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    • Day of the Dead 2014
      • The first of November is finally here bringing with it Day of the Dead and La Calavera Catrina! These sought after brews are out now and available in the following locations. More stores may be added but this list will steer you in the right direction over the weekend. This year we have once again bottled, and canned both beers. Bottled stock is on the way to Australia, and we expect to see it start to hit shelves this coming week! Available at: Auckland - on tap Vulture’s Brother’s Beer Freida Margolis Auckland - cans Farro Fresh - Grey Lynn Farro Fresh - Constellation Ave Liquorland Newmarket Super Liquor Howick Glengarry - Victoria Park, Jervois Rd, Ponsonby, Dominion Rd, Devenport, Kingsland, Grey Lynn Waikato - cans Liquorland Cambridge Rose on Roberts (Taupo) Hamilton Beer & Wine Co. Super Liquor Hillcrest Taranaki - Manawatu Liquorland Albert Street Liquorland Devon Street Wellington - on tap & cans Golding’s Free Dive Hashigo Zake Southern Cross Rogue & Vagabond The Malthouse Wellington - on tap Bebemos Bin44  Wellington - cans Ombra Moore Wilson’s Regional Wines & Spirits Liquorland Miramar New World Metro Karori Cellar Room Crafters & Co Glengarry Thorndon Quay Glengarry Kelburn Pak’n’Save Petone Nelson - cans Fresh Choice Richmond Christchurch - on tap Pomerory’s Christchurch - cans Twisted Hop Fresh Choice Parklands Fresh Choice Merivale Dunedin - cans The Portsider Meenan’s And of course, the Garage Project Cellar Door!

    • Trip Hazard
      • Necessity is the mother of invention, but if she filed a paternity suit, my money would be on cock-up being the father. Last year we had a little disaster. A 2000 litre tank of Trip Hop failed to ferment properly. I suspect a dud batch of yeast but despite every effort it simply ground to a halt. It’s not that it had an infection or any off flavours, it just seemed to lose interest. It didn’t taste bad, it just didn’t taste like Trip Hop should. It’s not easy passing the death sentence on a brew. At other breweries I’ve seen a number of tanks go down the drain, or more inventively, be shipped off to begin a new life as malt vinegar – but we’d never had to make this call at the Garage, touch wood we won’t again. How would you feel saying goodbye to 4000 pints of beer? There had to be another way. At the time we just happened to have acquired a reasonable number of used white wine barrels. With nothing to lose, we packed as much death row Trip Hop we could into these barrels and dosed each one with a cocktail of Brettanomyces strains, Lactobacillus, and Pediococcus. Although they are among the most feared of ‘beer spoilage’ organisms, these little critters are the basis of the European Lambic style and also have a penchant for unfermented sugars – just the ticket for a ‘stuck ferment’. So the lion’s share of the tank got a last minute reprieve, the rest was read its last rites. We tucked the barrels away safely and forgot about them. A year and a half later we’ve tentatively tapped a barrel and packed a lone keg off to the Pacific Beer Expo. Thoroughly changed by its year of quiet reflection this beer now definitely doesn’t taste like Trip Hop. This batch of Trip Hop may be dead – but long live Trip Hazard. It’s not your normal brew, but it’s all the more interesting for it. If you want to taste Trip Hazard you’ll have to get yourself down to The Pacific Beer Expo, this Saturday and Sunday 25-26 October. Remember, cock-up is the father of invention.

    • Five Hop Down to Hashi
      • “I say – this has boiled up into quite an adventure, hasn’t it?” – The Famous Five This Monday 20th of October, Hashigo Zake is celebrating its fifth birthday. Golly, five years! Hashigo Zake will forever hold a special place in the collective Garage Project heart. Back in 2011, when Garage Project consisted of a 50 litre brew kit and a couch in a derelict service station, Hashigo Zake were absolute bricks. Our first ever beers were poured through the Hashigo taps and they were willing to take a punt on us, giving us a tap every Tuesday night for the 24/24. Without their support and encouragement, who knows how things would have turned out? And of course it’s not just the Garage that Hashigo have given a much needed helping hand. It’s hard to overstate the importance of Hashigo’s contribution to Wellington’s craft beer scene. They’ve supported all new comers with equal and even handed enthusiasm and been the outspoken champions of good beer, all the time offering punters the newest, freshest and best beer in Wellington.    To celebrate we’ve taken up Hashigo’s challenge to brew a ‘five’ themed beer. We’ve called it Five Hop Down to Hashi. It’s a rather hoppy little IPA using five smashing new ‘unnamed’ NZ trial hops, added every five minutes throughout the boil. It certainly is jolly resinous! Be warned, there are only two 20L kegs of this beer… just like the old days. So make sure you get down to Hashigo Zake this Monday. You know the drill, things kick off at 5pm with loads of smashing birthday fun. Needless to say, there’ll be lashings of awfully good beer. [The original GP / Hashigo Zake launch poster] [Coming out of retirement for a very special brief, the mysterious King Rat contributed the art for ‘Five Hop Down to Hashi’.]

    • Something to Celebrate
      • We haven’t ever been very good at celebrating any of life’s little victories at the Garage. One reason is that we are often busy. There are periods of all consuming activity at the brewery around the lead up to events and equipment upgrades. Sometimes these intense patches bunch up together to create a perfect storm. You can tell when we’ve been through one of these patches when I begin to look like a Chilean fisherman who’s been lost at sea for six months and maybe had to eat his shipmates – all hair with a thousand mile stare. I looked in the mirror the other morning and realised we’ve been riding the storm. In the last two months we’ve pulled out our old brew house and replaced it with a new one twice the size and added three new upsized fermenters. This kind of large-scale installation and commissioning of equipment is a cocktail of excitement and terror. In the mix of cranes, forklifts and huge stainless steel tanks there are moments that make the sweat bead up in places you didn’t know you could sweat. Will it fit? Did we measure twice? What have we forgotten? WTF are we doing? Luckily everything did fit (or was encouraged to fit) in our little Garage. A brewery is always a funny place when it’s not being brewed in - like the heart has been pulled out of it leaving a room full of cold stainless steel. But now there is cause to celebrate. The brewery’s transplant has been a resounding success. In the last month since the install we’ve brewed what would have taken us four months on the old kit. It’s been hard work but, touch-wood, the upgrade will mean no more beer shortages. There’ll be more scope for playing around, more barrel aging, more cans and more beer in more outlets in more places. That seems like something to celebrate. Another reason to celebrate is the news last week that we picked up a coveted Silver Medal at the World Beer Cup for our Cockswain’s Courage Double Barreled Porter in the Wood and Barrel Aged Strong Beer Class – one of the top three most contested classes this year. Now, beer competitions are a funny thing and there is always an element of luck on the day. I’m generally the first to moan about them when Garage beers are ruled ‘out of class’ – but fuck yeah, we got a silver! I’m told it has been fourteen years since a New Zealand brewery got a medal. This year New Zealand won two - so huge ups to Speights who also won silver for their Triple Hop Pilsner in the International Lager Class. Well done. So there is much to celebrate. We’ll try to find time to raise a glass and once again, thanks to all of you who have supported the Garage, even when we had no beer to sell. We look forward to being able to fill your glasses in the years to come. Cheers.

