End of a sporadic blog, the beginning of a regular one

 

Hi all I start every blog apologizing about how long it has been since my last blog post was written. I guess I could do that again, but lets try and keep it fresh.

I left you last at the end of August. I had just had the Celia Wade Brown Ale released with Yeastie Boys for Wellington in a Pint. I had amazing feedback and that feedback still trickles in even though there is only the odd bottle of it lying around.

So what big has happened to me since the end of August last year? Well a lot. Let me start of things in order that they come to mind.

Firstly I was talking about working at Flight Centre last time. Wanting to working on brewing things on the side. Well that did not work out. Being a travel agent is not all it is cracked to be. I won’t go into detail about why it sucked so bad, but it did. I was there for 3 months, I quit with no back up, I have never done this before but it had to be done. Within this notice period I had been talking to an uncle of a friend of mine who works at Flight Centre. He co-owns a large home brew supply company in Albany, Auckland. Before you know we have lunch he tells me he needs someone to be the Companies “Beer Man”. He flew me up to Auckland, I met the team, talked business and well… I now live in Auckland (Boos heard from the Wellingtonians), Browns Bay to exact and work in Albany.

My new job, which I love involves quite a bit. Firstly I brew, which is what I want to do with my life and get paid to do so. I organise fresh wort nights with Breweries around the country. How this works is we go to a Brewery with a recipe (or use one of their existing beers), brew it, put it into 20 litre containers for people to come and pick it up on the night (mostly in brew pubs) or send them out to customers. Then they put the wort (which is unfermented beer) into their fermenter along with the yeast we supply (and dry hops if they are suitable for the beer). So far I have done a Wheat beer with Hallertau, an American IPA with Deep Creek Brew pub in Browns Bay (aka my local), a Red IPA with mike’s organic brewery in the Taranaki (fermenting as I write this), in a couple of weeks I will be doing a black IPA at Twisted Hop Brewery in Christchurch. Yes all the colours of the IPA spectrum. Have a look at www.freshwortpacks.com for details and to buy a pack.

Me mashing in the grain at Deep Creek Brew Pub

I have also been helping organise new dried beer yeasts. We are releasing 8 new dried beer yeasts which I have been testing. Yeast is a complicated thing. We have had a very smart guy in the UK developing them over the last 3 years. This has meant that I can brew with them and test different yeasts with different styles of beer which is really cool. I usually brew twice a week with my helpful French lab assistant Flo. I have also been working with the Marketing and design people and worked on naming and numbering the yeasts.

We are also designing a mash tun/boil kettle in one, also a really cool heat exchanger. Also working on a conical temperature controlled fermenter, a brew in bag system and a few other things. So it has kept me really busy. I will also have a stand at every beer festival in NZ to promote what we are doing. None of which I am complaining about.

So this brings me to another part of my job. I look after the Mangrove Jack’s Facebook page and Twitter account (I have been useless on the Twitter account so far, need to improve that) also writing a beer blog. Now originally it was going to be a blog drinking a beer every day and writing about it (like Alice Gallety – and her awesome blog Beer for a Year). But I have decided against this as I have put on enough weight with this industry, and am starting to lose that. But I will review a couple of beers a week, talk about home brewing, brewing with commercial breweries, write ups on breweries, brewpub and beer bars and any other beer and brewing subjects.

So the move to Auckland has been interesting. I love Wellington and probably will move back there some time but am discovering cool things about Auckland and making some good friends so I will be up here for a while.

So goodbye for now and check out my new beer blog “The beer hop” here is the link

http://mangrovejacks.com/blogs/news/7480368-the-beer-hop-beer-review

I will be posting 2-3 times a week. This means me drinking good beers and then writing about it a lot, and get paid to do so. I thank you in advance for your sympathy ;)

Cheers and see you on the new blog
Andrew Childs
The Beer Man

My beer is ready for you all to try! Get some

Ok I started this post 3 weeks ago, and am not just finishing it, ok its the same apart from a few things changed as they have become out of date. Next post will be my experiences with Beervana. More changes and preparation of starting my own brewing company.

Well it has been a long wait but on Wednesday the 8th of August my beer the Celia Wade Brown Ale was officially released at the Fork and Brewer (my old workplace) on tap and also at Thorndon and Island Bay New Worlds. To say I was excited would be a massive understatement.

Leading upto this date I had questions from everyone almost every day. The most common being when is your beer going to be released? I did not know exactly until about a week before hand. Unfortunately on the day of the launch I had a work event I could not get out of (as the last one of these events was on my birthday/homebrew party night). So I managed to turn up early then leave quickly, then literally forced to drink a bit at this work function, then race back as soon as I could. There were still plenty of people around when I got back, and I got some great feedback from people about my beer.

