Golden Eagle - South Island Pale Ale

Golden Eagle is relatively new brewery having been around since 2010. I've had the pleasure of sampling their Coal Face Stout which is an excellent brew especially for such a young brewery. I also thought the Solo Lupulus was pretty outstanding too.

So with great anticipation I pop the cap. A nice little burst of cascade type aroma hops out of the bottle, well I think its New Zealand cascade, the bottle claims five varieties of Nelson hops but fails to specify any. The aroma is a little grassy and herbaceous.

The colour is gorgeous, and amazing burnt orange that made me go "Ooooooo" as I poured it. A lovely little white head completes the picture. Carbonation starts with a little enthusiasm but settles down to moderate in no time. 

Drinking is easy, its sweet with burnt sugar and toffee notes, a lightness and smoothness to the texture of beer helps it slide down. Theres hints of spice with a punch of hops on the finish. The hops are tangy and citrusy with lemon and mandarin flavours. Nothing too extreme either way and at 5.5% makes for a nice spring evenings drinking. Certainly a excellent addition to the Golden Eagle repertoire.

Mikes - Heavy Petal

Contrary to popular opinion around the office there are actually things I like, and this is one of them.

Firstly I like colour, its a dark orangey red with a creamy off white head. It looks like heaven in a glass and it smells like water passed from the lord himself. Roses and hops. Sweet malt. Turkish delight, caramel!

Theres a pleasant hoppy floral bitterness, a bit of citrus zest and rosewater. Its got a lingering bitter finish, probably from whatever rose flavouring used. (Home made or otherwise, plants be bitter y'all). The malts a soothing and sweet with a smooth mouthfeel.

Sure its a gimmick brew, and maybe you won't sit down and order pint after pint.Not every brew has to be a drink all night amazing, some are just special once every now and then. I get the feeling I could really enjoy this with some raspberry cheese cake.

(Also I've been trying to work out a recipe turkish delight chocolate stout in my head for weeks, Mike's, please, steal my idea!)

Invercargill Brewery - Smokin' Bishop

Its a good colour, crystal clear and catching the light with a deep amber brown hue. It makes an elegant first impression with its delicate little tan head. Aroma wise I'm a getting a smoke with ethanol and hints of charcoal embers in a dying fire.

The first sip is smokey with a sweet impression and a little fruitiness. After a few sips all I can think of is wood smoke, smoked pork and barbecues. It slides around on the tongue and has a slightly oily mouthfeel with low carbonation. I start to get hints of burnt caramel sugars and flavours reminiscent of Belgian beers. Cigars spring to mind as a few tobacco notes hit the palate. Suddenly I find myself sitting in a leather chair by a dying fire sipping a peaty whisky, a cigar rests in the silver ashtray next to me and thin wisps of cigar smoke are winding their way towards the ceiling. This beer is highly evocative.

Complements to Invercargill breweries as the smoke level is just right, not too intense. It adds to the impressive complexity of this beer and seems to brings all the other flavours together.

I can imagine pouring this all over a pork shoulder before whacking it in a slow cooker or accompanying a tasting plate of nutty cheeses and quince paste.


Final thought: If Indiana Jones's hat was a beer it would be the Smokin' Bishop. Roguish and intelligent all in the same package.

Boundary Road - Jack the Sipper

Its still winter, while Auckland's been blessed with a few non-raining weekends I have been blessed with working Sundays. Today's post work beer is a hasty grab from the supermarket. A Boundary Road offering. While I haven't been blown away by any of their beers yet I remain hopeful.

I flip the cap and am greeted with a thin little aroma, hints of hops and dark caramelised sugar and maybe a smidge of roasted malt, I breathe and its gone. Minimal carbonation and very thin almost non existent head. It looks dark but when you hold it up to the light its got a lot of lovely red.

The first sip is fairly refreshing, after all I've been at work all day, by myself, bent over a bunsen burner, inhaling paraffin fumes, cutting my thumb on the device that has no name but is kinda like a hot plate crossed with a serrated knife and listening Hauraki so maybe at this point anything will do. I pause and try reflect over the flavours instead of downing the bottle in one go try to wash the pain of work away.

