The medalwinning Joyrider Southern beers win Australian awards
FOUR southern breweries won medals at this month’s Australian International Beer Awards.
From more than 2100 entries, Oamaru’s Craftwork won medals for two woodaged brews — Autobarn (gold) and Bruzelles ma Belles (bronze) — and for La Framboise Belgian ale (silver). Wanaka breweries B.Effect (silver for its C Bomb IPA and bronze for Mojo Pin ale) and Ground Up (bronze for The Crux pilsner) also scored.
Fellow Wanaka brewery Rhyme and Reason got silvers for Happy Pils and Mt Alpha and bronze for Joy Rider. It has been brewing keg beer for bars for nearly a year, but its brews should become more widely available now that it has started bottling.
Happy Pils (5%) has a nice balance of malt and hop. Mt Alpha (6.9%) is an American IPA, with seven hop varieties delivering a mix of aromas and delicious flavours. Joy Rider (5.4%) is a pale ale with pleasantly subtle aromas and flavours from English malts and American hops. The brewery is now also bottling a 4.2% Kiwi Kolsch (Germanstyle golden lager), which is pleasantly slightly sweet and sour in the mouth.
Dunedin’s Emerson’s and Invercargill breweries did not enter the competition.
Among the beers from the major breweries that won medals were: Mac’s Gold and Black Mac (silver), Mac’s Green Beret and Sassy Red (bronze). Steinlager Pure and Classic (silver) and Mid (bronze). Monteith’s Barber lager and XPA (bronze). DB Export 33 and Hop Lager (bronze).
Boundary Road won silver for the Chosen One and bronze for 18th Amendment and Flying Fortress.
New World golds
Nearly 600 beers and ciders were entered in the annual New World awards — and more than 20 (some of which are from small northern breweries and are rarely seen so far south) that won trophies or gold medals are on sale at the supermarket for the next month.
Among them is only one from the South — a wheat beer (Persistent High Hefe) from Queenstown brewery Altitude — and also on the list is another wheat beer with cucumber added.
Steinlager birthday
It was a black day, indeed: the Black Budget in 1958 hoisted excise tax on tobacco and beer — especially higherstrength 5% imported beer.
The big breweries responded by introducing their own 5% brews — Lion with Steinlager (called Steinecker until 1962) and DB with Export a couple of years later.
Until that day the breweries had largely kept on producing the 4% beers which were reduced from 5% in 1942 because of taxes on stronger brews to encourage less use of barley and sugar (yes, sugar in those days) in brewing.
Steinlager has changed a bit in the past 60 years.
It was in a brown bottle until 1990 although, by then, it was also in a green bottle (first introduced for export to the United States in 1973).
It became Classic along the way; Premium Light (2.5%) in 2000; a lowcarb Edge (3.5%) between 2006 and 2013; Pure in 2007 and Tokyo Dry in 2016.
Now, for a while, it is also Black to celebrate 60 years since that Budget led to its creation — a black lager in a black (well very dark brown, actually) bottle with more hop aroma, stronger (5.5%), smoother and not malty despite its colour.