Now obviously a commercial scale of your home brew is always going to be hard to get it exactly the same. The Celia Wade Brown Ale made with Yeastie Boys at Invergarill Breweries has a lot more pronounced coffee flavours, and a lightly different bitterness. I have to say I liked my original beer but I really like this one as well. Some Comments I have got and thoughts I have had include:

- It tastes like chocolate covered coffee beans (which is what I got from the first Mikes Coffee Porter)

• It was my favorite out of all 4, well I think that these people are just being nice, the other beers are very good, special mentions to the Garage Project Kawakawa Cable Car Classic that is a very cool unique Wellington idea and Parrot Dog Cooked Straight, I love smoked beers, and having a smokey pale ale is really risky, but you get a great smokey flavour then a very unique bitterness. The Bye Bye Blanket man, although simple is a decent golden ale with some nice Nelson Sauvin flavours coming through. Well done to everyone!

• Ok another comment was that the coffee was too intense, I can understand that but I think once the beer warms up a little that the coffee gives way good soft hop bitterness and have a good linger.

• For me I personally like it more that 8 wired double coffee double brown, maybe because it is 6% instead of 9% I feel that my one was more balanced. For this reason I am very happy with it. I can pat myself on the back as good as anyone but when it comes to brewing I can be my own biggest critic, so to say I prefer mine more than a similar beer from one of my favorite breweries makes me very happy.

• A huge thanks to the Fork and Brewer for putting on a great night, the new management are doing a good job, I look forward to the brewery opening soon. The beer is close to gone at the F&B grab one there while you still can.

• A huge thanks to the bars who are about to have my beers on soon. This includes Little Beer Quarter, LBQ one of the coolest bars around, they just turned one year old a while ago and they have always been awesomely supportive. The Malthouse currently have them in the bottle and they will be on tap soon, this bar is a Wellington institution. Bar Edward in New Town with the Rachael the lovely Duty Manger who I used with has had a keg come and go quite fast. Hashigo Zake have told me that they will have it on soon, this bar is probably the best beer geek bar in NZ, maybe in the southern hemisphere. I feel like I'm walking into Cheers bar whenever I am there.

• Another huge thanks to Regional Wines and Spirits, New Zealands best beer store in New Zealand, with 20 taps! one of which is my beer! I went there and got a rigger (so did my little brother) of my beer to share around with my friends. They have 4 kegs of the CWB ale and I am sure they will go fast.

• Thorndon New World and Island Bay New World thanks for selling the bottles, apparently they are selling really well! Awesome!

• Biggest thanks Clemengers BBDO for organising the whole Wellington in a Pint idea. I know logistically it has not been easy but you have done a fantastic job and specifically to Cristin Waite for coming up with the idea and running with it. They have put incredible amounts of time and money into this project. Appologies to everyone who was looking forward to seeing my face on a billboard (haha still think that was funny), but it is just a photo of the beers.

Cheers for everybody's support.
There will be many more beers to come from me in the near future
Andrew Childs

Being a Wellington in a Pint Winner

Ok I say this all the time, but I should have written this ages ago. But really all these crazy/amazing things happened all at once and I have been well.... exhausted. So let me start from the beginning. One of the coolest thing of course being Winning Wellington in a pint along with 3 other people. It was a great honour and now my winning beer the Celia Wade Brown Ale will be produced my Yeastie Boys one of my favorite New Zealand brewing companies. As another part of the prize,  Clemengers BBDO will be doing the marketing for my businesses beers for me. Very exciting times. The Celia Wade Brown Ale is a Brown ale named after the Mayor of Wellington. A woman of green politics so it has plenty of green hop flavours and a hint of organic coffee beans. I personally really enjoyed this beer, so much so that I entered the last few bottles of it as I and others had drunk them all. Very happy it won and look forward to it being released for sale.

So in total over 160 different beers were entered into the competition by over 80 different brewers. Some have said that I was going to well with thirteen entries, the most anyone entered. But apparently the person who entered the second most with 10 entries did not even get any into the top 30, made me better. So apparently I got 4 beers into the top 30, the only person to get 2 beers into the top 16, ie the next day's judging. I have to say I was waiting with baited breath to see if I had made the final round. When I found out that the 2 had made the finals I was stoked! (and happened to just be walking into the Fork and Brewer at that very moment).

I brewed thirteen beers for Wellington in a Pint. Excessive? Maybe. Did it work? well yes! Some in my own humble and often self deprecating opinion some of them were really good and a couple of them were average and one or two of them were bad to down right horrible. So here is the list I promised last time with some.