    • Dark Days Indeed
      • When we opened the cellar door early last year our goal was to always offer a full, interesting and varied line up of beers. Keeping the taps occupied and the beer flowing has been more than a full time job. On several occasions we’ve come perilously close to running out only to have been saved at the last minute. with a timely batch of beer.  However, it seems likely that at some point early this week the worst will happen. The Garage will run out of beer.                                  [Cellar Door taps in better days] Pernicious was the first to fall, then Aro Noir and Hops on Pointe. VPA held out valiantly but was emptied last week – since then Pils ‘n’ Thrills, Trip Hop and Extraordinary Ordinary have been putting up a rear guard action, but as of yesterday only Pils and Ordinary were left standing, and chances are that in the next few days, they’ll be gone too. Dark days indeed. Why? The answer is something of a perfect storm – a Christmas and New Year in the cellar door that far exceeded our projections, some interruption to production as we install new tanks, two special event beers and several pallets leaving us on an OS trip - but at the end of the day the simple answer is that demand has outstripped our capacity to make beer. But there is hope. A new batch of Pils will be coming through this week and Wednesday will see the launch of Beyond the Pale, our shockingly pink homage to the Fringe Festival, brewed with sumac, lemon and hibiscus. There are bottles of Hops on Pointe on the way and Pernicious Weed will be making a welcome return the following week along with API, our Webstock ‘reverse IPA’. There is also still Garage Project available in the best bars and bottle stores around Wellington and further afield. Best of all, our new tanks should be up and running by the end of next week (touch wood) hopefully marking an end to lean times. In the future there will be more beer and even more variety. In the meantime we want to thank everyone who continues to come to the cellar door and accept the slim pickings on offer with good humour. Thank you all for your support. We’re working hard to fix things. Your patience will be rewarded. Pete & Jos

    • Beer
      • It couldn’t be simpler. Pilsner malt, Saaz hops and Czech yeast. That’s it. Sometimes simple is exactly what you want. Why bother dressing it up? It is what it is. Beer. Beer is now available throughout Wellington bars and at the Garage Project cellar door.

    • Burning Globe
      • Guest blog post by Maddie Gillespie “… a quart of ale is a dish for a King” A Winter’s Tale My Dad is the brewer at the Garage Project brewery. When I said I had an idea for a beer he rolled his eyes. I explained that it would be a beer made with smoked malt, to mark 400 years since the Globe Theatre burned down and that we should call it Burning Globe. That got his attention. The idea came to me while reading a book about Shakespeare. It talked about the Globe burning down and it occurred to me that it was exactly 400 years since the event. What made the idea for the beer relevant was that the book mentioned someone’s breeches catching alight and being put out with a bottle of ale. “…only one man had his breeches set on fire, that would perhaps have broyled him, if he had not by the benefit of a provident wit, put it out with a bottle of ale.” Sir Henry Wotton’s eyewitness account of the Globe burning down 1613 A smoky English ale was destined to be created.  Double, double, toil and trouble, fire burn and cauldron bubble – my Dad and I brewing Burning Globe at the Garage Project, Aro Valley My Dad and I brewed the beer one weekend. We used oak smoked wheat malt, barley, and caramel malts for colour. It has finished fermenting now – I haven’t tried it but my Dad says it tastes great. I hope there’s some left for the event! Burning Globe will be available, served straight from an oak barrel at the Southern Cross garden bar on 1st December as part of a special Shakespeare event. As well as a range of barreled Garage beers there will be Elizabethan food, music and, fresh from their very successful run at BATS Theatre, a one-off live encore of the Playshop theatre company’s “This Fair Verona”. Theatre in Shakespeare’s day could be a boisterous and bawdy affair. Beer drinking was part of the audience experience (and useful in the event of trouser fires). Here’s your chance to get a sense of what Shakespeare for the people would have been like.    Entry is free, as it always is at the Cross, and the event will help to raise funds for the Shakespeare Globe Centre NZ. Barrels will be tapped at 4pm with the live performance beginning 4.30. Come dressed up if you like! Get a bit of Shakespeare up ya.

    • Garagista
      • Enzo Ferrari once scornfully labelled the start up, garage based Formula One teams of the 60’s as Garagista’s. They built their cars lighter, faster and beat teams with far greater resources all from small garages. Something we can identify with especially, being based in an old car workshop. 'Race Sunday, Test Monday' was their mantra, and in that spirit we're developing a new beer, Garagista. Several ‘marks’ will get brewed. All will be run through the cellar door taps as tasters only, and we want your feedback. Only when we’re all happy will it move up to the larger kit and make it’s way out of the Garage for you all to try. So drop by and give it a spin. There’s only 30L so it won’t last long. Cheers, Pete & Jos

