Swill Communication

Fight For Your Right to Party

2009-11-30T18:03:00.000-08:00

Bruce Holloway and Yeastie Boys Fight For Your Right to Party
Your Weekend (Fairfax weekend paper supplement), November 21st 2009:

Big new IPA fit for a king - The Press, 11/11/2009

2009-11-10T15:24:00.000-08:00

A selection of Carl Hadler's thoughts on His Majesty in the The Press this morning:

"...a wonderful texture."

"...a good challenging blend of bitterness and hop fruit."

"...the third big New Zealand IPA I have tasted recently. They have all been hop-tastic. I did enjoy the extra bitterness in this one."

Full story now available online.

Kid Chocolate Bounces Back Off The Ropes

2009-05-08T18:43:00.000-07:00

As well as a lot of tasting of the Yeastie Boys' latest ale 'Kid Chocolate', there has been plenty of talk about the beer and some of you may have already heard the word of our first knock down. Our first attempt at Kid Chocolate - our autumnal mild - came out short of our very high expectations but we fought on to come out with (what we think is) a knock-out beer.

Here's some background...

After testing and then tweaking the recipe in my Seatoun laboratory* using UK pale malt as a base, Steve Nally and I discussed having a crack at brewing the final product on a base of locally grown and malted Canterbury barley. I'm all for giving local ingredients a first shot, if they fit the bill, so we tried our hand.

Steve's own small trial batch, which we tasted the day before brewing, was very close to what we were looking for so we went ahead with the idea on brewday. However, a few days later, we discovered that the translation from 40 litres into our 1,200 litre commercial brew had come up short on fermentation attenuation - leaving a beer with a very different balance (and even lower alcohol, at 2.7%) than we were expecting.

Still wanting to create the mild we knew Kid Chocolate was meant to be, we decided to re-brew again the following week, this time with Maris Otter - the famous UK pale malt variety. We felt this one has hit the mark perfectly. It is a very different beer on tap, off beer engine and in the bottle - but unique and tasty in every form.

Prepared to take a loss to get our beer right, we agreed with Steve that the 'failed' first brew would be at Yeastie Boys' cost, unless Steve could develop it into a beer that worked for him and Invercargill Brewery. Steve has worked his magic, through aging the beer a little longer to integrate the flavours, and ended up with "Not On Your Nally" - an interesting and quite unique hoppy low-alcohol dark ale that he is very happy with. I can report, from a personal taste, that it is well worth investigation... as much for it's uniqueness, and the background story behind it, as for its flavour. Compare it with your memory of Kid Chocolate (or drink them side by side if you've stored some Kid chocolate away for a rainy day).

So despite our first knock down, both Yeastie Boys and Invercargill Brewery have ended up with winners (as have the drinkers!). Contact the Invercargill Brewery shop for your own taste of "Not On Your Nally".

* laboratory could read 'back deck' (and brew days are, it seems, always in a howling southerly).

Kid Chocolate Throws A Second Jab

2009-04-02T15:47:00.000-07:00

First Kieran Haslett-Moore penned a positive piece on Kid Chocolate packing a punch in Capital Times and now Bruce Holloway celebrates the little known Mild Ale style (and laments the lack of craft beer appreciation at beer festivals). Look out for this second article with this weekend's papers in the "Your Weekend" glossy supplement.

Nice one Kieran and Bruce. Thanks for the props and good health to more good beer writing.

Kid Chocolate Packs A Punch

2009-04-01T20:06:00.000-07:00

"Thankfully Mild’s day has come again as a new wave of British Micro brewers have taken to the style, revitalising it with new interpretations and an altogether cooler image.

Well now, that movement has hit here, because in the brewing world you don’t get much cooler than the Yeastie Boys. Their autumn release, Kid Chocolate is a mild through and through.

Named for the New Orleans Featherweight boxer and RnB singer who in the 1950s punched way above his modest stature, Kid Chocolate at 3.6%abv is packed with earthy chocolate, bready malt, subtle berry fruit notes and a balanced finish which makes for a very tasty session-able drop."

Full story from Kieran Haslett-Moore at Capital Times.