So without further ado here we go with my own comments on what I honestly thought about the beer and what was good and bad about them and their underlying concept:

On a good day blond ale 4.9% - This beer was based on what Wellington is like on a good day, a botanical beer, originally based on a botanical blond ale where I was going to grab a bunch of herbs and other plants from the botanical gardens. But well I ran out of time and just used rosemary from the back yard as this reminds me of walking through wellington as there are many of these plants around. So the verdict? too much rosemary, I used 7 grams for 20 liters, it was too much, it is still drinkable, but if I was ever to do anything like it again it would be scaled back significantly. It had a certain soapiness about it that was just too much. But I think I know how I would counter this in the future. 

Malty cultural 4.7%- This beer was meant to represent the the melting pot that is Wellington. Instead it represents my first truely unpalatable beer ever. I have made one beer that was too sweet for my liking before but nothing like this. Ok so this beer really was a bit of a piss take. How many different malts can I easily get my hands on? Turns out that number is 21 different types, so thats what I used (in different quantities), the result was an astringent browny/red ale that is just astringent and horrible. Really it was by far the worst beer I have ever made. It is still alcohol though, so who ever wants it, take as much of it as you like. Please get in touch and take it off my hands!

Latte Lout 4% - This beer, I really enjoyed making. I also enjoy drinking it. It made it to the top 30 apparently, it was originally going to be called flat welly white, but well it aint flat, it aint white. Also  I had always wanted to do a play on lager lout, or even call a lager, lager lout one day maybe. So this beer is a 4% milk porter (milk=lactose in this case which adds sweetness and body to the beer. I think the judges wanted the beers to be a wee bit stronger. The version I entered had cold infused Havana 5 star coffee. 

This is a really good time to thank the great people at Havana Coffee who gave me a huge amount of different beans to play with. Ok I did not use them all for brewing, but the coffee I made did keep me awake, and allowed me to brew. I LOVE Havana Coffee!.  I also dry beaned (put whole beans into conditioning) most of the batch of this coffee which gives it a bigger coffee taste but takes away from a lot of the other subtle chocolate and roasted flavours of the beer. Note to self, dont dry-bean again.

Me and 2 different versions of the Latte Lout

Red rocks IPA 6%- This red IPA represented the rugged wellington coast line. It fermented at too high a temp and resulted in some undesirable flavours, but most people who drunk it (its nearly all gone from the party I had) liked it a lot. It had lots of caramel flavours and used a good combination of NZ and US hops but was not overly bitter. Overall was ok for the fermentation issues that it had.

Buzzy bean stout 5.9%- This was my original idea for Wellington in a Pint. A beer that has coffee because as we all know Wellintonians are caffeine addicts through and through. It has honey to represent the beehive, has vanilla beans and cocoa beans. It was also a blend of styles oatmeal stout, milk stout and mead. This beer I used 5 different beans from 5 different countries and dry beaned each of them, each giving slightly different flavours, but a certain tannin from having the beans in there too long. Friends who like coffee still really love this beer though.

Coffee Snob Stout 5.9%- This one is for Jeremy LeBlanc. Formally of Fork and Brewer DM fame all around good guy who won a Tshirt by coming up with one of the winning names from the first round of wellington in a pint, really it is the above bear with a different type of coffee bean. 

Cuba Street Car fire 8%- This beer has definatly got me a lot of feedback. Not only did it make it to the final 16 but I hear it made it to the top 6, which I am very stoked about and am thinking of doing this one commercially in the not to distant future. So it is named after the crazy guy who set his car on fire in Cuba Street last year, what a nutbar! So it is a chilli rauch beer, using a lot of smoked malt (german rauch malt) and chipotle and cayenne pepper to make smoke and fire. Ok so I should have not put in the cayenne, they added too much heat and little to the flavour, but they were in the backyard and I wanted to use them. Next time, even higher percentage of Rach malt and only chipotle chillies (I can taste the burn of one I finished 15mins ago still). 

Smoke and Mirrors Lager  8% - Blantantly just the above beer with no chillies nice strong smokey lager that has enough sweetness to balance out the smoke, but to hell with that I want more smoke, so thats what I want to go for next time, not a bad beer though.