Concentrating over the second glass I get all sorts of strange flavours, It really reminds me of a golden syrup sultana cake my granny used to make. Frutiness from the yeast maybe, sweet malt and a bit of diacetyl giving me a buttery cake flavour? Top notes are a little lacking, theres a nice but brief  roastiness on the finish and a slight burnt sugar note but its fleeting and replaced by some cloying syrupy malts.

Overall its inoffensive, easily washed down and easily forgotten.

Renaissance - Craftsman

I've been trying to wrap my head around New Zealand stouts. Some of them have been amazing and some of them have been real clangers. I even had my first ever un-finishable bottle of beer. I wept as I thought of the money I'd wasted on the grossest beer of my life.

But onward to better things! I can't possibly go wrong with a Renaissance beer after all it was voted champion international small brewery at the Australian beer awards. 

The Craftsman is a chocolate oatmeal stout, now the oats don't add a "porridge" flavour to beer however they break down to give the beer body and a smooth feel on the palate. As for the chocolate according to the label there's cocoa nibs a plenty used at different stages of the brewing process. All those nibs must be working because the aroma is divine. Its a milk chocolate, soft to begin but developing into a mocha dark coffee aroma as you linger over the glass.

Its a beautiful dark brown beer with hints of red when you tilt your glass just the right way in the light and the thinest of tan brown heads as befitting the low carbonation of the style

Once you drink it it turns into a dark chocolate and medium roast coffee experience with hints of burnt toffee. It's not a sweet stout, nor overly bitter, there's a nice maltyness that really comes out as the beer warms. However it's not as silky on the tongue as you might expect for an oatmeal stout, in fact it sometimes feels a bit thin, but there's plenty of complexity from the dark roasted malts and coca nibs interacting to make for a very moreish brew. The hops are subtle as you'd expect from a stout, but they let themselves be known on the finish which is slightly zingy on the sides of the tongue. 

Added bonus is of course the attractive distenctive Renaissance bottle which Dai Henwood described as "making you feel like you are in Game Of Thrones, not the suburban twenty tens". Too right. 

Perfect for a winters night, posible dessert match but also good with venison!

Rogue - Juniper Pale Ale

In the depths of a Glenfield winter, there is always the light and well being that is a glass of beer.
Just look at this golden lovely! A glowing gold with hints of orange, its like a beacon on a cold winters eve.
Sure its head is thin, but it make up for it with good looks. A juniper pale sounds like a good match, my only experience with what juniper tastes like is of course gin, and probably average gin at that. But to my delight the bitter astringency that I associate with  the juniper flavour blends very well into a hoppy malty pale ale. Its light on aroma, malts hints of hops nothing too noteworthy and drinking is the same, a very nice light pale ale with light mouthfeel, finishing with hops and hints of that weird gin flavour we all know and love from stealing sips of grandma's drinks at christmas.
Its actually a damn fine beer and I can see why its won awards, I could drink several of these.
Refreshing and quenching, probably really good post gardening beer and only a little dangerous at 5.2%

Krombacher - Weizen

Krombacher, its German, and really cheap at my supermarket. I hate wheat beers so naturally I keep buying them.

I keep buying them because I live in vain hope that there might be one out there I really like, the closest so far has been a New Zealand offering, the Tuatara Heffe. However I've heard rumours that ze Germans make a good wheat beer, so being ever so I brave, I opened a bottle.

Its a bright, hurt your eyes kinda winter afternoon. So its definitely worthy of a beer. I first get yeasty lager aromas from this beer. I'm hopeful of not being overpowered by all those weird wheat beer esters. It pours like magic, cloudy orange, bright white bubbly head. Looks fantastic, but NO, I can smell the cloves. Ewww. Sigh, I'll drink it anyways. I go in for a sip and actually its not too bad, the clove flavour isn't too intense and theres a fairly mild malty flavour with a bit of a zing. Second sip is kinda yeasty with a mild fruity finish. Finish is short apart from the clove thing that seems to hang around on the palate for the weeks after finishing a wheat beer.

Well I'm not convinced. Its still a pass on the wheat beers for me, but it wasn't as awful as I expected and probably quite nice if you like this sort of thing. (You weirdos).