'Kid Chocolate' crosses the Bombays

2009-03-11T17:45:00.000-07:00

Yeastie Boys 'Kid Chocolate' is lined up to cross the Bombays for this weekends Auckland installment of the New Zealand Beer Festival.

It has been a long time between drinks for any Auckland-based Yeastie Boys fans with highly regarded summer ale 'Golden Boy' missing the rotation at Auckland's two top beer venues - Galbraith's Ale House and Hallertau Brew Bar - and a single keg of 'Pot Kettle Black' only lasting 48 hours all the way back in October.

The forecast for Saturday looks a little damp, but with warmish eastierlies, which is a whole lot better than the big chilly wet that hit Wellington a couple of weeks back.

Thanks to Paul and Nigel at Rotorua's Croucher Brewing for hosting Yeastie Boys on their stand. Make sure you try the lovely Croucher beers while checking out 'Kid Chocolate'.

Yeastie Boys 'Kid Chocolate' Punches Above Its Weight

2009-03-08T17:44:00.000-07:00

After advanced tastings of Yeastie Boys 'Kid Chocolate' turned up for a few rounds at a couple of Wellington events over the last couple of weeks (the New Zealand Beer Festival and Newtown Fair) it is now available for general release.

Already known for pushing limits and breaking free of styles, Kid Chocolate may be Yeastie Boys most outrageous beer yet. It is, in some respects, the craft beer version of New Zealand Draught. Where Tui, Sepight's Gold, Lion Brown and DB Draught fail to perform, Yeastie Boys deliver in spades. As most other craft brewers push the upper ends of beer flavour (and alcohol limits) the Yeastie Boys drop down to the lower end (to Mild ale, our favourite beer style) in an attempt squeeze as much flavour as they can from a beer of only 3.6% ABV.

"It was an obvious choice to go with a mild ale" says Yeastie Boy Stu McKinlay. "We created Pot Kettle Black for our beer loving friends, Golden Boy for those who were curious but less initiated in the world of flavoursome beer, and now this one is for us - the perfect quaffer for thirsty men and women". Look out for Kid Chocolate on keg or handpump at your local soon, or order a bottle or two online at www.beerstore.co.nz.

English Mild Ales are refreshing, flavourful, light-flavored, malt-accented beers that are extremely difficult to make but are readily suited to drinking in quantity by thirsty (and 'Yeastie') men and women. Yeastie Boys version 'Kid Chocolate', with its unique New Zealand hop twist, is chestnut coloured with a little autumn fruit and chocolate in the nose and on the palate (from the combination of new world Nelson 'Rakau' hops and our old world malts and yeast). Perfect, the Yeastie Boys think, for drinking through the latter days of summer.

Yeastie Boys - just like Lee Dorsey, everything we do gohn be funky.

About the beer:
Style: English-style Dark Mild Ale
Stats: 3.6% abv, 14 IBU, 18 SRM
Ingredients: Maris Otter Pale Malt, Caramunich Type I, Brown Malt, Dark Caramalt, Black Malt. Pacific Gem and organic Rakau hops. Fermented with Wyeast's "West Yorkshire Ale" yeast.

Beer tasting golden boys toast back-to-back victory on Yeastie Boys

2008-12-03T22:42:00.000-08:00

Last night a group of Wellington beer legends - aka 'White Rino' - took out Regional Wines and Spirits' annual Gisborne Gold Beer Options competition for the second year running. In a town as fiercely "beer geeky" as Wellington this is an enormous effort.

The final beer, and the one that catapaulted the team to victory, was Moa St Joseph's (a Belgian-style Tripel from Marlborough, which the team had recently used as a "practice" beer). It seems to be true, as Gary Player said, that the harder you practice the luckier you get.

Sick of sipping and sniffing such small samples of beer all night, the White Rino boys went on to pull some longer draughts at The Malthouse. Their beer of choice for the toast - Yeastie Boys' new summer ale 'Golden Boy' (spending all of their 1st place voucher on our beer! We're impressed fellas, thanks for letting us know).

Congratulations 'White Rino'. Looking forward to the three peat attempt.

White Rino is:

Adam Melville, David Wu, Ford Brownlie, Gareth Meates (missing from pic), Kieran Haslett-Moore and Pete McIver.

Finger Lickin' Good

2008-10-09T23:34:00.000-07:00

Posted by "Yeastie Stu".