Paua to the People - Smoked Rye Paua Stout 6.5% -  There is the Three Boys Oyster Stout, the Emerson's Claim Stout. Why not a Paua stout? I totally stole the idea from a very beery gentleman named Ian. He did a 3.5% version a year ago, I was really impressed with it. Now 3 people entered paua beers into Wellington in a Pint, I got to try the Chipow, Chilli Paua beer, I loved it!...Mikes has just made a Paua Porter that I thought was pretty good. As for my beer. It has taken a lot of time to condition and is now one of my very favorite beers I have ever created. The paua was put in 15 mins to the end of the boil many thanks to my old flatmate Kevin who supplied me with the Paua. It has a slight briny smell and a briny aftertaste, there is a good smokey linger and slight spiciness from the rye. It would be very hard to do this on a large commercial batch but would love to release say 100liters of this beer at some point. 

Dodgy Diplomatic Rye IPA 6.5% - This beer has many other names. Originally the Amerikiwi dozen (it is made with 6 varieties of NZ hops and 6 varieties of American hops). But this was not wellington enough. So the dodgy diplomatic is about getting Wiki-leaked hops from the states. This beer has a slight spiciness and according to one friend it tastes like peaches and cream, it has a lot of complex hop flavours, lots of piney/tropical and stone fruit flavours. I plan on making this beer as Chateauneuf du hop. The house of the hop! Name was from a crazy chef friend of mine. Chateauneuf du pope is a red wine that uses at least a dozen grape varieties. Now we have the beer version, an exciting beer that I look forward to trying to perfected. 

Courtenay nights Black IPA 5.2% - This was my first Black IPA, all I can say is that it is friggin unique.... I pretty much had a bunch of different grains left over to make a malt base. A bunch of different NZ, US and Czech hops. It was strange, hoppy, and tasted like..... Celery! it doesnt taste bad, but unlike any beer I have ever tried. 

Blanket man brown Ale 5.9% - the oaked version of the Celia Wade Brown Ale. A bit astringent like the man himself. But a really great beer, nice oaky, nutty, lovey beer I thought. According to some nicer than my Celia Wade Brown Ale. Love playing with oak.... Yummy. 

Celia Wade Brown Ale - The winning beer! The final beer will taste different to my home brewed one. But I cannot wait to try the final version. To be released in a few weeks time. Exciting times ahead :)

The Mayor Celia Wade Brown and I

Thats all for now, its been a big weekend.... I think that is a whole other post.

Cheers! 

Andrew

The beer guy

End of my Bar tending career, beginning of brewing business

Hi awesome people who read my blog.

There is so much to talk about and so little time (trying to squeeze this into the 45 mins before heading to work). So a week ago I handed in my two weeks notice to the Fork and Brewer. It is something I have been contemplating for some time now. For those of you who are not on my facebook (people I don't know read my blog apparently, that is pretty cool) or don't follow me on twitter ps @tall_ales, follow me for all beer and non beer related things, then you would not know I am going to be a travel consultant for Flight Centre. So are you giving up on your dreams? why did you not go back to legal work? Well for me I am a people person, I think I would make a good sales person, I am passionate about travel, hopefully use those skills to make a decent amount of money. This will be money that I put into my brewing business. So a week today I will have my last day at the Fork and Brewer, have 4 days off then off to start training for my new role.

So as I reach the end of point in my life as a bartender, being the beer geek behind the bar. I want to share with you some of the great things about life behind the bar. I have gone over some of the negatives in great detail. But one of my co workers told me something about this type of work that most office work will just not provide you with.

1) Dealing everyday with something you are passionate about. I love beer, I love it, I make it, I drink it, I talk about it, I research it, I hang out at other beer bars when not at my own, it pretty much influences a large proportion of my life. I get to impart my knowledge, get people to broaden their harizons. I have someone nearly every day (or at least several times a week) that come up to me and shake my hand and say it was great to meet me and thank me for introducing them to the wonderful world of craft beer. I have to admit that makes me feel pretty dam good.

2) The people you work with. Working behind a bar you get to know the people you work with really well. With people with all sorts of backgrounds and skills, from people who tattoo people (sometimes beer logos onto other staff members), people who are brewers who are passionate musicians, people who come from other countries and give you interesting insights, to people who work in the kitchen and are.... some interesting people, I could write a whole blog on them but I wont. One of the best things is when there are no customers, no loud repetitive music and you and your co-workers, no matter what has gone on during work, just sit down have a beer and just chill out and talk shit, have a joke and a laugh and get to know each other. It is a pretty cool thing and something that I shall miss a lot

3) Meeting people from the industry. Working at a beer bar you get to know people at other beer bars, really cool people, be it people from Little Beer Quarter, Hasigo Zake, Malthouse orTaphaus or any other beer bar it is cool to get to know people who work behind and run other bars. Even if you like the bar you work at, it is still work, so sometimes finding an outside sanctuary is essential. Meeting brewers, reps, marketing people and all other kinds of people I have found incredibly helpful in trying to start up my brewing business.