    • Day of the Dead 2013
      • On this Hallow’s Eve, we’re excited to announce our Day of the Dead line up for 2013.  From tomorrow, Day of the Dead AND La Calavera Catrina will be available in keg, 650ml bottle and cans.  We worked especially hard this year to ensure nobody misses out, and to that end, have arranged a simultaneous launch in New Zealand AND Australia! More details on where you can find the beers below… For those of you not familiar, Day of the Dead is our Chili Chocolate Black Lager, and La Calavera Catrina is a Maize Blonde Lager brewed with Habenero Chili, and condiitioned on Rosewater and Watermelon. New Zealand Day of the Dead and La Calavera Catrina will be on tap at the following bars from 1st of November. It will also be available at the Garage Project Cellar Door from Friday, and the Garage Project Online Store from early next week. Vultures Lane - Auckland (also pouring Triple DOTD) Brothers Beer - Auckland Freida Margolis - Auckland Hashigo Zake - Wellington The Malthouse - Wellington Bin 44 - Wellington Southern Cross - Wellington Kelburn Village Pub - Wellington (DOTD only) Goldings Free Dive (SATURDAY) - Wellington Pomeroys Inn - Christchurch (also pouring Triple DOTD) Day of the Dead and La Calavera Catrina cans and bottles will be available at the following retail stores. We expect more to be added in the coming week: Farro Fresh - all three stores - Auckland - DOTD Cans. Liquorland Albert Street - Palmerston North - DOTD Cans. Regional Wines & Spirits - Wellington - DOTD & Catrina Cans Moore Wilsons - Wellington - DOTD & Catrina Cans & Bottles Hashigo Zake - DOTD Cans Bebemos - DOTD Cans Australia  Melbourne will have stock tomorrow, with other cities receiving theirs over the next week. We tried very hard for day and date throughout the country, but this is the best we could manage!  Due to the long lead times on our current in-house canning system, we were unable to get cans across to Australia, and there are kegs and 650ml bottles only. Melbourne On tap Terminus - DOTD & Catrina Bar None - DOTD Bottles: Carwyn Cellars - DOTD & Catrina Grape & Grain - DOTD & Catrina Williamstown Fine Wine - DOTD & Catrina Blackhearts & Sparrows - Fitzroy - DOTD & Catrina Carlton Cellars - DOTD & Catrina Purvis Cellars - DOTD & Catrina The Gertrude Hotel - DOTD & Catrina The Wine Store Essendon - DOTD & Catrina Cellarbrations Elsternwick - DOTD & Catrina Press Cellars - DOTD For those in Wellington, we are holding an extra special launch event at Golding’s Free Dive on Saturday 2nd November.The Golding’s team are going all out to make the bar as festive as possible, and we will be pouring a sneak peak of Triple Day of the Dead - our Imperial version aged in Tequila Barrels! Thanks to all the hard work from everyone that went into making these unique beers possible in both can, and bottle, and also to arrange a simultaneous launch in Australia and New Zealand. 

    • YES WE CAN
      • We are excited to announce that as part of our involvement in the Visa Wellington on a Plate Burger Competition, we will be releasing Garage Project beers in cans! To begin with the cans will only be available at participating Burger Wellington venues, but after the festival ends we will be releasing cans ongoing. More details on availability will be released shortly.

    • Death From Above
      • This has been one of the most challenging Garage brews to date. At its heart was  the idea of combining aggressive, high citrus character of American hops with the heat and sweetness of Indochine flavours. Have you ever tried a Vietnamese mango and chili salad? If you haven’t you should. It could be life changing. It’s an idea that has been rattling around the Garage consciousness for a while and the Great Australasian Beer Spectapular seemed like a fitting opportunity to give it an outing. It was always going to be a challenging brew to pull off – mango, chili, Vietnamese mint and lime juice aren’t exactly conventional ingredients. Don’t bother checking, they aren’t listed in the Reinheitsgebot. Add a lavish addition of Chinook, Centennial, Citra and Amarillo hops, a deadline launch for an international beer festival and take it straight to a 2000 litre batch without any chance for small scale testing and you get what could have been a recipe for spectacular, monumental disaster. The idea of trying to bring all these flavours together in a coherent way given the pressure of time and prospect of public humiliation was, frankly, shit scary. Mango and Birdseye Chili straight out of the conditioning tank It is therefore somewhat ironic that the actual brewing of this beer was perhaps one of the least problematic parts of its launch. Death from Above was not the name on the brewsheet. The beer was originally going to be called Hopocalypse Now, a hoppy pun pop reference to the cult movie by Francis Ford Coppola. The only problem was that there are 12 other Hopocalypse beers in the world. Perhaps one more wouldn’t have mattered - but not everyone agreed with us. So we made the decision to change the name to Death from Above, the motto of the US Airborne Division, a lateral reference to the famous Ride of the Valkyries scene from Apocalypse Now… and the name of a jolly good band into the bargain. The name also seemed particularly suitable as we dumped whole bag loads of dry hops through the top of our fermenter into the conditioning beer. This was a beer concept fraught with danger. It could have all gone so wrong but we’re quietly happy with the finished product. It’s a complex beer which seems to reveal another aspect to its character every time I try it. It was never meant to be a controversial brew. It is just meant to be a good beer. The beer will debut at the Great Australasian Beer Spectapular in Melbourne 24 – 26 May, and then a limited supply will be available in bottle and keg in New Zealand and Australia. Don’t try it because of controversy. Try it because it’s a unique, complex and interesting beer. Peace. Note - a video on the making of the beer can be watched here.

    • Pan Pacific Amber Ale
      • Originally inspired by the humble ANZAC biscuit, Pan Pacific is brewed with golden syrup, suggestively named Golden Naked Oats and a combination of New Zealand Motueka and Australian Galaxy hops. It was originally released as a 20 litre cask at the first Pacific Beer festival with a name acknowledging the biscuit which inspired it. Interesting fact – it’s actually illegal to use the word ANZAC in the name of any product other than ANZAC biscuits (which can’t be called cookies). Who knew? This latest big batch brew has an addition of toasted coconut and a new name acknowledging its pacific ingredients. Pan Pacific is a rich red amber, with generous malt and fruit hop character, and a subtle hint of toasted coconut at the end of the palate. It’s a brew to meet the arrival of Autumn, with nice body and character with just a hint of warmer climes. Come fly with us.

    • Hops on Pointe
      • Beer and ballet – the perfect Pas de Deux. Brewed by Garage Project for the Royal New Zealand Ballet, Hops en Pointe teases the traditional boundaries between high and low culture. Brewed with premium German malts, Nelson Sauvin hops and finished with champagne yeast, the result is a pale gold lager with a crisp, clean palate, rich tropical fruit aromas and tight champagne bubbles forming a dense white head of foam. Available at all good barres soon… Hops on Pointe is brewed to celebrate the world’s first ‘Beer Ballet’ called Bier Halle that Royal New Zealand Ballet are staging as part of the Made to Move season. Tickets and more information can be found here. .

