Nonalcoholic beers make top 30

Bach Brewing’s All Day NonAlcoholic IPA and the Garage Project’s ‘Tiny’ NonAlcoholic Hazy IPA have made the Top 30 New World Beer and Cider Awards.

FOR the first time two nonalcoholic beers have made the New World Beer and Cider Awards Top 30:

from Auckland’s Bach Brewing and the Garage Project ‘Tiny’ NonAlcoholic Hazy IPA.

More than 100 breweries and distributors entered nearly 700 beers in the awards. About 120 came from 30 South Island breweries (20 from the Dunedin area).

Judge Michael Donaldson says creating a fullflavour beer without the alcohol is no easy feat. These winning breweries have met the challenge.

To make the Top 30, an entry has to not just impress, but must reach the threshold of being a worldclass example of its style, and these certainly do. ‘‘Both are nonalcoholic options that don’t make you feel as if you’re missing out on anything.”

This year also sees the first low carb beer make it into the Top 30 with Epic Blue. “We judged the low carb entries alongside their peers in each style class, and it’s a real credit to the skill of the Epic team to have created such a fullflavour competitor.”

Wanaka brewer Rhyme and Reason’s Space Monkey pilsner was the only other southern beer to make the list.

Garage Project has four beers on the list for the fourth time, including Proper Crisp IPA which includes sliced potatoes (potatoes have about the same amount of protein as malted barley).

There are also six hazies.

The Top 30 is chosen from the best 100 beers. Both lists can be found online at New World Beer and Cider Awards.The top 30 went on sale at the supermarket chain on Monday.

New hazies

DB Breweries is moving some of its Monteith’s beer label into cans. The first are Phoenix IPA and its first two hazies: West Coastin’ IPA (5.5%) and Gold Dust pale ale (5%). Both are tasty, with lingering hop aroma and flavours and a nice touch of bitterness.

They are in sixpacks (about $16)

Less hops

The hop harvest was about 20% less than expected this year, with some varieties down 30%. But they have more aroma than normal.

Most are grown in the Nelson region and have been since the 1850s. About 100,000 tonnes are produced worldwide, mainly by the United States and Germany. We produce about 1500 tonnes and are the fourthlargest exporter in the world, with 85%, worth nearly $40 million, going to about 20 countries.

However, hops have been grown in the South for more than a century, often wild around Otago. They were grown just out of Alexandra in the 1880s and by Dunedin nurserymen Howden and Moncrieff at nearby Manorburn in the late 1800s.

They were also grown at Tuapeka in 1886. The same year, hops from near Waihola were used in beer made at the Black Horse Hotel in Lawrence, which opened in 1866. It closed in 1923 (several hectares of daffodils planted around the brewery remain).

Hops were planted at Garston in 2016. An experimental plot of 300 was harvested for the first time this year just out of Wanaka. Manuherekia Brewery in Alexandra grows its own.

Tom Jones, who founded Green Man brewery in 2006 in Dunedin, is growing about 60 of several varieties of hops at Tuapeka next to his home in the converted St Augustine Catholic church. (St Augustine is the patron saint of brewers.) They go mainly into his own brews and to home brewers. He claims his is the southernmost commercial operation in the world.

❛ To make the Top 30, an entry has to not just impress, but must reach the threshold of being a worldclass example of its style, and these certainly do.