So maybe this is not how I imagined my time at the Fork and Brewer would turn out, but hey it was an experience, I will take what I have learned there and I believe good things will come from it. At the end of the day that is what is all about. So I look forward to my next step in my journey of owning a brewing company. I will keep you all informed about how it goes.

As I have promised in earlier posts I will tell you about my Wellington in a Pint entries very soon. I finished bottling them last night, took a loooong time. I have to do the write up for them in the coming days (I wrote this instead of some of them).

So until next time.

Andrew

Beer Festivals

Mmmmmmmm beer festivals. Now let me begin with I have been to many beer festivals over the years. I have always greatly looked forward to them months in advance. I remember the first beervana I ever went to was at the Wellington town hall. This is the first time I ever tried the Emerson's Taieri George Spiced Ale and fell in love, it is a hotcross bun in a bottle, think cinnamon, nutmeg, citrus zest, it is slightly different every year, it ages amazingly (it is the only beer I have ever kept for 18 months before drinking).

That same year my second favorite beer was the Martinborough White Rock Wheatbeer from the now defunct Martinborough Brewing Co, I loved such lovely yeast spice characteristics.That brewery was completely inconsistent and when it was good it was good and when it was bad it was bad.

Now there have been many other festivals over the years. Brief overview: worst beer festival experience was a NZ beer festival at Waitangi park. It was pissing with rain, drunk people were sliding in the mud, it was nuts! the bad part was only when afterwards when I myself was not the most sober, I was tackled into the concrete by someone and I bruised the cartilage under my knee cap, putting a rather large damper for the 10km race I was training for, took about 3 months of physio to fix. 

Now the best ones! Everyone that I have volunteered at! all two of them. Beervana 2011 was awesome, I got to be the first person to pour an 8-wired the night after they won best brewery in New Zealand. So I was quite a busy man. Of course the free session afterwards was great, amazing beers, good people and of course amazing beer. What was great about this year is that the food was INCREDIBLE! which was a great  change from previous years!

This came after I had volunteered for the awards night the night before, pouring pints. The funny thing was that there were some quality craft beers we were pouring then there was a Monteiths Black (owned by the big and quite evil DB) and only 5 or so beers from the whole keg was drunk, this was free beer, great to see.

Two weeks previous to this I volunteered at the judging for the BeerNZ awards. Two days of incredibly tiring but furfilling work. Both pouring beers for the judges, washing glasses, running up and down stairs, carrying kegs etc. I look forward to doing it again this year.

This bring me to The Matariki Winter Ale Festival. I worked on the food stand. It was quite literally a life changing night. The food was made by the hop garden. Lovely food. At the end we got to try some amazing food. This night I told a influential beer person/well known beer drinker around town that I wanted to make beer my life. She promptly volunteered me for the events just talked about above. So the reason for this post is so I could talk about and post some pictures from Marchfest in Nelson this year. This is a picture from very late in the evening (Im pretty sure that is David Wood, one of my most favorite of beer nerds pretending to chock me out).

Anyway I went with Simon Cook. Simon works at Little Beer Quarter, one of my very favorite beer bars, that place has the vibe that I would want if I was to open a Brewpub. Simon is a keen homebrewer and likes making some crazy brews like I do, he has started the Massy University Brewing Society and all round GC. He had won an a bunch of free tickets so we just needed to pay for the ferry and a nights accommodation. This trip turned out to be well a little bit nuts. First of one of the dude we were going with slept in. Missed the ferry and have to fly to nelson. We got to one of the sunniest places in New Zealand and the weather was shit. But we started the trip with a couple of homebrews from each of us on the ferry.

We got to the beautiful Founders park and it was like being in Wellington, all the beery folk were there. I got there and had a Moa Smoked mussel stout, it was beautiful and inspired me a little for my Paua Stout (was going to do it anyway but a bit of smoked malt would be a nice touch). Turns out the brewer was behind me and said, its good you should get a full pint. But we found that the half pint was the more economical way to do it, which is the case with most festivals.

Soren from 8 wired talking about brewing

We went to several talks about brewing and beer in the media. Was good to see the difference between brewing scale and techniques between Moa and 8-wired. Good to hear and comment about beer in the media (I may have become a bit more opinionated after having a few me-thinks).


