Parrotdog best budget ‘hazy’

THE Society of Beer Advocates’ latest (September) issue of Pursuit of Hoppiness lists the best three budget ‘‘hazies’’.

At the top is Parrotdog Birdseye hazy IPA (5.8%) (which I have not found yet), described as ‘‘creamed clover honey, juice, whipped cream, orangeflavoured cough syrup and aroma of ripe oranges’’. It’s rated 9.6 out of 10 and is $19.99 for a sixpack of 330ml bottles.

The widely available Mac’s Apparition IPA (5.6%), which has resin and orange hop flavours (7.5/10, $13.99/sixpack), is second and Boundary Road Haze of our Lives (5%), with lots of orange and peach hop flavours, light bitterness and a nice head helped by a little bit of wheat with the barley rounds out the top three.

It uses four hop oils from four American varieties. The oil is taken from freshly picked hops and delivers more aroma and less bitterness than dried hops (7/10, $13.99/sixpack).

Ales popular

These ales are among the growing number of (often hazy) ales being produced by big and small breweries alike. Usually they have lots of hop flavour rather than bitterness. The bitterness can, however, be enhanced when the beer is wellchilled.

Tuatara has a series of them ($20 sixpack), most of which pour with a nice head.

The newest, Pacific (4.4%), has a hint of sweetness. Aotearoa (5.8%) is citrus flavoured with light bitterness. Hazy pale ale (5.5%) is mango flavour with perhaps the least bitterness. The malt flavour in the APA (5.6%) dominates the hop flavours. The IPA (6.1%) has a touch of sweetness.

Among Parrotdog’s offerings is a hazy IPA (6%) called Keith, which has mandarin flavour and an easily refreshed head because of the wheat in it ($9 for 440ml).

Just on the shelves is Monteith’s Sounds hazy ale (4.5%), which has a couple of American hops (mosaic and citra) in it ($26/dozen).

Another nectaron

Christchurch brewery Cassels has used the recently released new nectaron hop in an IPA (6.1%). The hop produces lots of aroma and luscious stone fruit (nectarine/peach) flavours — although the label describes these as ‘‘tropical fruit’’ — which have a nice underlying bitterness ($20/sixpack).

A nectarine is a peach without fuzz. One brewer has described a nectaron beer as like biting into a fresh peach. The latest Pursuit of Hoppiness (search for it on the internet) has a story about how the nectaron hop was developed.

Sayonara

Carlton and United

Breweries (VB, Crown and Fosters) — which was opened in 1888 by the Foster brothers and, for a while in the 1980s, was known as Fosters — was Australianowned until it was sold to South African brewer SAB Miller in 2011 and onpassed in 2016 to the big international AnheuserBusch Inbev.

Now it is about to be bought by Asahi, which also owns Aucklandbased Boundary Road Brewery. All this means that both of Australia’s big breweries will be Japaneseowned, with Kirin owning Lion (XXXX and Toohey’s). Kirin owns Lion here, too, while DB is owned by Heineken.