DRINK YOURSELF SOME BLISS

Alice Galletly on how she learned to love beer

Alice Galletly on how she learned to love beer

Afavourite question of journalists interviewing beer people is, “If you were a beer, what would you be?”

Seven years ago, before I was a beer person myself, I asked a Wellington brewer named Stu McKinlay this question. Although he hadn’t yet become the craft beer poster boy he is today, he knew how to deliver a good soundbite. “I’d be an Orval,” he said, referring to a moderately challenging Trappist ale — exactly the kind of beer a brewer would claim to resemble, “Complex, unusual, and worth getting to know.”

At that point I had never heard of Orval, much less got to know it. My experience with beer had been limited to cans of Tui at high school parties (occasionally shaken up and punctured — a technique called “shotgunning”, which allowed you to consume the whole thing in 30 seconds flat), jugs of Speights at university and a little Belgian number called Stella Artois when I was feeling posh.

The most adventurous thing I had ever ordered was Guinness. “A meal in a glass,” I liked to call it, because this was something I’d heard my dad say once. I’d also heard you could survive off it for ages — maybe a year, maybe forever — because it was so full of iron, vitamins and Irish luck.

When I interviewed Stu I was 23, back living at Mum’s house after a break-up and trying to get a portfolio together for my journalism school application. I had been asking everyone I knew for potential story ideas and almost all of them had been useless. “You should write a story about how movie popcorn is a f***ing rip-off,” one friend offered via Facebook. Another suggested I cover her niece’s Christmas ballet recital. (“She’s the next Anna Pavlova — in that she’s literally playing a pavlova, lol.”)

When an ex-colleague suggested I interview her cousin about his new brewing venture, I figured I might at least get a beer out of it.

Stu and I met one afternoon at The Malthouse on Courtenay Place — at that point Wellington’s only speciality beer bar. Hashigo Zake would open later that year and several more would quickly follow, but the “craft beer capital” slogan was still just a twinkle in the city council’s eye.

As soon as Stu and I sat down at one of the Malthouse’s high wooden tables, it became painfully apparent that I wasn’t a real journalist. For starters, I didn’t have any questions prepared, nor, for that matter, a pen and paper. All I’d bought with me was my mum’s digital recorder, which still had patient notes from her endocrinology clinic saved to it.

“Which paper did you say you were from again?” Stu asked, when I hit the wrong button and someone’s thyroid test results started playing. “The Wellingtonian,”, I told him, which was only mostly a lie. In truth I’d never set foot in their office, but the editor had agreed to print my piece if he liked it.

Stu ordered us a large bottle of a Belgian strong ale called McChouffe, which was rich and sweet and quite obviously the finest beer I’d ever tasted. I sipped it enthusiastically — probably too enthusiastically — while he told me about the new brewing company he was about to launch with his friend Sam. It would be called Yeastie Boys and their first beer was Pot Kettle Black. He described it as a cross between a porter and an IPA, with a taste like liquid orange chocolate cake.

“So hang on. Hang on a minute,” I said incredulously (I would have spit out my beer for effect if it wasn’t so expensive), “You’re telling me

there’s beer out there that tastes like Jaffas, and all this time I’ve been drinking beer that tastes like beer?”

I felt at once cheated and exhilarated and a bit drunk. There was a whole world of exotic ales and lagers out there, yet I had been led to believe that spraying a can of Tui into my mouth sideways was the biggest beer-related thrill-ride on offer. “What else can beer do?” I asked. As far as interviews go, it was a flop. I got home afterwards and realised I hadn’t turned on the recorder, so I had nothing but my McChouffesoftened memory to rely on. None of that mattered though. Over the course of our two-hour conversation, Stu had blown my mind with descriptions of beers that were smoky, salty and even sour. He’d told me about the growing number of craft brewers in New Zealand who were taking on DB and Lion, and about a new festival called Beervana, where I could experience the revolution for myself. I had left feeling elated, tipsy, and determined to be a part of it all.

Two years later I got around to it. The year in between, I spent getting a post-graduate diploma in journalism, during which I was too poor and too busy to meet my most basic nutritional needs, let alone indulge in $10 IPAs.

But in 2011, once I’d landed a real job and was in a better position to take up drinking as a hobby, I started a blog. It was called Beer for a Year, and for it I drank and wrote about a different beer every day for a year. Beer for a Year was and forever will be my Everest.

I may have blagged my way into writing a book on beer since, but nothing will ever reach the giddy heights of that malt-fuelled, hops-soaked year of beer blogging.

Last month I spoke at the Nelson Readers and Writers Festival. A journalist in the front row asked me the question I’d put to Stu McKinlay all those years ago. If I was a beer, what would I be? My mind went blank, and I cursed myself for not pre-preparing an answer. “Maybe an 8 Wired Cucumber Hippy,” I said eventually. “Because I’m cool. You know… Like a cucumber.”

Somebody at the back of the room coughed. Sensing the audience wasn’t buying it, I reached into my jacket and pulled out a pocket knife and a can of Tui.

“Watch this,” I said.