Support is Choice!

For those non-New Zealand readers, “choice” is a term that Kiwis tend (or tended) to use to refer to something being cool, nice or just plain awesome. For example, “Check out my Mazda RX-7, bought it today!” to which the answer would be “That’s choice, bro”. I would use different words, but hey, RX-7s were never for me…

As most of you are aware, Luke Nicholas of Epic Brewing Co. and myself (also of Epic Brewing Co. as of this year) embarked on a 17 day road trip back in January and February that saw us visiting and filming 44 breweries and resulted in a collaboration beer called Mash Up, the world’s largest collaborative brew. We are still trying to get this out there as a bunch of webisodes, with each one highlighting breweries or areas that we visited.

Kelly's lovely tea-stained coaster. Should be beer-stained!

The idea behind this was to get some footage of what it is that these breweries are doing, having a chat to the brewers and owners and generally allowing those in the comforts of their own armchairs to have a glimpse inside some of Aotearoa’s great breweries. The challenge with such a mission is that it cost money. Campervans and film crews and food and brews along the way. Sometimes we had amazing custom from people along the way, other times it cost us a bit. Then there is the editing. This also costs keg-loads of money and we assumed that the sales from the beer throughout the year would cover the costs of brewing/production/packaging as well as the trip and the editing. It didn’t.

So a shout out was made on Facebook and Twitter for people to buy a Mash Up instead of a green-bottled beer to show their support, not only for our project, but for a certain rugby team that was playing in a certain final a few weeks back. I’m sure now that the event that couldn’t be named due to hardcore copyright madness is now able to be named, but just to be on the safe side, I won’t name it. I can give you a hint though… it’s initials are the same as the following… “Right Wing Capitalists”. No link between the two of course.

Then Luke had an idea… We need about $10 000 more to complete the editing, a batch yields us around 10 000 bottles and the $1 profit we make per bottle would pay for it! So we’re gonna brew another batch tomorrow, which should see Mash Up around for the next couple of months. I’m not gonna beat around the bush. We hope people buy it and we get to finish the NZ Craft Beer TV project. That’d be cool.

We’ve also taken the liberty to alter this recipe a bit… We’re using more NZ malt than the previous batches and we’re gonna increase the dry-hop to balance out this change in grist. Better than the first two batches? We hope so!

So, if you drink a Mash Up, take a pic and post it on the NZ Craft Beer TV page or elsewhere in Facebook to show your support for the project. We’ve had some awesome support from a few brewers around the country who have given the recipe a whirl: Martin Bennett from The Twisted Hop, Joseph Wood from Liberty Brewing, Fraser Kennedy from Ad Lib Brewing and we’ve heard rumour that Dave Kurth from West Coast Brewing and Stephen Plowman fromHallertau Brewery are also gonna give it a go. The recipe is also on the NZ Real Beer Forum if any of you keen homebrewers out there want to have a go. We’re thinking that we’d like to try your brews, we’ll judge the best one and give you a sweet little prize.

Shot fellas (Do you see what I did there? I finished with another Kiwiism…) “Shot” means “thanks” and “fellas” refers to you lot!

Kia ora