McNeill's Brewery

After a long ski on crusty snow - for some of us there was as much falling as skiing - we headed to Brattleboro and McNeill's brewery and bar. We had been forewarned that we were in for something of a local experience, but none of us guessed quite what an experience.

McNeill's is a true bar: it hasn't been prettied up, with just plain tables and chairs, and rough wooden floors, while it was a little lacking in the heat department (we were all wearing our coats!). While we expected a quiet Saturday afternoon crowd, since the place had just opened for the day, it turned out that they were hosting part of the Northern Roots music festival, so there was a session already in progress when we arrived.

We got our beers and settled down to listen, though the music ended pretty quickly, and a solo performer took over; as he was getting ready to take the "stage", I realized that I knew who he was (he's a professor at BU), so we listened to him sing and recite for a while and I introduced myself afterwards.

McNeill's brew their own beers, and we sampled virtually everything on offer, including two cask offerings. There were three different IPAs available - one on cask, another brewed with the roots festival in mind - and several more unusual styles, like an unfiltered Kölsch, with a general high quality of beer on offer.

New Zealand beers

Over the course of a month in New Zealand, we sampled about 40 different beers, from over 20 breweries stretching from Emerson's in Dunedin, near the southern tip of the South Island, to a number of Auckland-area brewers not far from the top of the North Island. 

While craft brewing is growing very fast in New Zealand - many of the smaller breweries were opened in the last decade - the styles are distinctly different from those found in the US. I'm not sure what brewpubs and small breweries were producing when the American craft brew boom began, but now many of the breweries have gone in the direction of "extreme beer," which could mean anything from the revival of an ancient Ethiopian brew to a beer hoppy enough to blow the average drinker's tastebuds off. 

That may well be in New Zealand's future, but right now they seem to be focused on turning out very fine versions of some traditional beer styles, with lagers and pilsners, always very popular in New Zealand, very much to the fore. Many of the breweries make use of local hops - we saw hop fields between Nelson and Golden Bay, in the northern part of the South Island - but they don't dump great quantities in: even a beer that one brewery billed as being pretty hoppy was really quite mild. 

Since I'm quite a fan of a finely-crafted pilsner or lager I was in heaven for the entire month, and several of the beers left a lingering impression. I've listed every beer we tried, or every beer we can remember trying, below. Among the lagers/pilsners I'd highlight Wanaka's Brewski, the Tuatara Pilsner, and Wigram Brewing Company's Bavarian Pilsner, one of the most enjoyable beers I've had anywhere in the past couple of years. Other highlights enjoyed Harrington's amusingly-named Wobbly Boot Porter, the Mac family of beers, and the unusual range on offer at the Mussel Inn, including a very tart lambic and a beer flavored with manuka, a local tree (Mata brewing company - with a female head brewer, a rarity in brewing - also has an interesting manuka-flavoured beer). 

Considering that New Zealand has a population of just 4.2 million people, they sustain a remarkable number of breweries: we could probably have sampled twice as many beers with a little bit more time, or a little less attention to the health of our livers. That is what the return visit will have to focus on: the ones that got away.

And here's the evidence that we took our beer research seriously:

Brown Teal Ale (Pacific Brew Ltd for Organic Action)

Croucher Brewing Company Czech Pilsner

Croucher Brewing Company Pale Ale

Dux de Lux Hereford Bitter

Dux de Lux Lager

Dux de Lux Nor'wester

Emerson's Bookbinder

Emerson's 1812 India Pale Ale

Green Fern Organic Lager (West Coast Brewing Co.)

Green Man Best Bitter

Harrington's Pilsner

Harrington's Wobbly Boot Porter Ale

Mac's Black Mac

Mac's Gold

Mac's Great White (Belgian Wit)

Mac's Hop Rocker Pilsner

Mac's Sassy Red 

Mata Artesian

Mata Manuka

Monteith's Original Ale

Monteith's Celtic

Monteith's Black Beer

Monteith's Pilsner

Mussel Inn Captain Cooker

Mussel Inn Dark Horse Black Beer

Mussel Inn Golden Goose Lager

Mussel Inn Lambagreeny Lambic

Mussel Inn Red

Speight's Old Dark

Steinlager

TaaKawa Ale (brewed by Steam Brewing Company)

Tuatara Ardennes

Tuatara IPA

Tuatara London Porter

Tuatara Pilsner

Tui

Twisted Hop Golding Bitter

Waikato Draught

Wanaka Beerworks Brewski

Wanaka Beerworks Cardrona Golden

Wanaka Beerworks Tall Black

Wigram Brewing Co. Bavarian Pilsner

Winnie's Ale

Otter Creek Otter's Dubbel

The Otter's Dubbel is an entry in Otter Creek's World Tour series - a Belgian dubbel, as the name implies, and a very fine American version of the style. It has the sweetness characteristic of a dubbel, but it doesn't overwhelm the beer, which also has a slight sour tang; it's a nicely balanced brew which went surprisingly well with a meal of tacos...

Oktoberfest

Oktoberfest
(5 gallon)

1 lb Munich malt
3/4 lb crystal 20
2 oz crystal 90

3.3 lbs Pilsen light liquid malt extract

3 lb Pilsen light dry malt extract

1 oz Cluster (7.9% AA) (60 min)
3/4 oz Hallertau (2.4% AA) (25 min)
1 oz Hallertau (2.4% AA) (15 min)

60 min boil

yeast: WLP 029 German Ale Kölsch Yeast

Pitched 1/25/09, SG 1.040
Secondary 2/11/09, SG 1.012

Kegged