10 beers of the summer

Everyone does top-10s and I’m no exception, so with 1/12^th of 2012 behind us, here’s my 10 beers of the Kiwi summer to date.

Tuatara APA

The highlight of the summer. Bursting with tropical fruit hops, this is the Kiwi cousin of Tuatara's ephemeral American Pale Ale, but made with New Zealand hops instead of American varieties, which proved too hard to get because of a US shortage. The relatively new Wai-iti hop strain adds a softer, sweeter citrus flavour than you find in many American pale ales  with more mandarin than grapefruit  which gives the punch-bowl flavour a tangy subtlety. It makes you feel like filling the swimming pool with beer and diving in.

Mussel Inn Captain Cooker

From this extraordinary brew pub in the middle of nowhere comes the definitive New Zealand beer. It tweaks the recipe that Captain Cook used  Leg 1 when he brewed the first beer in New Zealand, using tree bark and leaves from rimu and manuka, at Dusky Sound in 1773. The modern Captain Cooker uses manuka flowers, which give a beautiful turkish delight twist. It's an incredible beer.

Pink Elephant Mammoth

Blenheim brewer Roger Pink is a cult figure in the New Zealand brewing scene, making eccentric beers to match his quirky personality. Mammoth is a perfect holiday treat. It's got Christmas-cake aromas of dried fruit and nuts, but with a fragrant earthy sourness hiding behind a caramel malt curtain. I had mine with some leftover cold ham that had been glazed with my home-brewed old ale and marmalade.

Epic Larger

No it's not a typo. It's a lager, but a larger lager. In fact, it's an imperial lager, in the sense that imperial just means bigger. The higher alcohol level (8.5 per cent  be warned one 500ml bottle is 3.4 standard drinks) makes it an ideal food match. I had one with an array of Mexican barbecue food and it was a perfect match, strong enough to compete with the spice, yet still offer a change of pace on your palate.

Three Boys Golden Ale

Deirdre loves Ralph Bungard's summery Golden Ale, so every time she saw me pulling a distinctive Three Boys bottle out of the fridge, she would ask: ``Is that one of mine?'' I managed to sneak the odd glass for myself and what a lovely butterfly of a beer. Light and bright with gently fluttering floral hop aromas, it's a perfect summer drop.

Invercargill Smokin Bishop

Smoked beers were all the rage last year, and this is the best of them. This is what beer could have tasted like centuries ago when the only way to dry malt was over an open fire. The smoke is neither overpowering nor subtle. It's perfectly pitched and a stunning example of a classic style.

Epic Coffee and Fig Oatmeal Stout

Yep, those guys from Epic, again  this time with the commercial realisation of a brew they made with Victoria Wells from Dish magazine for the media contest at Beervana (where they trounced my Hop Off The Press collaboration with Emerson's). I shared this on New Year's Eve with some friends because you couldn't drink a whole 750ml bottle of this (well, you could, but it wouldn't be that sociable). Up front, there's chocolate-coated coffee bean that is softened by the oatmeal. It has the texture of sleek black cat.

Yeastie Boys Digital IPA

Yeastie Boys has decided this is an open-source beer and has put the recipe online for home brewers to try to replicate. I'll be giving it a go just because it's worth having many, many bottles of this citrus and tropical fruit  explosion. You could hop, skip and jump your way through three or four of these in no time flat.

Harrington's Anvil Dry Hop

Harrington's are starting to do more high-end, higher-alcohol brews and this is a fine example of their premium craft styles. A strong New Zealand pilsner, it is juicy and full-bodied, but splashed through with summery cut-grass aromas. It's refreshing and drinkable in the extreme.

Stoke Biscuit Lager

Another in the Stoke “Bomber” line, this lives up to its name with a chewy toffee character that reminds you of mum's baking. The hoppiness provides the icing on the cake.

Turning tortoises into hares

Rory Sabbatini got a bad rap a few years back when he left Ben Crane in his fuming wake because Crane was moving with the speed of sleepy sloth.

And slow play in golf came to the fore the other week when Jonathan Byrd did anything but fly around the course in the final round of a PGA Tour's opening event.
http://www.montrealgazette.com/sports/Slow+play+killing+golf+game/5974978/story.html

But slow golf amongst the pros is one thing - it's slow golf on your local course that can do your head in and create Sabbatini-esque explosions which include deliberately hitting up on the group ahead, yelling abuse and generally getting so wound up your round turns to custard.

I recently watched a group spend at least 10 minutes looking for a lost ball out of bounds before one of the group ran back to the tee to play a third shot. The net result: two furious groups backed up on the fourth tee.

I've always maintained amateurs need to play by different rules to pros and this was a case in point. If you can't find your ball out of bounds, just play it like a lateral hazard, take a drop and get on with it.

Everyone rabbits on about golf being gentleman's game and how honouring the rules and self-regulation are critical to its integrity. Bollocks (unless you're playing for money or a trophy). If golf is going to continue to attract new players in the 21st century it needs to battle a far greater enemy - lack of time.

Unless you're retired, you're probably time poor and I for one don't want to spend over four and a half hours playing 18 holes when I know I could get round in a threesome in less than three and a half hours if there was no wannbe PhilMickleson in front of us.

You can't do much about idiots who phaff around over three-foot putts and take 20 practice swings but you can make your own round go faster by taking a more relaxed approach to the restrictive rules of golf.

I've always maintained all amateurs should be allowed to place the ball to avoid hitting out of someone's divot, or from an unraked footprint in the bunker - the game is hard enough without having your round ruined by someone else's selfishness and laziness. If an 18-handicapper moves the ball a few feet what does it matter? It will hardly alter the score and can make things run more smoothly and stress-free.

So imagine how rapt I was to see the venerable Golf Digest website echo my thoughts. Because they have much better technology than me, I'll let them take up the story.

http://www.golfdigest.com/golf-instruction/2011-10/photos-reasonable-rules

So next time you're out playing, go easy on yourself and have fun - after all the game is not meant to turn you into a mental wreck.