    • Alfresco Baltic
      • Pouring today only at Regional Wines and Spirits will be our Alfresco Baltic Porter, brewed ‘en plein air’ in the car park of Regional Wines and Spirits a month or so ago on one of Wellington’s shittier blustery days. The brew is a Baltic Porter, made with six malts and given a long cold ferment with lager yeast for a nice clean palate. To give this brew a Regional Wines & Spirits angle, the beer was conditioned on French and American toasted oak chips which had first been soaked in red wine and whiskey respectively (get it, wines and spirits - see what we’re doing there). I think the finished beer is quite fun, complex but not cloying with a nice oak aroma and the ghosts of wine and whiskey lingering in the palate. The usual Garage Project warning about limited quantities is even more pressing here given that one 20L keg of the porter will be available on the fill your own taps with a minimum pour size of 1.25L (which, if you do the math, means a lucky 16 people get one). However, they will also be reserving another keg for in-store tastings available from today while stocks last. Check with Regional for details.

    • The Chosen Few
      • Last year Boundary Road, the “independently minded brewery nestled in the foothills of the Hunua Ranges” who also brew Tuborg, Carlsberg and Kingfisher beers under license, very generously sent twenty two thousand $5 notes to people who had expressed an interest in trying the brand’s new beer offerings. At the time we were hard up against it trying to find enough cash to upgrade from our 50 litre pilot plant, and their marketing ploy seemed a tad extravagant to us. Jos cheekily suggested that anyone who didn’t want their $5 Boundary Road beer money could donate it to our fermenter fund as a way of helping us buy some more equipment. A surprising number of people did pass on their stamped $5 bills and thank you very much to all of you who did. Fact is that it didn’t quite add up to a fermenter (they are expensive) and that left Jos and I with a neat little pile of fivers and the sense that we really ought to do something worthwhile with our ill-gotten gains. Jos once more came up with a plan – why not use the money to make the most gratuitously extravagant beer we could imagine and then offer this to those who had supported us. So this Tuesday night at Hashigo Zake we are proud to announce the launch of the beer we have christened The Chosen Few (aka. Mr. Truffleupagus). At its heart is a specially brewed strong blonde Belgian ale, to which we added 20g of freshly dug white bianchetto truffle that we first infused in honey, and then refermented with champagne yeast. The result is something you’ll just have to taste if you can make it down to Hashigo Zake this Tuesday night. Those of you who gave us your details with your Boundary Road beer money will be contacted, but for those who anonymously donated (and be honest), it would be in your interest to make your way to Hashigo Zake this Tuesday and make yourself known to the bar staff. Hopefully we can make it the best $5 you ever did nothing to earn and then gave away. All of you be warned, only one 20 litre keg of this beer exists and it starts pouring at 5pm on Tuesday 18th, so get in quick. We would like to especially thank Jeff Weston from Borchii Park for sharing his knowledge of bianchetto truffles, Ace, Bonnie and Bellasconi, the truffle dogs responsible for finding this brew’s extravagant addition and without whom this beer would not have been possible… and of course, cheers to Boundary Road.

    • Summer Sommer - Double Summer Ale
      • This week we’re genuinely excited to announce the re-release of Summer Sommer, our Double Summer Ale. We first brewed this beer in November last year as part of a hugely enjoyable and successful collaborative brew with Kjetil from the Norwegian brewery Nøgne Ø. We were all happy with the result back then, so much so that we sent a couple of bottles off to the Australian International Beer Awards where it ended up winning a trophy for best in class for speciality beer, which was nice. Despite the inevitable dramas of brewing with rye, (see our post on Bastard Rye) it is great to brew this recipe again. I love the tradition of brewing festive beers, but in the northern hemisphere these brews are often dark, rich and spiced, something like a liquid Christmas pudding, which somehow doesn’t seem quite right for an antipodean Christmas. Summer Sommer (sommer is Norwegian for summer) is our answer to Christmas in the sun. Brewed with pale, rye and cararye malts, Pohutakawa honey and finished with Kohatu hops - the aim is a strong summer blonde ale, something a bit special for the festive season. If all goes well Jos and I will be heading over to Norway next year to brew this beer again with Kjetil. Fingers crossed. Summer Sommer is available first at Hashigo Zake (it’s going on as I write this) and then in all good beer bars around New Zealand, and maybe even Australia. There will also be a limited number of Summer Sommer bottles available soon, stay tuned for details. From all of us at the Garage Project, Gledelig Jul and have a great festive season. PS - Dylan and the guys at Hashigo filmed the original brew, which you can watch here. Thanks guys!

    • North American Scum*
      • Pils ‘n’ Thrills & California Über Alles Call it a rut, call it a phase, call it what you will but we seem to have been brewing  a lot of American inspired beers of late. We haven’t done it on purpose but looking at the fermenters there’s a definite trend. Last Friday we released Pils ‘n’ Thrills, Garage Project’s first Pilsener beer. To be honest it was something of a covert release with a few kegs appearing at The Southern Cross and Regional Wines and Spirits, but despite the quiet release this is anything but a quiet beer. There comes a time in any brewery’s life when they need to make the serious  decision about what sports team they’ll get behind. For Garage Project this decision was simple – roller derby. If you haven’t made it to a roller derby match yet, you really don’t know what you are missing out on. Inspired by Wellington’s own Richter City Roller Derby team Pils ‘n’ Thrills is an American hopped pilsener, with a bright golden colour and a crisp, clean, bitter citrus character. Like all Garage beers it is also vegan and unfiltered. The fantastic vintage tattoo art work is by local tattoo artist Simon Morse, which seemed fitting since he’s inked half the Richter City team. Unfortunately events conspired to prevent a proper roller derby launch for this beer, but we are looking forward to celebrating the beginning of next year’s season with Pils ‘n’ Thrills. In the meantime, look for Pils ‘n’ Thrills at the Cross and at a few other select outlets. Then, continuing our American affair, next week we will be launching California Über Alles. Brewed with US Northern Brewer hops, Pale, Vienna, Crystal and Caramel malts and California Lager yeast, California Über Alles is the Garage take on the California Common style made famous by Anchor Steam beer. I should point out that anyone looking for a replica of Anchor’s classic brew won’t find it here – like all Garage brews Über Alles takes the style as a starting point rather than trying to produce a clone of an existing brew. If you don’t get the name then you probably didn’t spend the eighties trying to push safety pins through soft parts of your anatomy. If this is the case don’t feel bad, but remember it’s never too late to start. As if that wasn’t enough, look out for a batch of Angry Peaches and another American hopped Golden Brown in the lead up to Christmas. Honestly, what hop crisis? * Settle down, it’s a lyric, not a racial slur