The first week of Yeastie Boys in the wider public eye...

We made the front page of the Dominion Post's business section, thanks to a little piece of 'beer-for-fish' trading with the journalist over the fence (long story but not as long as the one about the one that got away).

We started selling some Yeast-T's, as modelled by Sam in the Dom Post picture, which is nice because the beer money won't start coming in for a few weeks yet.

Everyone asked me why I didn't wear my Yeast-T. That was part of the reason and the people who asked whould have known better ;-).

Our beer-loving friends at Ratebeer enjoyed Pot Kettle Black as much as we'd hoped. This means more to us than most people would realise. These guys are our peers, afterall we are beer drinkers first and foremost.

My bro, Steve, was the first to get a rigger of Pot Kettle Black at Regional Wines and Spirits. That's ironic, considering I only just recently brewed him 19L of beer for his 45th birthday. He then went home and worked up the following recipe:

Venison sausages, with garlic mash, caramalised onion and peas – served with a Yeastie Boys, Pot Kettle Black (PKB) and balsamic sauce.

Get very good quality venison sausages. Don’t over cook the venison sausages! Boil potatoes boil with 3 or 4 garlic cloves, mash with an egg, some butter and dash of milk. Caramalise the onions with some olive oil and brown sugar – cook them over a low heat until nicely browned and sweet. After the sausages are cooked place in oven to keep warm, deglaze the pan with PKB and balsamic, add some brown sugar and reduce. Serve with peas and a glass of Yeastie Boys, Pot Kettle Black – delicious!

Oh yeh, and in other news, Yeasayer rocked the San Francisco Bath House, let the audience join in for the last song, and seemed to have as much fun as if they were riding a Metropolitan train. What a gig! I've been to a few good ones this year but this one was a firecracker. If only the Sassy Red had been in better form... or, better, Yeastie Boys had been on tap.

Pot Kettle Black - A Black IPA?

2008-09-23T13:54:00.000-07:00

Posted by "Yeastie Stu"

I had never before heard of the term "Black IPA" but the term has been bandied about through the beer geek community following the relase of our first beer - Yeastie Boys Pot Kettle Black.

Pot Kettle Black was one of those lightbulb moments that occurred following months of discussion with beer writer Neil Miller. I love malty beers and often think the this hop craze thing has gone too far - pale hoppy beers fill every shelf around town, and everyone, everywhere, is talking about them. Neil is probably New Zealand's most certifiable hophead, I'm not sure he ever tasted a beer that he wouldn't think could be better with more hops - until he got to San Diego and the World Beer Cup. I'm not sure if he met his match there but he has certainly been fairly quiet since he returned! Anyway, back to the PKB story, Neil and I spent a lot of time discussing the subtle, and not so subtle, intricacies of the deabate around hop-fuelled pale ales versus marvellous malty monsters. It got me thinking about straddling the fence between us.

Although it started out in my head as a very robust American Brown Ale, I now think of Pot Kettle Black as an American-style Porter (or, perhaps, a 'new world style'). Anchor Porter and Epic Porter were partial influences, though I always felt like both beers exhibit more black character than I wanted and that their hop character is too grassy/piney. They were hoppy porters, rather than porterish hoppy ales. Although I'd never tried it, Sierra Nevada Porter has now become the big brother beer to Pot Kettle Black. Renaissance Elemental Porter in its sweeter incarnations is like a fun uncle.

Black IPA describes Pot Kettle Black pretty well. The hops are as prominent, if not more so, than the black "Porterish" character. Black IPA is not a new term, however, as Stone Brewing in San Diego used it for their 11th Anniversary Ale in 2007 (interestingly about the same time as the first batch of Pot Kettle Black was brewed - a total coincidence). The term has since been used by quite a few breweries - most famously by Laughing Dog Brewery. To be associated, even implicitly, with the likes of the amazing Stone Brewing feels like a pretty good start for Yeastie Boys. We're here to brew beer in very small volumes for the very peak of the people in the beer loving pyramid. We hope that this peak grows, so we can grow with it, but we won't be lowering the lofty standards we're trying the achieve so that we can bite of a part of the wider "mainstream" section of that pyramid.

Slainte mhath
Stu