What are you drinking ?

[jt]

Ok, so What Are You Brewing was a hotty, as topics go.

Now I'm 15 pints into a keg I only filled on Tuesday and wondering if anyone else has a favourite at the moment ?

It's my second brown with US-Oh05 and it's better than the forst, maybe Ikept the temps down a bit during the scorcher we had in januray

[Ally Mcg]

Bit of a monster mash for me this evening.

First up the CBC winning (or so Paul the Octopus predicts) Amber ' La Tristessa Durera Toujours' which, if it was carbonated, would have been quite a tasty little number. Chucked the remaining bottles into the fermenting freezer at 15c with the Blackness American Pretend Lager to try and carb up for next weekend.

Then on to a couple of Monsters - the Yak which was superb with dinner and continuing being superb so I had another bottle. Finishing with the Mot Monster, which I guess would be a Raglan surfer to the Yaks classic CA surfer. Hmmm.

[Llew Bardecki]

Okay, I've given up on trying to document every beer I drink on holiday. I'm nearly 2 weeks behind now and have had a heap of good stuff since then.

But, since arriving in Toronto, Sarah and I got to one event that was worthy of special note: Bar Volo's Cask IPA challenge. It was kind of like the Malthouse West Coast IPA challenge writ large.

The event works like this:
It's a (roughly) single elimination tournament that started with 21 cask IPAs.
Local breweries enter their beers (some breweries have more than one.)
Each round takes place over a single day, when all the beers served blindly at the bar. You just go in and say "I'll have cask IPA #3" and they give you the appropriate beer along with a scoresheet.
The beers are secretly split into pairs (e.g. beer #2 is put up against beer #7) and whichever has the highest average score at the end of the night is the winner. The winning beers move on to the next round, the losers are out. This continues until one beer is crowned the champion Ontario Cask IPA.

We were there for round 2, where there were nine different cask IPAs available. They ranged from subtle English numbers to huge American hop monsters with bits of dry hop floating around in the glass. Between the two of us we actually managed to have a pint of each.

There were some fabulous beers, including possibly the best smelling beer I've ever had. Unfortunately I think the servers may have messed up the numbering order for some of them, so even though the results have now been released, I'll never really know what was what.

Still, a really fun way to spend an afternoon :)

[Ally Mcg]

After last nights mostly Yak Monster bots I decided tonight to focus on the Mot ones. Big, frightening and New Zealand, its the kind of beer that won't let you go camping again afraid of some terror in the bush, but thoroughly enjoyable all the same. Cheers yeasties.

[vdog]

Epic Barrel aged IPA for me this evening. Very different to the regular Armageddon, still an interesting drop though. The oak comes through quite strongly and adds some extra depth to the flavour - a little disconcerting to taste that in a beer where you'd normally expect it in wine, but it's a good thing. The hops are still there in abundance, as expected, although a little less fruity than the non-barrel aged version. I think I still prefer the cleaner flavour from the regular Armageddon, but I'm definitely pleased I tried this as well. Keep the experiments coming, Luke!

Last night tried Martin's IIPA and saison - very impressed with both (and jealous of clarity!). The IIPA has a huge hop kick up front that tangoes with the sweetness in the beer really nicely, then you get a WHAM of bitterness to dry it out and get the next sip lined up. The saison was really good too - but probably should have tried it before my tastebuds were savaged by the IIPA!

[Martin Bridges]

Thanks for the feedback mate. I tried your bitter later in the evening and it was a great example. Nicely balanced, firm bitterness but with solid malt. Could have drunk plenty of it.

[Christian]

Renaissance Craftsman Chocolate Oatmeal Stout tonight from the Freehouse - nice chocolate hit on the nose and first taste but this soon gives way to overpowering, dark Cocoa. Not really my thing at all but I can respect it for what it is. Will take a few doses of strong hops to restore my palate to normal, or perhaps some Stonecutter or MPA!

[Steph]

Had a smoked beer tasting last weekend with a huge array of beers (about 19 in total) including some homebrew from Dale (peated Wee heavy and Smoke Peat Stout) and Dave (Medication Imp Porter with star anise and peated malts) and a Joking imperial stout...Once you go black you never go back...I cannot remember it that is its name or we name it that!! Anyway, we tasted it blind with three other beers; no one guessed it was homebrew and it won the voting with half the votes on offer.

