Brewjolais Day!

[Martin Bridges]

Apologies for posting this in the general forum but not everyone reads the SOBA forum and we're looking for as many people to attend as possible.

Thursday 1st April has been designated by SOBA as Brewjolais Day - a day to celebrate the launch of Mac's Brewjolais, a distinctive wet-hopped pale ale. We'll be gathering in Mac's Brewbars around the country and raising a toast (at 6pm) to the beer, the brewers & the company that makes it.

There's an Event listed on this site with more details. I hope that lots of you will turn up at your nearest location. Although this is a SOBA-organised event, guests are more than welcome so bring along your friends, families and workmates. It's the last evening before the Easter holiday so there's no work (for most of us) the next day. Should be a great night out.

Cheers,

Martin

[vdog]

Wish I could say the same - unfortunately the Northern Steamship didn't have it on at lunchtime, and were a bit vague about when it would be on (conclusion: "sometime tonight") as it wasn't cold enough to be served yet.

So I went to Brew on Quay and had a pint of Epic to make me feel better. It worked.

[Stu McKinlay]

next time get three pints at once - the first will be good, the second great, and the third (warm) will be outstanding

[MrC]

Managed to sneak in a Brewjolais at lunch today, and took opportunity to beerducate a couple of colleagues.

Everyone like the beer. We all sat there sniffing, sipping & chewing the beer searching for aromas, flavours and the words to describe them. We all agreed on sweet oranges (tangerines) and sweet, light caramel. I loved the body & mouthfeel. We could very easily have settled in for the afternoon. Nice hoppy burps all the way back to work.

Quite a different beer to the previous two years that I tasted. The malt seemed the same to me but the different hops made for a very different beer. All good, no complaints from me.

Managed to briefly meet up with Matthew & Coffeelater (is that right?) but had to head back to work :-(

[James P]

We had a good turn out at Mac's Brew Bar in Christchurch. 10 SOBA members, joined with another 30 or so people to salute Brewjolais (got the pronounciation (sp) correct Martin!). A surprise was the turn out of some of the brewing team from Lion Nathan (Geoff, Stephen and Joel), and our own Tom Ashton (also a LN lab tech) were also there. We got to have a good talk with the LN team and they are interested in the SOBA movement as well as the HB scene, commenting on their interest in taking a look at the CBC later this month.

The beer. Not bad. This one proved a little unbalanced (sweetness) and a little tart from what I thought was lemon. I guess I was expecting a big hoppy aroma, but it was not as refreshing as I would have thought, but again the beer was still pretty good. Alas I have not had the chance to try any of the previous batches but I thought this was nice.

Having said all that, I'm going back again on Saturday to have another or two just to see if it was one of my bad beer days.

[Christian]

Best April fools joke in a long while! Great back story - 'we came to Motueka to get the first hops of the harvest and put them in a batch of waiting pale ale, blah blah'. Ha ha, had me going there! At least now I know what beer without any hops tastes like.

[Martin Bridges]

Great work James, thanks for stepping up!

[Martin Bridges]

Phew, glad that's over! So much for trying to organise a nice simple event! Time to reflect a little on how it went:

On the positive side:
- sounds like we got a good gathering of SOBA members and guests at the various bars. I haven't had any reports from Nelson yet but everywhere else seemed to have plenty of people.
- most people seemed to like the beer. Very different to previous years, not as in-yer-face hoppy, but still a nice drop. Obviously some weren't so keen, but there's no pleasing everyone.

On the negative side:
- the individual bars didn't really step up from the Mac's side. I'd been coordinating through the Marketing dept. at Macs and they'd made sure that all the bars had the beer and would have it on. They'd sent a free keg to each bar but the bars then had to order their own. It seems that some didn't, or didn't have the remainder of the order ready to go on, so they restricted the beer to free glasses for SOBA members and didn't have any more.
- the communication to the bar managers about the free glass promotion wasn't great either. The manager at Newmarket (where I was) was pretty clued-up, but it sounds like others weren't.


Overall it's shown to me the difficulties of organising something on a national scale at fairly short notice. I hope those who turned out had a good time - I certainly did.

Martin

[Pilgrim]

Thanks for your efforts Martin. I enjoyed the beer which was very drinkable, pity it's not available all year. Also enjoyed meeting up with quite a few SOBA members who are also regulars on this forum. All in all, a great evening.

[David Wood]

There was a great turnout in Wellington, I recognised almost everyone at the bar - a true SOBA invasion! Steph did a great job with the toast, perfect for the job.
I was let down by the beer, I was expecting a big zesty hop aroma/taste like previous years but was met with a malty rich beer with only a hint of hop. Will try it again properly though and let it warm up a bit.

[Tony]

Thanks Martin, you did a fine job. I know how these things can consume a lot of time and energy, for seemingly little benefit. But I feel if anything, our exposure and contact with LN has improved our image and standing. It appears, LN at least, is starting to notice us and take us a bit more seriously. Lets hope DB has the intellect and integrity to do the same? Perhaps when they loose the Radler case they will.

I was at the Northern Steamship, in downtown Auckland. I had invited several people, including some of our renown local brewers. On arrival, I found out about the 1 keg debacle, that took place here and felt slightly embarrassed. Still, they opened up the keg for us and we emptied it in short order. Greig McGill, did a fine job of our toast and we had about 30 SOBA members and supporters in attendance. Perhaps if the Manager had been a bit on the ball, we all would have stayed a bit longer and polished off another one (or two). We did request that the music be turned down for the toast and this was also denied (?). I understand that this is a commercial premises and they are running a business, but we were there to support them and it could have been reciprocated a bit better.

The beer- I sort of agree with the sentiments already posted here. It was a very fine beer, crisp, more malt driven than in the past. It was easy to drink. But I couldn't help being a little disappointed that it wasn't the hop driven, aroma bomb of past years. Macs could produce this beer all year round, without problem (perhaps there's a clue for you) and I think it would be a big seller. But for a hop harvest seasonal beer, it lacked the hops. Congratulations to Macs for brewing a fine beer. But LN, please, please please, don't drop the ball! You have the perfect opportunity here to prove you can brew a quality, hoppy Pale ale. If you just put the beer before profit margins. Macs is the perfect flag ship to show you have it over the normal slop that passes for beer.

A good night for SOBA and I think we all had fun and good conversation at the Northern steamship. Cheers

[Steph]

There was definitely a huge turn out of SOBA members in Welly. Some were disappointed not to get their free glass as the keg ran out; that is an indication of the numbers. The Bar Manager wasn't expecting me but was convivial and turned the music down. Everyone in the pub stopped, listened and clapped so, there you go!! It was good to catch up with heaps of people.

[Doublehoppy]

There were about 8 SOBA and guests at Kingsland. The bar were certainly on the ball and we had free Brewjolais all night! I agree with previous comments, it lacked hop aroma and was slightly to malt driven for me, still a nice enough drop.

Thanks Martin for organising.