    • Caledonia Über Alles
      • When you mention old world India Pale Ale most people who have read the standard history of beer think of Burton-on-Trent, England. It’s less well known  that Scottish breweries played a significant role in the production and export of  IPA, accounting for a quarter of all British beer exports by the late 1800’s. This is the inspiration for Caledonia Über Alles, an ‘old world’ IPA brewed with Edinburgh Ale yeast, a strain capable of producing beers with a crisp, clean character, and Golden Promise malt made from Scottish spring barley. That’s where any pretense at historical accuracy ends. Other than Goldings, the other hops in this beer - Target and Challenger - are modern British hybrids that weren’t even a twinkle in the hop breeder’s eye in the heyday of IPA. The result is a crisp, hoppy pale ale, weighing in at a respectable 7% abv with a clean amber gold malt base and a hop character which is assertive but distinctly ‘Un-American’. The name is of course a reference to the song by US proto punk band the Dead Kennedys. Later this month we’ll be launching a new Garage Project beer that we’ve called California Über Alles, a beer based on a style known as California Common. Phil made the Caledonia Über Alles joke. We laughed. It stuck. Caledonia Über Alles will be available at the Malthouse this Friday 9th October for their ‘old world IPA challenge’. Beers pouring from 5pm - sláinte!

    • El Dia de los Muertos
      • For el Dia de los Muertos - Mexico’s Day of the Dead, it gives us great pleasure to announce the return of an old friend, and introduce to you his little sister. Last year’s Dia de los Muertos provided one of the most memorable nights of the 24/24 with the launch of the Day of the Dead - a strong black lager inspired by the Aztec beverage xocolatl, “a bitter, frothy, spicy drink” combining cocoa and chilli. This year we’ve brewed Day of the Dead again, this time on our big kit. We made a special effort with this brew to source as many authentic Mexican ingredients as possible, with Mexican cocoa and smoked chipotle chilli going into the brew. The finished beer was then rested on Mexican vanilla pods, more chipotle, agave syrup (the basis of Tequila) and raw cocoa nibs sourced from Whittaker’s Chocolate. The result is a smooth and complex mix of smoke, chocolate and restrained chili heat that builds as you drink. I’m happy with the result, which I think might be even more balanced and complex than last year’s offering. We’re also excited to introduce a new beer especially brewed for this year’s Dia de los Muertos. La Calevera Catrina, the elegant skull, little sister to our original dead head. La Catrina is as blonde as Day of the Dead is dark, but she’s no lightweight. The base beer is a blonde lager with a cheeky, even ironic addition of maize. Maize is an ingredient you’d normally associate with much blander lager offerings, but here it is fired up with a generous addition of organic Habanero chillis, giving Calevera a far more assertive chilli heat than the smoky chipotle of her brother. To this blonde chilli base went an addition of rose water and watermelon. The result is a complex and surprising beer we think can stand proudly beside the Day of the Dead. Cheeky, ironic, complex and firey – what more could you want in the Lady of Death? We hope you’ll give her a warm welcome. This Día de los Muertos, November 1, Day of the Dead will be available in good craft beer bars around New Zealand. La Calevera Catrina will be available in limited supply at Hashigo Zake the following night, Friday November 2.

    • Pie vs Cake
      • Cakes and pies, cakes and pies! Ziggy’s Carrot Cake came as a bit of a surprise for us at Beervana. Honestly, I just really like my Mum’s carrot cake (always referred to in the family as Ziggy’s carrot cake, though no-one knows why) and I thought it would be funny to brew with carrots. Then everything got a bit crazy, Ziggy won the trophy for best festival beer and we ended up having to ration people to half pours to make the beer last each session of Beervana (which it didn’t even). After the dust of Beervana had settled people asked if we were going to rebrew Ziggy’s. I said definitely not – festival beers are for festivals and the Ziggy’s recipe was filed away. Pie vs Cake has made me a liar. But how could I say no – a proper confectionery confrontation, a real dessert storm. Ziggy’s Carrot Cake the original recipe spiced carrot ale vs the contender, Pecan Pie, a rich dark ale brewed with caramel and biscuit malts, Moscova sugar and infused with candied pecans. And along side, a proper old fashioned bake off, with Wellington’s sweet elite bringing in their best Carrot Cake and Pecan Pie offerings for our panel of experts to judge. As for the beers, you decide. There can be only one. Very limited stocks of Ziggy’s and Pecan Pie will be pouring from 6pm at the Southern Cross, Halloween Eve, until the kegs run dry.

    • PIE vs CAKE
      • Announcing a Halloween Special to be held at Southern Cross on October 31st. More details will be posted on early next week, but we wanted to let you know about something very special that is also taking place on the night… (see below the image!). Alongside the beers, we will also be holding a PIE vs CAKE BAKE OFF! We are laying down the challenge to find Wellington’s best baker as judged by an esteemed panel of culinary experts we have assembled. Bake your best Carrot Cake, Pecan Pie or something for the open ‘wild card’ category (pie, cake, slice, you decide!) and go into the running to win prizes, fame, glory and the title of Garage Project Beer Baker Extraordinaire 2012! The entries will be judged by: Jacob Brown - Owner and Chef at The Larder  Beth Brash - Editor at Eat & Greet Jeremy Taylor - Food Blogger at The Omnivore The Pies and Cakes will be judged on appearance, flavour and most importantly, how well they pair with either the Pecan Pie or Carrot Cake Beer. There will be a winner, and they will receive a prize pack including $50 voucher to the Southern Cross, and exclusive bottles of Ziggy’s Carrot Cake, Pecan Pie, Double Day of the Dead Bourbon Barrel Edition and one other secret beer yet to be announced… To enter - please email jos@garageproject.co.nz to receive further instructions. Good luck, and may the best Beer Baker win!

