STOP! Porter time.

Stout is a beer with quite an interesting history. Before the early 1700's the huge majority of Beers were dark, largely because the art or lightly roasting malt hadn't yet been developed. Stout's are made with dark malt, obviously, and traditional stouts were simply the stronger Dark Ales. Stouts today are thicker and creamier than Porters but both tend to be 4-5% in strength, and with lasting head. I'll look at some of the most popular Stouts and one of the best Porters.

Without a doubt the most recognisable Stout in the world is Guinness Extra Stout or Draught from the tap - interestingly Guinness was originally called Guinness Extra Superior Porter which should tell us something about the intertwined nature of these beers.

At it's best Guinness is rich, creamy, slightly chocolate and coffee with roasted malt and only the merest hint of bitterness. I say "at it's best" because a lot of the magic about a Guinness depends on the pour and the condition of the Beer. Too often Guinness is less than amazing because of bad carbonation lines - either not clean, or not mixed correctly. Although developed in London, large amounts of Stout were shipped to Ireland where it quickly became the tipple of choice, and it wasn't long before the Irish started brewing it themselves and what a great job they've done ever since!

There really isn't anything quite like nestling down in front of a roaring fire at the local pub on a cold winters night and enjoying a Guinness!

Guinness is classified as Irish Dry Stout, as are the other mainstays of Stout: Murphys and Beamish. Aside from dry Stout there are a few other varieties of this delicious wholesome beer. Imperial Stout would probably be the next most popular, so names because of it's origins in Russia. Imperial Stout tends to be stronger, ranging up to 11%abv and was designed to help Russians stay warm in the long cold winter months. There are also Milk Stout and Oatmeal Stout the former being sweeter (Lactose sugar is non fermentable to brewers yeast) and the latter being creamier. Porter can have all of the flavour characteristics as Stout but without so much of the variety, and as I said, less thickness.

Stout and Porter are also popular with micro brewers and craft brewers, and many beer makers include a Stout/Porter in their range. I'm going to skip straight to a microbrewery just outside of Naiper: Hawkes Bay Independent Brewery.

Black Duck Porter lives up to all of the promise of a great Porter. It's rich, has perfect creaminess and lovely mouth feel, being thick but not quite as heavy as a proper Stout. Flavour wise Black Duck is outstanding, with all the goodies in there in well balanced measure, from hints of dark chocolate through to a lovely coffee bitterness, HBIB have done very well with this. If I was to fault this beer, particularly in comparison to Guinness it would be that it's head didn't last all the way down. Normally I don't make a huge deal about head retention but this beer was absolutely outstanding so I thought I needed to find some fault.

With winter on the way I'm going to look forward to more Stouts and Porters... and getting the fireplace cranking!

Do you need glasses?

Beer Glasses are a big thing for me, so I'm going to talk about why people use beer glasses, the types of beer glasses, the best beer glasses for different beer styles and a whole lot of other glassey goodness.

We all know the line when someone hands you a bottle beer of beer and asks if you want a glass: "it already comes in one". And to a large extent, with non-distinct lagers that's a fair statement to make. In fact one of the great joy's of beer is it's portability - going to the beach? Pack a couple of cool brews and you're set.

But there's a counter argument - a glass allows you to enjoy the beer more. You can experience it's colour, it's effervescence (I'm not exactly comfortable with that word in describing a beer), it's head and allows you to get a better handle on it's aroma. If you're taking export gold's to a party it hardly matters, but if you want to get the most out of your limited edition craft ale - or even your better than average lager the right glass can make a good beer even better. If a beer glass can make even a ho-hum lager halfway decent, imagine what it can do for that special IPA you've had tucked away for months!

In the great beer brewing parts of Europe, many beers have their own glass to enhance the flavour and aroma for us humble beer drinkers.

There are a boatload of sizes and regional types of glasses that I wont go into here, but broadly speaking these are the typical beer glasses as recommended by such beer alumni as Michael "Beer Hunter" Jackson.  

Pilsner/Lager Glass

Tall to reveal colour and carbonation, and with a taper to enhance head retention.Like the name on the box says, perfect for Pilsners and Lagers

Snifter/Goblet

For aromatic beers like IPA or "Big" beers for sipping like doppelbock. These are large, stemmed, bowl shaped. I throw beer flutes in this group mainly for simplicity.

Pint Glass/Mug

The classic, versatile beer glass, suits most styles, but atypically English.A clever wee feature is that these can actually enhance the carbonation of a beer.

Most importantly, a beer glass allows you to enjoy another fine aspect of a beer: the pour. 

Getting more out of your beer is an easy sell, and making a run of the mill Ale or Lager taste like something halfway decent can't be bad either. A glass that you can get your nose into, that you can see the beer and experience it's colour and fizz.

A Tale of Pale Ale

Pale Ale is one of the most popular Beer styles, produced using predominantly light (or pale, if you will) malts and brewed with top-fermenting yeasts. It's one of the most traditionally innovative styles of Beer and Pale Ale and to this day brewers are making winning Pale Ale's in a variety of ways.

Typically a Pale Ale does indeed derive it's name from it's light hue - before Lagers, it was the lightest beer style. it came about because roasting malts is a tricky business, especially in the pre industrial days when brewers relied on fire kilns to do their roasting. As you can imagine, roasting little bits of barley over open flame produced more than a little darkening of the malts - and hence at the time (this is the late 1700's) Ales were usually of the darker variety.

Anyway, today a Pale Ale is considered to be golden amber through to copper in colour, leaving plenty of room for brewers to experiment with malts to obtain subtle sweetening and complexity of malt flavours. Pale Ale is a broadly encompassing style of beer, including English Bitter, American Pale Ale, Irish Red, Blond and many more, but today I'm going to look at two.

