Tall tALES: End of a sporadic blog, the beginning of a regular one

I left you last at the end of August. I had just had the Celia Wade Brown Ale released with Yeastie Boys for Wellington in a Pint. I had amazing feedback and that feedback still trickles in even though there is only the odd bottle of it lying around.

So what big has happened to me since the end of August last year? Well a lot. Let me start of things in order that they come to mind.

Firstly I was talking about working at Flight Centre last time. Wanting to working on brewing things on the side. Well that did not work out. Being a travel agent is not all it is cracked to be. I won’t go into detail about why it sucked so bad, but it did. I was there for 3 months, I quit with no back up, I have never done this before but it had to be done. Within this notice period I had been talking to an uncle of a friend of mine who works at Flight Centre. He co-owns a large home brew supply company in Albany, Auckland. Before you know we have lunch he tells me he needs someone to be the Companies “Beer Man”. He flew me up to Auckland, I met the team, talked business and well… I now live in Auckland (Boos heard from the Wellingtonians), Browns Bay to exact and work in Albany.

My new job, which I love involves quite a bit. Firstly I brew, which is what I want to do with my life and get paid to do so. I organise fresh wort nights with Breweries around the country. How this works is we go to a Brewery with a recipe (or use one of their existing beers), brew it, put it into 20 litre containers for people to come and pick it up on the night (mostly in brew pubs) or send them out to customers. Then they put the wort (which is unfermented beer) into their fermenter along with the yeast we supply (and dry hops if they are suitable for the beer). So far I have done a Wheat beer with Hallertau, an American IPA with Deep Creek Brew pub in Browns Bay (aka my local), a Red IPA with mike’s organic brewery in the Taranaki (fermenting as I write this), in a couple of weeks I will be doing a black IPA at Twisted Hop Brewery in Christchurch. Yes all the colours of the IPA spectrum. Have a look at www.freshwortpacks.com for details and to buy a pack.

I have also been helping organise new dried beer yeasts. We are releasing 8 new dried beer yeasts which I have been testing. Yeast is a complicated thing. We have had a very smart guy in the UK developing them over the last 3 years. This has meant that I can brew with them and test different yeasts with different styles of beer which is really cool. I usually brew twice a week with my helpful French lab assistant Flo. I have also been working with the Marketing and design people and worked on naming and numbering the yeasts.

We are also designing a mash tun/boil kettle in one, also a really cool heat exchanger. Also working on a conical temperature controlled fermenter, a brew in bag system and a few other things. So it has kept me really busy. I will also have a stand at every beer festival in NZ to promote what we are doing. None of which I am complaining about.

So this brings me to another part of my job. I look after the Mangrove Jack’s Facebook page and Twitter account (I have been useless on the Twitter account so far, need to improve that) also writing a beer blog. Now originally it was going to be a blog drinking a beer every day and writing about it (like Alice Gallety – and her awesome blog Beer for a Year). But I have decided against this as I have put on enough weight with this industry, and am starting to lose that. But I will review a couple of beers a week, talk about home brewing, brewing with commercial breweries, write ups on breweries, brewpub and beer bars and any other beer and brewing subjects.

So the move to Auckland has been interesting. I love Wellington and probably will move back there some time but am discovering cool things about Auckland and making some good friends so I will be up here for a while.

So goodbye for now and check out my new beer blog “The beer hop” here is the link

I will be posting 2-3 times a week. This means me drinking good beers and then writing about it a lot, and get paid to do so. I thank you in advance for your sympathy ;)