Also on the agenda was a verticle tasting of Smoking bishops:
2007 - this beer has pretty much gone dead. If you have any, drink it. I retained the strong smokey aroma, more than any of the other years, but was flat and sweat. It got one vote out of eight.
2008 - this one retained a little smoke on the nose and palate, but the sweat malt was again dominant. This got zero votes from the tasters.
2009 - this was the most popular, with 6 votes from eight tasters. It had both the smokey aroma and taste with inether being particularly dominant. It was quite balanced and drinkable.
2010 - my notes say "barnyard"!! What I think they are meaning is that this beer seemed to have more hops than the others (not just due to its freshness). This distracted somewhat from the smokeyness. It got one vote.

The general thought was that the odd year beers were better than the even, but that the 07 had not stood the test of time.

We also tried the schlenkra, 8 Wired and Alaskan up againt each other. Not quite a fair match. The schlenkra standing out for its incredible smokeyness and paleness againts the others. Everyone loved the 8 Wired but were blown away by the Alaskan Smoked Porter. It had huge hops that worked really well with the smokeyness. And, even though our glasses were well used, it poured with an amazing head and had impressive head retention. This is a truly great beer.

[Martin Bridges]

We had a few leaving drinks at work last night for a member of my team who's moving to the UK (poor deluded soul). I took in my Mild & Biere de Garde and they went down well. Some nice feedback on the BdG (someone said it took them straight back to a bar/bistro in northern France), which was good. A Sassy Red & a Hop Rocker from the fridge weren't too bad then off up to Galbraith's.

My main target was the cask-conditioned Croucher Pale Ale on gravity dispense on the bar, but the barman must have misheard me because the first beer I got was a Harrington's Classy Red off the guest tap. Still, nothing wrong with that - it's a nice beer, better than the similarly named Mac's beer I'd had before leaving work.

I then managed to make myself understood and got a Croucher's next up. Not 100% clarity (which apparently had been why they'd delayed selling it until the Friday) but not hazy by any means. The lower carbonation and slightly warmer serving temperature really opened this beer up. I remember the days when Croucher Pale Ale was an APA, but these days it's definitely an ESB and (IMHO) all the better for it. Lots of juicy malt balanced with fruity NZ hops. Lovely.

I then had a great chat with Keith Galbriath about various things (the disappearance of the dimpled pint glasses being one of them - it was a price point thing, which I totally understand), and we got to talking about their Antipodean NZPA. The second batch is conditioning at the moment and will be on sale in about 3 weeks. As Keith left he asked Dave the bar manager to get me a sample of the new batch, which was very kind of him. It's still a little rough round the edges but a nice beer all the same. The dry hop has been dialled back which I think increases the drinkability of the beer.

Another Croucher then off to get the bus. Some slightly boozed tweeting then ensued on the way home! An awesome night though. I don't get into Galbraith's anywhere near often enough - it's always superb.

[DP]

Went out to lunch at Sales St (just above Glengarry's near Victoria Park Markets in Auckland) and was surprised to learn that they brew three of their own beers; a lager, a brown ale and a porter. I only tried the dark ale ("Freemans Ale") but I thought it was quite a nice drop. Great food too. How come I've never heard of this place before? Anyone else been there? What are their other beers like?

[Martin Bridges]

I've never actually been. They're owned by one of the big boys and early reports of the beers weren't great. I really should get down there sometime and give them a go.

[Daron]

Sale St is a mixed bag ! Fri and Sat night it's a bit sceeeery with wall to wall butfy-boys and cougars prancing their stuff but reccomend Weekend arvos. Last summer they had live music on Sunday and some truly awesome muzos.

[Daron]

Chewing through a strange brew I concocted off a recipe to finish off the last of a 4kg box of Weyermanns extract. On brew day I realised I had forgot to get yeast and only had a dried Pislner one in the fridge.

Decided to use that and brewed for 4 weeks at a 12-15temp and has largered for 4 weeks at the same. I'ts actually good enough that the wife is getting into it dammit.