But was definatly not as opinionated/ really rude as one drunk brewer who shall remain nameless. So the festival was great despite the crappy weather, there was a competition to name all the secret ingredients in all the beers, that lasted about 30 mins until we got too busy drinking and chatting to people. The lines were crazy long but me and a couple of other people found some good line shortening techniques.... *they underestimated my sneakiness*

After we ran out of tokens/had tried everything we wanted to try. Some of us headed to the Sprig and Fern Brew pub. They brew an incredible amount of there own beers, I had an oatmeal stout which was great and scotch ale which was really a more sessionable version of the stonecutter scotch ale. Talked to some Tuatara folk and Hasigo Zake folk then it was off to the freehouse... now this is a beerpub! wow! a converted church which additional space for the yurt in the front yard.... great local beers, beer on hand pump that you would never expect to see there. Everyone was very merry by this stage (some other people will off getting into trouble else where which makes for a great story, but not one to be put online haha).

Dave Waugh and me, geeez Dave haha

So I will leave you with some photos of the day. I will talk about the awesome X-ale festival in another post then well I have heaps to write about, I should write this thing more often but well, I am too busy doing the things that I am write about to write about them. But there is a lot of big things to talk about so stay tuned.

Man love at Sprig and Fern

The Awesome Freehouse

Paul and Johnny at the freehouse

Johnny and Steph 

Mmmm imperial Pint

A happy man

Inside the Yurt

At the stoke brewery the next day, we took our own brewery tour, we missed our ferry but just got one an hour later, no biggie

Simon about to chunder, ok he didnt in the end, long night, I think the $1.50 pies helped  ;)

I'm still back.... Fridays!

Hi everyone. Today another Friday. Friday.... the only day of the week that has "thank god it's" in front of it on a regular basis. Well not for people who work behind a bar usually. I do find my self saying, dam I used to like Fridays. Working in a Government department we felt that working all the way till 5pm was a some super human effort. Off to the pub/boardroom for a drink or many before heading to town to meet friends. Now well I start at 5pm today which is not bad, you just walk into the beast of suits thirty for the taste of end of week freedom. If we are not crazy busy I usually ask how their day has been. The response, better now. Then you just smile back and think dam I will be here till midnight.

Have only been once in Sweden, was ok for a chain

But last weeks blog was the moaning blog. This week I will attempt to catch you up on some of the awesome things that have happened. For one thing I moved to an awesome place in Hataitai in Wellingtons hills that look over the sea and out to Shelly bay, home to an old army base. I have a small room but lots of room upstairs. We have 2 balconies, a fire place, a kitchen island (very helpful for brewing purposes). Cool flatmates, at the moment 3 English people, friends and a new random, all awesome people. You open a cupboard you will likely find some form of beer or brewing equipment in there. Since I work more nights than days I am often at home and able to read, brew, or spend too much time on facebook. So what has happened in the last 6 months that has been cool?

1. Christmas and new years was great to get a decent amount of time off work to catch up with family, went to my aunties farm in Masterton, hung out with the family for a few days, did some brewing, chilled out and did some reading. Was very nice.

2. Brewing, brewing and more brewing. Had some good feedback on a few of my brews and have had a lot of ideas of stuff that I will wont to make commercially one day. This is a good place to come to were I left off last time in a list of brews that I have made over the last few months. Here we go

• New Czechland Pilsner 5.3% : My first ever lagered beer. They are not easy to do, they take ages, but I have had many good comments about it. So the name comes from it having half Czech Saaz hops which give it spicy, earth characters and half New Zealand Hallertau Aroma hops. It has lagered for nearly 2 months and the fermentor even moved flats with me. What I liked about it is the clarity, nearly perfect (it is the beer I am holding in the article written about me). It was crisp and easy to drink, decent bitterness, but had a slight caramel flavors which are not really to style, it also had little nose as I did not at hops to the fermentor (dry hop). So with a few tweeks and a few more batches I think I can make a very enjoyable pilsner that people would be willing to buy.

•  5 Min Mot, pale ale 3.5%: My first attempt at a low alcohol beer. You know what some people have thought it is my best one yet.... I tried to make it come in at 4%, did not really turn out that way. It has Motueka hop additions every 5mins in the boil. I has good bitterness but amazing stone fruit flavours and aromas. You could enjoy great hoppy flavours all day long and still be able to not slur your words and faceplant on your way to the bathroom. Defiantly an interesting idea of something to do more of in the future. Everyday I have someone tell me that they do not make enough lower alcohol delicious beers. 

•  No New Pope imperial stout. 10.4%. This is a peated,smoked imperial stout. This was a mish mosh of different grains and sugars... you are allowed to put sugars in an imperial stout. This is used to boost the body without boosting the body. Well I have only tried one of these because it is so big and peaty that it needs to age for between 6months to a year before it is ready. It has a lot of toasted oats to increase the body. Would I make it this way again? no. A bit too much peat and not enough smoked malts. I split the batch and put half of it in with toasted oak that had been soaked in laphroaig whisky. So it is a smoked, peated, oaked oatmeal Russian Imperial Stout... a mouthful. Anyone get the name of the beer? well when the pope dies and they are voting on who the new pope will be, if there is no clear decision black smoked is released from the chimney. Well I thought it was cleaver haha. 

