Brewers a crafty bunch
I always freeze my bones after a roast so I can turn them into a rich, nutritious stock which I then use for the base of my soups. I have used lamb bones in this soup, but if you had roast chicken carcass, beef bones or even pork then the same method appl
MORE than half of all beer is sold in pubs, clubs, cafes, restaurants and liquor outlets. And they are still closed.
Which means the big breweries are just ticking over with nothing going out in kegs (usually up to 20% of total production) for tap beer and less in bottles and cans.
A lot of small craft breweries, which rely largely on kegs for tap beer in local bars, have reduced production to a trickle. Some have always had online sales, while others are now moving online to keep afloat.
b.effect Brewing in Wanaka, for example, has a new website for freightfree orders for its canned range and also plastic riggers because brewer James Hay fears that bars in the resort, where most of his kegs go, will be quiet for a lack of tourists in coming months.
Included is a new alcoholfree kombucha beer called Special K, which (unlike its Kellogg’s namesake) is glutenfree. Kombucha is a tea popular in China which can be brewed with sugar. Hay agrees with most that kombucha beer is a poor substitute for beer, but reckons that after 10 trial brews he has a drinkable one for celiac sufferers who are allergic to grains.
Altitude in Queenstown is also now delivering riggers (up to 40 some days) locally from online orders. And, since dairies are also closed, it is making a creamy sweet strawberry milkshake IPA (6.2%) with lactose sugar, vanilla and 220g of strawberries per litre.
The likes of Cableways in Dunedin are also delivering online orders.
Cheap drinking
Will pubgoers return to bars when they eventually reopen after so many weeks of drinking at home at about a third of the cost? Definitely, largely because of the priceless enjoyment of being with mates and a desire to catch up with them.
And let us find new mates: shout any supermarket/grocery staff you recognise in the bar because they have risked their health to keep us in beer during the lockdown.
Health experts say that the ’flu season is in winter only because we spend so much time indoors in close contact with others. Perhaps, then, we should all wrap
up and sit in the garden bar?
Hopping to it
Hop growers are included in the list of essential business and, therefore, managed to complete their harvest.
And it has been a bumper season for the second year in a row. Last year, the harvest was up 45% to just over 1,000,000kg. This year, it’s up by about 20%.
The hops come from more than 700ha planted mainly in the Nelson region by 28 farmers, and more than 80% is exported, mainly to the United States and Britain.
From lockdown diary
‘‘Half of us are going to come out of this quarantine as amazing cooks. The other half will come out with a drinking problem.’’
‘‘Homeschooling is going well: two students suspended for fighting and one teacher fired for drinking on the job.’’
Anyway, better six feet apart than six feet under . . .