Just as a controversial artwork can attract and repel in equal doses, so it is in the beer world. What one person quaffs down, another spits out. This is the brilliance of the craft brew scene - there's something for everyone and much of it is so far from the mainstream as to be called radical.
Take Yeastie Boys. The Wellington- based brewery gets its stuff made under contract by the Invercargill Brewery. Effectively they are experimental home brewers who find a recipe they think will work and get it made in bulk.
Or sometimes they get an idea they know might not work but will get people talking. And so we have Rex Attitude: not so much a beer as an experience.
Their spiel is that the beer is made with 100% peat-smoked malt when no one is prepared to add more than 5% smoked malt. As a result, Rex Attitude bears more resemblance to a Laphroaig whisky than Lion Red.
The first whiff is campfire meets medicinal and the first taste sends confusing messages to your tastebuds. Could it actually be whisky diluted with beer?
For many people, that's where the Rex Attitude experience ends . . . with a scrunched-up face and a wrinkled nose. For others, it's a revelation and they can't get enough. By their own admission, Yeastie Boys say nine out of 10 Kiwis don't like it. For once in my life I'm swimming with the mainstream . . . I don't like it. But I can see why you would and I appreciate the out- there-ness of it.
The other highlight of Beervana was being part of the media competition where various journalists were paired with top brewers to come up with a collaborative brew.
My effort with Richard Emerson in Dunedin scored 30 out of 45 points which left us midfield with a number of other beers.
Our brew was too bitter, mainly because Richard kindly agreed to make a recipe I'd conjured up myself. Turns out all the errors I made at home probably disguised an underlying fault which was glaringly exposed when Richard applied his highly efficient processes. It was a great lesson in the art and science of brewing and I'm grateful to have worked with a genius like Richard.
There were two stand-out beers in the media competition. Luke Nicholas of Epic and Victoria Wells of Dish magazine created a coffee-fig stout which easily won over the judges with 41 points, while Yeastie Boys (yes, them again) teamed up with Simon Morton from Radio New Zealand to create a beer and a political statement with Riddler, an Anti-Shandy.
Their entry took the mickey out of the decision by the intellectual property office (IPONZ) to allow Dominion Breweries to trademark the term Radler (as in Monteith's Radler Bier). Radler is a beer style that has been around for decades and comes from a Flemish word for cyclist. It's all to do with a long story about bike racing and a hot summer's day and beer being watered down with lemonade.
Radler is widely accepted as a beer style, but because it's little used in New Zealand, IPONZ granted the trademark.
So Morton and those radical Wellington brewers came up with their version of a shandy: stout laced with Moet. It's creative and smart - just like our craft brewing industry (and journalists!).
