Report from gathering at NZ Beer Festival in Auckland

[Martin Bridges]

A surprisingly excellent day yesterday! A number of SOBA members and soon-to-be SOBA members (c'mon guys, you know you want to!) met up at the NZ Beer Festival in Ellerslie. Although the megaswill vendors were present it was good to see that there was a good range of craft breweries and all were busy. We spent most of our time in an oasis of calm and quality beer between the Tuatara and Croucher stands.

Beer of the day for me was the Tuatara Porter, with Yeastie Boys Kid Chocolate not far behind. Croucher Pale and Epic Mayhem were having a little argument about third place for me, unresolved by the end of the day. Oh, and not to forget the gorgeous Wild Thing that Nathan brought over from Murrays in Oz - good to meet you Nathan and I hope your liver enjoys its trip around NZ!

So good to see so may friendly faces - SOBA members, forum members, brewers, publicans....

Highlight of the day for me had to be seeing the "dead zone" of empty space around the Carlsberg stand, while the rest of the place was rammed! Even their slinky bar steff in their little red dresses couldn't save them! The Epic crowd next door must have been loving it!

[JoKing]

Bummer for them! I was talking about it with them when I picked some yeast up from them last month or so ago. They were saying it was super popular at the Blues Brews and BBQ's - but they never told me it was infected!

[Reviled]

The tart I saw drinking it seemed to enjoy it ;oP Maybe it can still be popular with the masses even with an infection?

[Martin Bridges]

I don't know how anyone could get past the aroma! I had a cold and it was pretty overpowering.

[Reviled]

bahaha, maybe theyre used to sucking on band aids? :oP

Found the name of that Russian brewery, was quite impressed for what seemed to be a mega-swill brand

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baltika

[Sam Possenniskie (TGM)]

Yes, sampled a few of these when I was in Russia a couple years back. A bit of a mixed bag. Ridiculously cheap over there though.

[JoKing]

I don't know if this is my place to say this, but (without trying to upset anyone) they were at the time, looking at taking on an apprentice (type of thing) a student from the Wanganui food science course - where they have a 500L pilot brewery. This student brewed a number of batches for Whitecliffs there. The way I understood it, the student is passionate about brewing, which is a positive thing. I wonder if they teach pasturisation of Strawberries there...?

[Stu McKinlay]

It's newish owners, isn't it? Bound to be some teething problems.
The mild has been tasting really great, from all accounts (I've liked it for a long time). I think the new branding is really good for them too - it's not to my personal tastes but it really stands out on the shelf (looks a little RTDish - yikes!) The old bottles got lost a little - too busy and like someone had fashioned them up in MS Paint.

[JoKing]

Yes, newish Coming up to 2 years now. I just thought a little bit of an expanation wouldn't go astray here - gotta stick up for my peeps over here in the Naki!

[Sam Possenniskie (TGM)]

Band Aids sums it up pretty good. I'm not enough of an expert to define it any more than that. Was just really chemically.

Maybe it was the odd machine they were serving it out of - it resembled my work's coffee espresso machine.

For the record, I'm also a fan of their Mild.

[Martin Bridges]

Maybe worth dropping them an email - they should be interested in objective feedback.

[Stu McKinlay]

Sam's on record saying that he is totally subjective ;-)

[denimglen]

There was something funky going on with it. My Mrs got one.

I didn't notice any band-aids but did get a lot of chlorine-like aroma, probably the same thing.

It also was like they had used imitation strawberry for the flavouring, which wasn't helping the band-aid chlorine.