moa sultana IPA

This is part of Moa’s ongoing series of single hopped IPAs.  The hop this time around is a recent American variety that started life as the experimental X06277 before being commercially released as Sultana towards the end of 2019.  As hops go it’s a new one for me, so I’ve gotten lucky being able to try it on its own.  The up-front aroma has HUGE citrus oil, like crushing fresh grapefruit peel right in front of your nose.  Behind that there’s fresh pineapple and a streak of sticky pine resin, but really that nose is all about the grapefruit.  The citrus is less outrageous on the tongue, still out in front but giving the more subtle tropical mango, melon and pine notes some room to move.  The malt body is on the lighter side of medium for  6.0% abv, which gives the bitterness lots of space to charge in on the end of the palate and really hit hard.  A lighter bodied and absolutely hop forward IPA, the perfect beer to really show off what a hop can do on its own.

Haagen Lager

As consumers, we all have two lines that constrain our habits.  Above, there’s the price ceiling, when the cost of beer gets above a certain point we’ll turn away.  That price ceiling has been talked about to death over the last five years (at least). ...

Boneface X Brave Cold IPA

Cracks are already appearing in the fresh hop dam… but before we’re completely awash in those impending releases — one more conventional IPA. The third in Boneface Brewing’s rolling series of collabs (this time from Hasting’s Brave Brewing) and quite possibly the best...

Sawmill Barrel-aged Imperial Porter

As a tribute to the official end of summer (or perhaps a final nail in the coffin, for those of us in Canterbury), I’ll turn to a more fireside coded drop, crafted by Matakana’s Sawmill brewery. In terms of its principle construction, this is a fairly simply patterned...

Boneface Knuckle Duster West Coast Pilsner

The ‘West Coast Pilsner’ style continues to wander through the craft beer labyrinth somewhat without a bearing, and drifts further from its (admittedly flawed from the beginning) descriptor in the process.  It’s as much as I can do to classify them as ‘good ones’ vs...

My Life In Five Beers — Matt Warner

While still at university in 2008 and after a hot Friday of Wellington hillside landscaping, I vividly remember propping up at the end of The Malthouse bar with my flatmate and being smacked in the face with a pint of Emerson’s Pilsner. It was brash, full of...

Drinking In The Middle Lane

When my recent piece ‘A slow walk through paradise’ was published, a mate joked, “Jeepers BH, you’re a bit middle-of-the-road in your beer tastes to be talking to the craft beer community.”...