Last week left at the desk job, and the craziness that is the “old man mocha porter”

The last week behind the desk, here I am looking the beautiful view over Wellington harbour, slightly blocked by the railway station but that is not bad to look at either. So in the last week we had someone else leave policy, she is heading to Scotland to live while I am moving about 2 km down the road to the Fork and Brewer.

The bar opens this Friday! With a few invite only drinks then the bar is open from 8pm. It is also the day the world cup starts, New Zealand is going to be insane for the duration of the tournament. Hopefully lovers of fine ales and rugby will be packing the bar and the atmosphere will be awesome! The new brew bar won’t be brewing for about a month due to the brewing equipment still being in China. But it will be exciting when it all gets going.

So last week I made “old man mocha porter” in celebration of my old man, his love of coffee and dark beers. This one is something special and I hope over the next few weeks of fermentation it lives up to my expectations! I have high hopes but it potentially has a lot of alcohol, possibly over 8%, so things can go wrong at higher alcohol levels. This thing has a lot of ingredients in it, more than I have ever used. To start off it has cold infused coffee from Memphis Belle on Dixon street (they do amazing coffee) coco nibs, lactose, ground mocha beans from caffe l'affare, lots of chocolate malt, roasted barley, crystal malt and some nice subtle hops. Also just for good measure added some vanilla and marshmallows (tokenly to make it a real mocha). I think I will have to add more yeast to get it to this huge alcohol level. Don’t worry I will be inviting all of you are to sample when it is ready (about a month away I would say. I think if I drunk this all myself I would die of liver failure and become the size a whale.

I have tried the Bob the Builder Pale Ale that I have made in celebration of my little brother turning 21, it is tasting pretty good, just a simple cascade hopped pale ale with some piney and citrusy notes, big hop linger, I like it but, my pale ales will only get better. My green tea pale ale will be sampled over the next day or so, hopefully it will be similar to Bob’s pale ale but with subtle green tea flavours, update, the green tea pale ale is quite sweet but with cascade piney notes coming through, it is not too bad but can be improved in the future.

Well I need to head to the gym soon, with the future occupational hazard of drinking too much beer, gym efforts must be doubled. Will be interesting to see what my new schedule is like, hopefully it will give my more daylight hours to get out and do more running and getting back into a good gym routine.

I leave you with a pic of me brewing my first beer, learn to fly pale ale... I finished the last bottle with my brother over the weekend, am still very happy for my first beer being drinkable :)