Ok so this took longer than usual. So next post will be on the amazingness of some beer festivals I have been to this year. I will also talk about some of my Wellington in a Pint beers. All going to plan there will be 13 of them.

Until next time. Enjoy your friday be you drinking working, or volunteering at the Great Australian beer festival. Dam I would love to be there now.

Andrew Childs BCA/LLBeer geek

2012 return of the blog

Ok well this blog got off to a good start, then just died, disappeared, I just stopped posting.
Why did I stop? What about pursuing your dream? Are you just a lazy bastard? Well let me see if I can sum up the last 6 months or so for you...

So when I left you last 7 months ago to the day, we were still in the mist of the rugby world cup, we were all working crazy hours and everything was a bit nuts. So why did I stop blogging. Well I if really think about it one of the major reasons is because things were not going to swimmingly at work. For all of you who have worked in hospitality you know it can be unforgiving and thankless. So I did not want to want to get on this blog and do nothing but bitch and moan about the job that I talked about the job I was so looking forward to. Also I did not want to mention things that could get me into trouble, especially since one of our owners is especially tech-savvy and will no doubt read it. But what is a blog if you are not free to speak your mind? I have things I have to say and if people are interested then they should be able to read about it. Having all this stuff pent up has changed me, and not for the better so it is time to share it with those of you who care.

So to start I will start off with a bit of a rant of what has not been great in the last 7 months, that way I can end on some lovely happy things about the last 7 months.

To start with we unfortunately had the worst General Manager I could possibly imagine. Should I name him? am I defaming him? (asks inner lawyer). No am not I have the defense of truth and honest opinion, go my B- in Tort law!. I wont name him but I'm sure many of you will know. Where to begin? well this guy was a real piece of work. He would yell and swear at employees, he threatened to put his size 11's up peoples butts (I felt like giving him a piece of my size 13s), he sexually harassed the female staff (in my in others opinions), he would lock himself in the office on a busy night for long periods of time and not help, called last drinks on a bar with 50 people 3 hours before the end of our licence, and then swore at me for telling him that people were a bit bemused by the call (as it turns out he had to be up early the next day to be an extra in a TV show). He would even phone the bar from the office (5 meters away) and ask someone to bring him in 2 cans of coke and a steak sandwich, believe me he could live without the 2nd coke). So long story short it was hell working for this guy. I never thought I would say this but thank you 90 day trail law, because some 80ish days later his ass was gone, I only wish he could have given him a piece of my mind before he had gone.

So post this waste of space of a person. Work got better, the owner operator took over the General Manager position, he really does know his stuff. I was not stuck exclusively on cleaning glasses, we all do a lot of them, we have had many staff come and go. Most leaving back overseas, some moving to higher positions elsewhere to keep their visas. Now only a couple of originals remain, being me the 2 remaining duty managers and one part time person. So what is hospitality life like after 3 and a half years of policy work. Well to answer this I have to say I got into all of this on my own accord, so any bitching I do is stuff that I knew or should have known would be part of the deal.

One thing about this kind of work is the hours. At the start they were too short, not getting enough hours to get by, but then as staff left, the split shift became more of feature. This is were you start in the morning (as early as 9am for stocktake, but usually 10:30am or midday) and have an unpaid break of anywhere from 30mins to 3 hours. I don't complain about the times now, sometimes I have time to hit the gym and have something to eat. You often can finish at anytime from 10:30pm to around 1am, that amount of time on your feet defiantly makes a 8hr shift feel like 10 or a 10hr shift feel like 13. This pretty much is just your day. I have not seen my friends apart from when they come to the bar, or when on the very odd occasion I am free I am usually quite jaded, not quite myself.

I told people at my last job that no, the hospo lifestyle will not get the better of me, I will keep up with my workouts and diet... some of that is true but it has defiantly had a negative impact of my health. Sometimes there is just not time to prepare a healthy meal, no money to buy healthy meals or eat at regular times when you are serving other during dining hours. Sure you are burning calories on your feet all day, but it is not the same as having a 60min run or weights. The toll on your body is such that you don't want to go to the gym for an hour then be on your feet, lifting thing (often lifting kegs up stairs, with 2 people now, with the old manager it was a 65kg keg up the stairs by yourself) Sometimes at work you just eat a fries or wings because that is all you have time for. Also one of my concerns is what hospo has done to my hands, cleaning  things constantly all day with abrasive chemicals has aged my hands, with small cuts, chemical burn and general dermatitis that I have never in my life come across, it really is a horrible condition.