Garage Project - Aro Noir

Garage project, I need you.  I need you to be just down the road and serving kegs up at my local on a weekly basis.

But until I manage to concoct some brilliant plan to *cough* "encourage" you to look at moving to Auckland I will have to make do with the kegs that make it our way and the odd bottle offering.

Stylish label is it not? Garage project are not afraid to experiment with label design or beer design. Bold flavours, experimental combinations, its all on and craft beer fans can't get enough. I was thrilled when bottles started turning up at Forest Hill liquorland.
For winter's gloom I felt a stout was in order so I went straight to the darkside with Aro Noir. It pours black, black, black, black, with a nice pale tan brown head. A very dark roasted malt aroma with hints of sweetness and hops gives away some of what's to come.

I as understand it "three different ‘black’ malts are combined with crystal and pale" to produce this dark lovely. So its no wonder that the burnt toast, roast coffee, bitter cocoa flavours are right up front. There's just enough sweet malt in there to lend a hand to the hops but those black malts keep shining through. A little astringency but nothing of putting add to a complex finish. 
As an added bonus the 7% ABV does a nice job of warming ones toes on a winters afternoon too. 

Fuller's London Black Cab Stout.

Ah English beers, I have a awkward relationship with you. I sometimes like you but sometimes you are so weird to my new world palate.

But the more I drink you, the more I like you and not just in a everything tastes good after the fifth glass way.

So I had the stout out of the fridge while I did a little housework and let it warm up to New Zealand winter room temp (don't know why I bothered really but I'm every the delusional optimist).
Once I'd earned my beer I retired to the gloomy deck and poured a glass. Oh my black beauty, attractive little number aren't you ;) I think the beer is flirting with me, although it may just be the migraine medication I had to take this morning. Anyway the beer invites me to take in some of its aroma's before we get down to business.  Well hello dark roasted sugary sweet malts you smell very nice, plus some really dark dried fruit aromas that must be yeast driven. Do I smell a little wood or vanilla and just the subtlest hint of coffee?

The flavour is all that on the nose with an excellent smooth creamy mouthfeel. There's some bitterness from hops not evident in the aroma that add a lovely balance and more coffee comes shining through. A little bitter cocoa with a roasty note also adds complexity. Its not too big, but not small either, there's enough richness in the finish to be really satisfying but its not so heavy as to become overwhelming.

I enjoyed the bottle more and more as it warmed up, a satisfying stout that I would drink again.

Tuatara Conehead

I pretty much love everything about this beer. From purchase to cleaning the bottle for homebrew its all a joyful experience. (Speaking of homebrewing, if anyone else is drinking this beer please save me the bottles.)

Firstly its $8.90 a bottle from Brothers Beer, Glengarry and hopefully other outlets I've yet to visit in my search. The bottle is damn cool. Scales and a Tuatara eye on the bottle cap, cool cool cool. The label reminds me of a house we used to rent in Whangarei with an original 70's kitchen, so brown, so orange (and teal green carpet with velvet curtains, oh god the place was a living museum). I don't know what they were thinking with the label actually. But its okay all is forgiven when you pop that cap. This brew is fresh, aroma, is so green and piney, fuzzy green green peaches, resin, hops, all so good. 

Its pours so clear, its like a lager in colour, a beautiful gold with a glass lovin lacey head. No chill haze, and unlike a certain beer I wont name (*cough...Hallertau stuntman) no hop sludge in the bottom of the bottle. No need to prove you put hops in by leaving some in the bottle, I can smell every single cone.


Sure its bitter, but in an oh so lovely way. There's a real art to balancing hop flavours and I can't fault this blend, its got Citra and Amarillo in the boil with Nelson Sauvin in the hop back. There's an impression of sweetness from the hop flavours too, a tempered and wise hand on the malt means theres no cloying aftertaste. Its a crisper finish than I'm used to in this style but works very very well.
It tastes like it smells and maybe thats because of the fresh hops, but it makes for satisfying drinking. 



I love it, more fresh hopped beers NZ brewers! (For 8 Wired.. high five!)