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

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.

Pot Kettle Black - A Black IPA?

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