This brings me to the money. Wow I wish there was a tipping system in NZ now. Kiwis earning anywhere near the minimum wage have it rough. Many people who work or used to work with me all got paid significantly more for working fewer hours. Now I am not bitching about how little I get paid in general, that is what I signed on for, but it does make even affording to do my brewing at home hard work.

This brings me to my final moan I promise. The Fork and Brewer has been the Fork and Barman for the last 7 months, yes we are so close we can taste it now but it has been a long and frustrating wait. If it is bad for me a guy who just wants to help out and learn the ropes of brewing commercially, then our head brewer who is also working behind the bar must be extremely frustrated as well. I could live with crazy hours low pay if I was there for what I wanted to do, get into the brewery and help out be it from cleaning out the mash tun to whatever they needed me to do.

Ok rant over (stops to get lunch). Now for the good things at work. Beer, we have some great beer on at work consistently having quality craft beers on everyday (except sundays when the doors are locked). I get to be on the cutting edge of NZ beer. We have had beer launches, Wellington in a pint, a month of Mild Ales (we still have a couple on tap well worth trying). Being the token beer geek at the bar has good and bad things about it, good, you can help explain to customers the ins and outs of beer, help them with what you think they might like (I have to say that most of my co-workers are pretty good at this). Talk to people about styles. I get to talk to people in the beer community on a regular basis. Do I get annoyed with customers, sometimes, but for the most part I enjoy interacting with people on a regular basis.

I have made some excellent contacts, excellent friends and learnt a lot about the beer and hospitality trades. But really where my passion lies is at home with my home brewing. Both the bar and my brewing led to this article in the Wellingtonian and on Stuff.co.nz http://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/news/local-papers/the-wellingtonian/6807954/A-tale-of-ales-from-bar-to-bar.

So last time I talked about a Kiwifruit wheatbeer, that feels like a lifetime ago, but infact I think I drunk the last of it last night. So here is a list of what I have been homebrewing taking into account this  is the last 7 months of 15months of home-brewing some have been much better than others:

• Failed old man Mocha porter - from the name you can tell it failed, it was too sweet for my liking, I thought it was due to too much lactose, but really it was too much crystal malt, I did not know enough about the fermentability of it at the time, I have learnt and have never used that much again. Am currently leaning from that while making my Coffee beers for Wellington in a Pint
• Hopoate IPA - it has hops up the arse! (google it for the reference if you don't get it). This beer was the best I had made so far, it had excellent stone fruit aroma, lovely tight bubbles taste of peaches, nectarines and a bit of orange, it had a lasting bitterness that may have been a little harsh but I got good feedback on it
• Blender whiskey porter - I thought I would use oakchips in a porter for the first time (I have done a lot more since then. This has been a very popular beer for me, I originally was going to blend it with the failed mocha porter, but this beer was sweet enough by itself, it had a high alcohol content at 7%, it had chocolaty whiskey notes, also notes of banana (likely from a high fermentation tempreture), was big and rich. I ended up giving a few of these to my dad and he loved them. Not how I pictured it tasting, but one of my favorites so far.
• Raging Raisin Belgium strong ale - This recipe was taken from Sam Calagione's Extreme brewing. The recipe called for raisins, belguim candy sugar and was STRONG. This in the end tasted really nice, but at the back of the mouth was a huge phenol alcohol flavour that was way strong than I ended. At 10% alcohol I only drink one of these on a rare occasion.
• The Full Nelson Imperial Pale Ale - This beer was made with Neil Miller in mind a massive fan of both hops and Wrestling. It as my first imperial pale ale it came in at about 8% alcohol. It used all Nelson Sauvin hops, and a lot of them! It was double dry hopped and had a beautiful aroma, lovely flavours but as the worlds most recognized beer writer (Stephen Beaumont) who was given my beer by Neil said, he liked the flavour but there needed to be a better integration of the hops and malts, giving a more balanced beer, I could not agree more so I will defiantly remake this beer in the near future.

Ok so I have not done this for ages there are many more of my beers I need to tell you all about, both made and drunk (or some still around) currently brewing, going to brew for Wellington in a Pint, and brews that I want to make commercially some day. This blog did not sum up the last 7 months but I will continue to drip feed all that info over the next couple of weeks.

I will try and write this blog on a weekly basis from now on, more concentrating on homebrewing and the quest to open my own brewing company.

Thanks for reading and talk to you soon.

Andrew