New Zealand Beer Speights

In spirit of this being ANZAC Day week I decided to focus on beer in New Zealand.

I have had a lot of trouble finding NZ beers over here, I find the occasional craft beer in my hunting, but I am curious as to what is popular over there.

Fortunately, a family member went over on holiday and I asked him to investigate.

What he came up with is Speights Gold Medal Lager.

This cheeky beer was entered into the Melbourne Exhibition in 1880 and won two gold medals, hence its name.

The flagship beer of Speights isn’t sweet so that the malt and the hops can come forward a lot more.

At 4% it isn’t as strong as I’m used to but from what I’ve heard it is a very good beer.

Beer was introduced to New Zealand by those drunken Europeans who travelled around quite a bit back in the day. Captain Cook was the first to brew beer there.

The first commercial brewery was opened in 1835 so they haven’t been brewing beer for as long as many other nations, but they seem to be on a good thing.

I once heard from someone who visited there that they like to drink warm beer? I need to confirm this.

I will endeavour to find more New Zealand brews to share with you.

Cheers,

Dave

Hobbits live here

Easter 2019

Easter is almost here, these days instead of chocolate I’m usually watering at the mouth for the best tasting Easter beer… I still don’t mind some chocolate on the side though.

Easter beer isn’t really a thing yet, not like Christmas beer, so I look for beers that fall into a certain category.

Coming into our Winter in Australia the beer will likely be a dark one and to give it a bit more going for it the stout could have chocolate, vanilla or milk tones to it.

Favourites I have drummed on about before are Young’s Double Chocolate Stout and T-Bone Choc-Milk Stout.

There are quite a few stouts available that fall into these criteria, I will need to start trying the lot.

In the meantime, I suggest the best way for you my fellow beer drinkers to enjoy Easter is to get a standard chocolate rabbit, break the head off, fill it with the dark beer of your choice and bottoms up.

At least that’s what I’ll be doing over the weekend.

Happy Easter everyone.

Cheers,

Dave

Boag's St George Returns

 Gallantry is back!

Rising from the ashes of Boag’s Wild Rivers comes the phoenix – Boag’s St George, resurrected from the Boag’s purgatory pit where all good beers seem to go to die.

Poor sales from Wild Rivers has seen it out of production, very sad since it was only created late last year.

After a lot of encouragement from fans, Boag’s caved and brought back this cult favourite for a ‘limited release’ as stated on new packaging.

see: https://www.facebook.com/pages/category/Community/Bring-Back-Boags-St-George-484426921693118/

Boag’s St George had a good run up until 2011 back in the Golden era of beers when Boag’s was making an amazing range.

St George was unique, a premium lager it had a stigma of a classy man’s beer, a smaller stubby but at 4.8% ABV still made it an easy to drink beer but with a premium price.

Meant for Tasmanian only release it has only been given to select bottle shops in the state, coming in waves as I believe only a certain amount was made.

When I held one for the first time, I kissed it, I never thought I would drink this amazing beer again…

But is it the same?

It looks the same, it tastes the same but on closer inspection the alcohol content has dropped down to 4.2%, which is why it is a lot cheaper than it used to be.

I have stocked up for now,   

My fondest memory of this beer was during Christmas of 2011 I had one carton left, I drank the whole carton that day and still had room for scotch afterwards.

Enjoy it while it lasts, sadly all good things must come to an end… again.

Cheers,

Dave