    • Kava Coconut
      • Sa vakarau na yaqona ni turaga - the kava of chiefs has been prepared There is an important lesson to be taken from the research we undertook before brewing this beer. On no account should you ever engage Sean from the Thirsty Boys in any form of competitive Kava drinking. Really. Some facts. The drink Kava is a popular recreational drug widely consumed throughout the Pacific Ocean cultures of Polynesia, including Hawaii, Vanuatu, Melanesia and some parts of Micronesia. It is made from the powdered roots of the Kava plant Piper methysticum, a plant that coincidentally is closely related to the New Zealand Kawa Kawa, the leaves of which (6000 to be exact) went into our Wellington in a Pint beer earlier this year. Powdered Kava root has mild sedative and anesthetic properties and when consumed produces a state of relaxation. Another interesting fact, you can buy it at Pak’n’Save– who knew? Sean and his wife Tere had very kindly agreed to come around to the brewery to help us do a little research on Kava. We chatted about the cultural practices of Kava drinking while Tere prepared a large bowl by mixing the powdered root with water and squeezing it through a fine mesh bag. She then poured me a shallow coconut cup worth of the hazy liquid. I’ve heard people describe Kava as tasting like muddy water, but I’m not sure that this quite does it justice. The normal descriptors I’d use for beer are useless here. It is oddly numbing, at once somehow both bland and intense, with a muted spiciness and well, a little bit of mud. I tried to down my cup in what I imagined was a confident worldly way. I obviously failed at this because Sean gave me one of those special sympathetic smiles before he and Tere both effortlessly downed a coconut cup each. Phil, the most recent member of the Garage Project, was given a cup that he took away and thoughtfully nursed. At this stage a significant portion of my face went numb. “Sean”, I said, “I can’t feel my face.” This was quite hard to say because my lips weren’t really working very well. “What, already?” said Sean lifting one eyebrow. Now, as a brewer I’m normally pretty good at holding my drinks, but this was a different story. Clearly I was out of my comfort zone here and judging by the look on Sean’s face I was obviously a bit of a kava woose. Not to be totally put to shame I accepted another cup, downed it in what I hoped was a more confident way and smiled. Job done, I thought. It was at this stage that Tere explained that once a bowl was made it was customary for drinking to continue until it was empty. WTF. I looked at the bowl. It seemed like a pretty big bowl. Why would anyone manufacture a bowl that big? What were they thinking? It also still seemed quite full. I looked at Phil who was avoiding eye contact with me and was still nursing his first cup. I looked at Sean who just grinned and passed me another cup. Around cup number four I had the interesting sensation that my brain was a boat, that the rope holding it to the pier had slipped off and that the boat was just floating gently away. I won’t lie, it felt quite nice. Somehow the bowl was finally emptied. Neither Sean nor Tere seemed to have been effected in the slightest. I on the other hand felt that I had severed ties with time and space. I thanked both of them, doing my best impression of having my shit together. They both grinned at me. I grinned back in a slightly lopsided way and hoped that I wasn’t drooling. And from this exhaustive research comes our offering for the Great Pacific Beer Expo – Kava Coconut, a truly Pacific inspired brown ale, brewed with coconut sugar, Maris Otter, Biscuit, Crystal, Caramel and Special B malts, lightly hopped with Centennial and infused with toasted coconut and yes, Kava. Available on Saturday and Sunday this weekend at the Great Pacific Beer Expo. We are told some tickets remain… Finally, huge thanks to Sean and Tere for all their help, and for being so tolerant of my amateur attempts at Kava drinking. Make sure you check out Sean’s side of the story at the Thirsty Boys blog site.

    • Lola - Sour Cherry Cola Rye Ale
      • This is definitely one of our more playful beers. The base is our Bastard Rye, which had its debut at Hashi a couple of weeks ago and will appear in a number of forms over the months ahead. This particular batch was soured up and has been resting on cherries. We were having a taste of it to see how it was getting on when Jos just happened to play Lola by the Kinks, with that classic opening line. "I met her in a club down in old Soho Where you drink champagne and it tastes just like cherry-cola" The next thing you know our sour cherry rye is getting a dose of Six Barrel Cola syrup. The result is a bright cherry red beer with sour cherry palate and a whimsical cola finish. We’ve called it Lola. As well as being the musical inspiration for this beer, Lola is also the name of the Aro Park cat – the tabby who frequents the park beside our brewery - one of the few cats I know with its own Facebook page and definitely among the most charming and photogenic local Aro characters. Lola the Aro Park Cat If you’re keen to give Lola a try be advised that there is an extremely limited quantity of this beer in existence, so get down to Hashigo Zake from 5pm on Tuesday the 16th. First in first served.

