Tag: New Zealand

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MOA

No, it is not someone asking for “moa” beer please. It is a brewery from New Zealand. Blenheim to be exact.

MOA Beer recently held a tasting of 5 of their beers up in Oregon at the famous Belmont Station. And maybe some of their line will reach a little further south here to Los Angeles.

The ones that most interest me are:
Moa Five Hop Winter Ale shows the unique signatures of traditional North European bottle conditioning. Displaying a Nelson-dominant hoppy nose with a subtle oak character leaving extra smooth and creamy, honeyed characters on the palate. A well-balanced companion to eastern style spiced foods. Traditionally served just below room temperature.

Moa Methode is bottle fermented and conditioned to give a natural, more consistent carbonation and flavour. Due to the natural brewing process of Methode Moa, a light, beneficial sediment will remain. This sediment protects the beer from premature aging and leaves full, slightly spicy characters on the palate.

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New Zealand goes all in

This sounds like one amazing beer. And you can not only drink it, but watch a video about the growing craft beer scene in New Zealand too.

“Here is an amazing world first for New Zealand, creating the world’s largest collaborative brew, with most of the small independent breweries of New Zealand contributing. This project was filmed and will become an online TV series about the craft breweries of New Zealand.

The resulting beer, Mash Up, is a New Zealand Pale Ale at 6% abv that is an ode to the deliciously refreshing New Zealand hops. It uses a blend of Kiwi and British malt (many brewers are British or got their inspiration from the UK beer scene) and is touted as being the world’s largest ever collaboration beer.

“We both think Mash Up is a great summary of where NZ beer is at,” states Ryan. “With the popularity of our great brewing ingredients on the rise abroad, it’s definitely time that we celebrate their quality here at home.”

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Kiwi Hops

After reading about New Zealand in the current issue of All About Beer, I was intrigued by the new hops talked about and thought that a little hop education was in order. But since I am not a grower or brewer, I decided to let the descriptions from THE source do the talking. New Zealand Hops Limited


Pacific Gem
A high alpha hop with a pleasant aroma and a useful bitterness level of 13% alpha acid. Pacific Gem can produce a cask oak flavour with distinct blackberry aroma, along with a woody character. Used as a bittering hop by internationally famous European brewers.

Green Bullet
This hop variety has a unique raisin-type character, a slight floral note and has been likened to giving a Styrian style flavour to the beer. It consistently averages more than 12% alpha acid and its aroma qualities match its excellent bittering power.

Super Alpha
A very reliable variety always giving better than 10% alpha acid. Super Alpha has a very encouraging humulene-caryophyllene ratio, similar to European aroma hops. A unique cross of the best English and German hops, Super Alpha produces a crisp clean flavour and also has some nice resin character.

Southern Cross
A spicy and lemony character typifies this high alpha variety with some slight piney and woody hints. Southern Cross has an excellent essential oil profile and low Cohumulone, whilst still producing alpha acid of 12%. It produces a very “European” flavour in beers.

Pacific Jade
The most recent release of the New Zealand Hop Research Programme Pacific Jade is a high alpha hop, averaging 12-14%, with low Cohumulone and an excellent oil profile. Brewing trials have shown that this hop gives the beer a clean crisp taste, with a nice balanced palate.

Both Pacific Jade and Green Bullet intrigue me. But which hop would you like to see more of?

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Let’s Tour – 8 Wired

Our final stop of New Zealand breweries is 8 Wired.

Here is what they have to say about themselves:”8 WIRED BREWING is inspired by the legendary Kiwi can-do mentality and fellow craft brewers who have dared to challenge the masses and show us all that beer is no longer “just beer”! Crafted by Søren Eriksen, a nomadic Danish brewer who has finally found permanent ground in Marlborough, New Zealand. Expect unique brews, expect ingenuity in flavour.”