I'll talk about Boundary Road brewery later, but for now lets consider the merits of this beer. Because of the flexibility of the style there is no one Hops profile typical to Pale Ale, and being a man who enjoys a lot of Hops in my beer, The Flying Fortress Pale Ale does not disappoint. There's a certain distinctive tangy frutiness to the NZ varieties of Hops, and Flying Fortress is rich with hoppy goodness. A lush but not overwhelming mix of Pacific Jade and Motueka provide wonderful fruity aroma and just the right amount of bitterness. What most impresses me with Flying Fortress is the beautiful mouth feel - delicate carbonation that could almost pass for bottle conditioning and an impressive almost creamy texture. Boundry Road are quickly establishing themselves as winners in the rapidly growing craft beer market and Flying Fortress is the cornerstone that grounds their excellent range.

I'm not particularly familiar with the craft beer market over the ditch (something that I plan on rectifying as soon as possible) but a little Pale Ale from Victoria is making inroads here. Matilda Bay have made a great Pale Ale with a strange name: Fat Yak.

It's a great contrast to Flying Fortress - this is made in the American Pale Ale style, making it more golden than amber, but is liberally hopped with the American staple: Cascase, with a little Nelson Sauvin for added depth. It's good - delightfully fruity and crisp on the palette, this beer practically screams "Summer Afternoon".

These two Pale Ale's offer a fantastic exercise in hops comparison - both are boldly hopped in different ways. Both are excellent. Enjoy!

Good Press for Moa

Getting big press doesn't seem to be too much trouble for Moa these days, but I didn't know that the head brewer there, Josh Scott, was none other than the son of Allan Scott - he of the fantastic Sauvignon Blanc!

Anyway, there's a great wee write up here about some of the thinking behind their amazing beers and the new craft beer Moa Quad.

I've already talked about Moa's fantastic Breakfast Beer and I'm always excited by Moa offerings, but I love the attitude that the new breed of beer makers are taking - it's not about sucking back a dozen bland commercial beers: beer is to be enjoyed and reflected on much like wine.

Now, being in Auckland my challenge is to track down this fine tipple...

Where Beer?

To my mind there are few situations that can't benefit from a cool refreshing brew, but the true home of beer is the Pub.

Lets just clarify what I mean by Pub.

Of the many types of drinking establishments, only the Pub and Tavern are real domains of beer.

I know you can get beer at a bar, and certainly many types of bars are beer bars - a dive bar is hardly the place to order a Martini, and a sports bar probably serves jugs. But a bar varies in nature - you have theme bars, vodka bars, ice bar's, wine bars. Bars often play music and don't usually serve food. Bars are night-time places and some bars don't pour beer into a glass which is a definitely faux pas... and faux pas isn't a beer word at all!

And nightclubs are something else entirely - clubs are places for dancing and frivolity and merriment for sure. Clubs are cocktails, bottled beer and maybe some wine. Clubs are about the entertainment and nightclubs, as the name implies are nighttime places too.

This isn't a criticism of either and I can confess to many a good time (and sometimes a decent brew) in both, but when considering the perfect environment to drink a beer you can't go past a Pub.

A "proper" Pub or Public House as it's shortened from, is to my mind a place where people go to drink, eat, talk and possibly listen to a little live music. Pubs serve food and are open during the day, they allow kids and outside of big cities pubs usually allow dogs. If they do have music it's secondary to conversation as the entertainment, unless the music is live (and most probably local).

A Pub may have several areas or rooms, and might even incorporate a bar. A pub has a Publican. Pubs have their origin in Roman times as Taverns - hence the similarities (though to my understanding a Tavern is likely part of a hotel, whereas a Pub is more standalone, even if some Pubs do have accommodation).

Most importantly, a Pub has Beer on tap, and if it's a good Pub it will have a good selection and if there's one thing this beer drinker loves, its a good selection!

If you want to go for a chat, for a feel of community, for relaxing and for a feed, it's a Pub you want. If you want to enjoy the best of what makes having a beer good, it's got to be a Pub.

The IPA Debate

I've been thinking about Indian Pale Ales - so it's timely that the very nice people at Boundry Road Breweries are about to release an IPA and are asking for tasters. You can get in on this by answering a few simple IPA questions here.

But I digress...

IPA's were famously developed because regular ale wasn't lasting the long trip from Great Britain to India in the 1800's. Brewers made the brew stronger and added more hops to preserve the beer and hide any off flavours picked up in the long voyage fraught with poor cask storage conditions. When it arrived it was watered down for the enlisted men (though officers were still allowed the higher strength)... or so the story goes. Demand in the homeland grew shortly thereafter and the IPA legacy was born.

So if we take the style to be full strength, pale ale that's both bitter and aromatic with hops we come to Fullers IPA.

Definitely full and hoppy, this is my flagstone IPA. Lovely body, beautiful fruit aroma, bottle conditioned. The only thing that's missing is good head (pun only partway intended). This is fantastic drinking.

So what ISN'T and IPA? Well, Tui for one. Lacking any notable hops, sweet instead of bitter and brewed as a Lager, Tui has no place calling itself an IPA. Tui is in fact, a good example of a New Zealand Draught - and Draught is the topic of an future post (and thanks to Randolf von Stagg for the suggestion).

There are of course in this brave new world of craft breweries, many fine examples of great IPA's - both classic and modern. Dunedin crowd Emerson's 1812 is a good traditional IPA, Epic (who can do no wrong) make a pretty stunning Armageddon IPA. I've yet to taste the open source beer from Yeastie Boys - Digital IPA, but judging by the Hop's bill that's going to be a mighty, mighty interesting experience... if anyone knows a shop or pub in Auckland selling it I'd be one happy, hoppy beer drinker.