    • Bastard Rye
      • Rye, it’s a bastard. Its lack of husk, high water retention capacity and high beta-glucan content mean rye is notoriously difficult to brew with. In simple terms it can convert a brewer’s mash (the porridge like mixture of hot water and crushed grain designed to convert starch into sugar) into a giant vat of gluggy jello, making it almost impossible to run off the sweet wort needed to make beer. There are cautionary tales among brewing circles of rye brews lasting days while their brewers sit rocking back and forth in a fetal position, sobbing. But despite, or perhaps even because of the difficulties it causes, rye holds a special place in brewing lore. It delivers a unique and distinctive spice character to the beers it’s used in, but I suspect that, like eating puffer fish, its popularity has something to do with courting danger. With a few rye beers under our belt on the pilot plant I was feeling pretty confident, even cocky, about brewing a batch on our big kit. Summer Sommer, our first rye beer, brewed with Kjetil from the Norwegian brewery Nøgne Ø, was a bit of a bastard to run off - but I was pretty sure I’d improved my technique, pretty sure I’d dodge the rye bullet. Wrong. Normally the run off from the mash takes a couple of hours. By hour seven of my rye run off I was feeling decidedly less cocky. Bastard rye. This was shaping up to be a nightmare brew. It was particularly interesting to chart my mood with the slow realization that this was going to be a terminally slow run off. I was reminded of a ghastly human resource workshop I was forced to attend when I worked for Lion Nathan in Australia. In this workshop we were introduced to SARAH - a description of people’s reaction to traumatic events (S-hock; A-nger; R-ejection; A-cceptance; H- ealing). What I thought was interesting was that after reaching a state of calm at around hour 9 (which I assumed was H-ealing) I seemed to go back to S and start all over again. It’s personality flaws like this that meant I would never be a good Lion Nathan employee. At hour 13 of trickling slow run off I decided I had enough, in more ways than one, and started the boil. I have to say that after a 13 hour run off a one hour boil just seems like an anti climax. Now the funny thing is that we brew two days in a row to fill our fermenters, so with the brew finally done and dusted by the small hours of the morning, I crawled home with the knowledge that in a couple of hours I’d have to be back at the brewery to do it all over again. I arrived back at the brewery feeling significantly less cocky. Now, I’m not normally big on the whole modernist ideal of man’s dominance over nature, but after a 19 hour brew day the day before I was keen to bring the full power of science to bear on this beer. This time I made a separate mash for the rye with not one but two protein rests designed to break down those troublesome beta glucans which had ruined my run-off the day before. I then added this to the main mash and this time success – a respectable four hour run off, and a warm slightly smug feeling. In your face rye. This Tuesday night you can taste the first installment of Bastard Rye as part of our 24 More series at Hashigo Zake. The lion’s share of this beer has been tucked away to mature in Maker’s Mark bourbon barrels, but we pulled out a small portion that we have been quietly resting on raspberries. At 11% abv this is one of the strongest Garage beers so far, so strong it seems to cling to the glass. The result is a boozie hit of rye spice and berry character, blonde but with a definite raspberry tint. With an alcohol content this high, although it was brewed almost four months ago now, it still seems ‘young’ to me. It’s great fun to try now, and it will be fascinating to see what happens to the beer as it ages in our bourbon barrels. A proper bastard to brew certainly - but well worth the effort.   

    • Aro Noir
      • Don’t get me wrong, we love Aro, but let’s be honest, it’s an interminably long, damp, dark bastard of a winter in the Valley. It’s made worse by the fact that which ever deity is in charge of Wellington’s weather clearly does not bestow his/her love equally. As anyone who has ever lived in the Valley knows, in the middle of winter, one side of the street gets all the sun, while the other moulders in perpetual gloom. No guesses which side of the street we’re on. Perhaps it was one of the early symptoms of vitamin D deficiency, but there were days when I’d stand at the garage doors peering out from the shadows at the sun drenched houses on the other side of the street, and I swear I’d begin fantasizing about building some kind of giant fuck off mirror on the other side of the street so that we could share their warmth. Inspired by what is now two winters on the ‘dark side of the street’ comes Aro Noir, one of the stars of the 24, and a personal favourite of mine. I have been asked a number of times what my favorite Garage Project beer is. I’ve always been reluctant to answer– but this would have to be one of them. It’s pitch black and full flavoured but with a nice balance of hops and roast malt character. At its heart is English Maris Otter pale malt, with a touch of Crystal and a generous addition of Roast and Black malts. The hops are American, Chinook and Summit, creating a nice citric bitterness and aroma which marries nicely with the roast malt character. At 7.1% abv it’s rich but not heavy or cloying. Yes, it is inspired by the darkness of a Wellington winter in Aro Valley, but truly it is a stout for all seasons. Join us on the dark side.

    • Have Brewery – Will Travel
      • It’s 7 o’clock in the morning, the Sunday morning after Beervana, and most sensible craft beer enthusiast (not to mention quite a few less sensible ones) are still tucked up in bed. But we’re not. Despite having only finished packing up our Beervana stand about 6 hours earlier we’re now setting up our little brewery and bar just outside the front of Moore Wilson’s. It’s the Wellington on a Plate Food Heroes’ market and for a day the Moore Wilson’s car park has been taken over by an army of stallholders offering just about every kind of produce imaginable. It’s a foodie’s dream and more than enough reason for us to be there, but there is another reason. Just outside the front of the store is a water fountain, a very special water fountain which is fed by the Thompson Lewis Crystal Spring bore which taps into an aquifer of pure artesian water 470 feet beneath Wellington. I have actually spent a number of distracted shopping trips to Moore’s, often totally failing to buy what I’d gone to get because I’ve been thinking about brewing with this water. This was, finally, my chance. We’ve brewed al fresco before. The last time was in the hop fields of the Tadmore Valley for our hop harvest brew. Brewing out in the middle of a hop field is challenging. Brewing outside a supermarket has its own challenges, but a lack of convenience is not one of them. So in addition to Moore Wilson’s spring water, English Maris Otter, Aromatic and Crystal malts and whole New Zealand grown Goldings hops, a quick nip around the store yielded some fresh oranges to zest and a rather nice jar of marmalade. The resulting beer is our Moore Wilson’s, Old English Bitter Marmalade, a proper English session Bitter with a marmalade twist, coming in at a modest 3.8% abv, dry hopped and conditioned in the Firkin and served straight from the cask on the bar top at Hashigo Zake tomorrow. We’re calling this number one of 24 More, a nice gentle start to our next installment of new brews at the bar where it all started. It’s good to be back.