And here is their brew listing:
ReWired – Brown Ale
HopWired -I.P.A.
The Big Smoke – Smoked Porter
iStout – Imperial Stout

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Let’s Tour – Mac Brewing

Our second beery stop in New Zealand is at Macs.

I heard about this brewery from one of my friends parents who was traveling there and just raved about the stout and asked me if they could buy it here in America. Alas, I have not found it here, yet!

Here are some of their signature brews:
Black Mac – they call it a dark beer. a porter
Currant – yup, made with currant berries
Sassy Red – English style bitter.
Hop Rocker – you would think IPA but it’s their pilsner

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Let’s Tour – Epic Brewing Company

This month, I am focusing my e-brewery tour focus onto New Zealand. And our first stop is Auckland’s Epic Beers.

Here are some of their unique offerings:
PORTAMARILLO
“A collaboration, a Festive brew and the world’s first tree tomato beer. A sorta-Porter fermented with New Zealand grown Tamarillos, which were smoked using wood chips from the sacred Pohutakawa tree (also know as the NZ Christmas tree).”

PALE ALE
“You can only drink so many beers in a lifetime, so you better make each one count. That’s where we can help. Because at Epic we’re obessed with creating big hop-fuelled beers. This takes a shed-load of skill. It also takes a shed-load of hops. In fact there are 23 crammed into this bottle. Many brewers would call that ‘insane’. We call it flavour.”

ARMAGEDDON IPA
“In the beginning, there was nothing. Then an impish brewer piled a ludicrous amount of hops inot a batch of beer. This zymurgical big bang is Epic Armageddon, an apocalyptic assault on your preconceptions and taste buds. It may be too huge for this fragile planet so enjoy this beer like it was the last one on Earth”

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Yeastie Boys

One of the first thing that hops out when you visit this brewers website is this tagline, “New Zealand’s first ultra cool, postmodern brewers of leftfield ales. Specialists in all styles.”

All you have to do is peruse their beer list to see that leftfield is an understatement.

How about:

Pot Kettle Black
“Remixed and remastered as a celebration of Pot Kettle Black’s double trophy-winning effort at BrewNZ 2009: Champion beer in the ‘Stouts and Porters’ class and winner of the ‘People’s Choice’ award at the Beervana festival.”

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Mike’s Organic

We dip back into New Zealand to look at an organic brewery by the name of Mike’s. I like that they celebrate both mom and dad. (Some organics forget the male of the gender) “mike’s is committed to offering you the very best quality organic beer that we can produce. Joining us are mother nature, who supplies all of the ingredients, and father time, who matures the beer for us.”

Their IPA sounds like a bitter treat:
“Inspired by the hoppy English pale ales but leaning toward the highly hopped American variety. Pours rich golden amber with a faint haze and a creamy white head settling to a fine veil. The aroma is complex with tropical fruit including passion fruit, pineapple and melons all vying for attention.

The flavour is something to behold, with the sweet tropical fruits now balanced out by the strong biscuity malt flavour and absolutely intense hop bitterness. The very full mouth feel and glowing warm aftertaste serve to further keep the hop bitterness in check.

This is an extremely hoppy beer, if the drinker is not partial to hops, they might struggle with this drop. For the true hop heads, this is nectar to be savoured.

Serve chilled in small stemmed goblets, to be sipped on cool Autumn evenings. This beer needs to be treated with respect, weighing in at 9.0% ABV, it’s no lightweight and should be shared with good company.”

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World Cup + World Beer – New Zealand

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TODAY: NEW ZEALAND V. SLOVAKIA

To quench our thirst as we watch the Kiwi’s, we turn to “Speight’s Summit lager, a refreshing golden lager, brewed with only natural ingredients. With the wisdom of the southern man you understand that there is a natural order in this world.

Summit lager is a new liquid innovation from Speight’s Brewery, our first lager brewed with only natural ingredients. Pacific hallertau hops sourced from Nelson have been used to create a clean, crisp, refreshing golden lager with a 4% ABV.”
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