    • Red Rocks Reserve
      • Sometimes you can be wrong about a beer. When Jos suggested that we do a ‘stein’ version of the Red Rocks beer we originally brewed for the 24/24, I distinctly remember telling him to fuck off. ‘Steinning’ is an ancient brewing method dating back to a time when beer was brewed in wooden vessels. Instead of applying external heat (tricky with a wooden kettle), hot rocks would be thrown into the wort to create a rolling boil. Cool. But seriously, why would I bother super heating rocks to make my beer. Ancient people used to do all sorts of crazy shit. Example, trephination was once a popular way to cure migraines, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to rush off to Bunnings to pick up a trephine next time I’ve got a headache. I got it in theory. Conventional modern brewing techniques bring the wort to a boil around 100˚c, but rocks heated in a fire can reach many hundreds of degrees creating a super boil when plunged into the wort. The motivation behind recreating this ancient brewing practice is to create a rich toffee character in beer through the caramelization of wort sugars on the super heated surface of the rocks. But still, it does sound like a ton of effort to go to considering the modern brewer has a whole swag of other ingredients and techniques at their disposal to recreate this kind of character in beer. So I admit it was with a certain amount of reluctance that I finally agreed to give it a crack. Jos’ enthusiasm for the project was infectious, and at the end of the day who doesn’t like having a nice big fire. The first step was to find our rocks. Our original idea was to use some of the red rocks from Red Rocks on Wellington’s South Coast – the place that originally inspired the name of our beer. Here’s where it gets tricky. You see, it turns out that red rocks from Red Rocks tend to explode when heated. Crap. But all was not lost. Apparently, according to the geologists we spoke to, the rocks 100 meters down the coast from Red Rocks, although not red, were less likely to explode. No promises you understand, just less likely. My growing confidence for the project was only temporarily dented by Jos’ announcement at this point that he would actually be in America for the week we were planning the brew (which struck me as a safe distance to be in the event of exploding rocks).            [Jos at said safe distance in the Stone Brewery in Escondido ] Heating rocks in a great big fuck-off fire in the forecourt of an old petrol station in Aro Valley takes a lot more organisation and planning than you might think, but we managed it. A good heap of non-red rocks were collected from the South Coast and this pile supplemented with a load of stone grill rocks. A fire permit was obtained and a roaring manuka wood fire was stoked up out the front of the brewery. We even managed to get Rob, a fireman I know, to come and spend his day off with us while we played with matches. All seemed to be going well. There had been no explosions and the rocks, after a morning in the fire, had reached over 500˚c. But after all this I still had my reservations. Would it be worth it? Would this massive effort pay off in the flavour of the finished beer or would it all have been a load of buggering around for nothing? Any reservations I had evaporated the moment the wort hit the hot rocks. I have never seen a boil like the one these rocks created. As the column of steam cleared after the initial roar of contact, the boiling wort looked like lava - like rich red toffee lava. It was one of those moments of pure joyous excitement when you know for a fact that you’ve pulled something off, that it’s worked, that despite everything that could have gone wrong it’s gone just right. I love that feeling and the stupid indelible grin that goes with it. And the flavour is there, unmistakably, in the beer – rich juicy toffee sweetness from all those caramelized sugars, layered with Red Rock’s distinctive lush hop aroma. We’ve been calling it a hopfen-stein bier. I don’t know if that really is a style but I do know it is definitely one of the most fun beers I’ve ever made. Sometimes it’s good to be wrong. Massive thanks to all involved. To the geologists who gave such considered advice, to Phil for embracing the madness on his first week at work, and to Rob, for taking a day off from putting out fires to light one and letting us play dress ups. Cheers.  Special thanks to Corie for filming and editing a video of the brew, which you can enjoy here, and to local artist Evan Purdie who painstakingly hand painted the awesome Red Rocks Reserve poster (and also Pernicious Weed Killer Hops one).  You can view more of Corie’s work here including the horror film ’Fetus 5000’ shot in the brewery for the 48 hour film competition earlier this year and we will let Ev’s genius speak for itself… Very limited amounts of the beer are available still. If you see it in a bar, grab a pint. It might be a while between drinks. For a list of bars pouring our beer, check out our Facebook page every Friday afternoon for a fresh update.

    • The Larder Parks Up at the Garage
      • We’ve probably had more than our fair share of fantastic collaborations. Wellington’s a town with a nice buzz going on and the fact is it’s not been hard to come across inspiring and like-minded people doing all sorts of interesting and creative things. But our collaboration with chef Jacob Brown and his partner Sarah, the owners of Miramar restaurant The Larder for Wellington on a Plate has definitely been our most challenging and perhaps most audacious project yet.   I really like Jacob. There’s no doubt he’s a great chef, but he also has a cheeky streak and you can tell that he likes to stir. Witness his soft spot for offal. It’s an interest grounded firmly in the philosophy of using the whole beast, from tail to snout - but there’s definitely a twinkle in his eye that suggests there is more than a hint of mischief at work. It’s just as well for those who are lucky enough to have tried his meals, because this kind of mischief, when it’s backed up with real skill, creates something pretty close to genius. This was the premise - hatched up over beers and a slab of barbequed meat in Jacob’s back yard – a six course meal, to be held among the tanks of the brewery, each course to be served with a different beer, three courses designed by Jacob to go with existing Garage Project beers and three courses with beer designed to go with a dish suggested by Jacob.   What happened next was about three months of discussion back and forth, testing, tasting, design and revision - nowhere near as clear-cut as the original idea, but in practice even more productive and fun. The highlight was definitely brewing our Oyster and Black Pepper Stout with Jacob, sharing the brewing process with him while he shucked his way through a pile of fresh Tio Point oysters - one for us, one for the brew, two for us… The result in the end was eight rather than the original six courses (there were just too many ideas that seemed too good to pass up). The beers in order of appearance were, Purple Haze Honig Hefeweizen a tart, dry Blue Borage honey wheat beer designed as an aperitif, Pernicious Weed, Bier Blonde sur Blonde, a Belgian Blonde brewed with malted barley, rye, wheat and oats, a quick Red Rocks Reserve to stall while the finishing touches were being put to the pig, Smoke and Mirrors, our lightly smoked Bock beer that’s also been served along side LBQ’s Hare of the Hog Burger, our Tio Point Oyster and toasted black pepper stout, Lord Cockswain’s Double Barreled Porter and the very last of the Double Day of the Dead. I won’t give a blow-by-blow account of the night itself, that’s already been done in inimitable style by the food blogger Jeremy Taylor the Omnivore detailing the eight courses of inspired and surprising food that greeted the diners on the night. If you were lucky enough to be one of the forty people who sat down to Jacob’s dinner I’m sure it will bring back fond memories. For those who missed out, sorry, we’ll try to do it again. But in the meantime just think of this as porn for food and beer lovers.   Huge thanks to all involved, to Jacob, Sarah and their team, to Jeramiah Ross aka Module for the perfect mood music, to Simon, the small holder who takes our spent grain and of course his pig, who made the greatest sacrifice of all - you will be remembered fondly by all who attended the night.

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