Day 12 – Beers of Auckland – Epic 1991 IPA

Beers of Auckland Advent Calendar 2014
DAY 12 – 1991 IPA by Epic Brewing Company

TAP: 1991 IPA
BREWED: Steam Brewing Company
ABV: 6.0%

I’d like to invite you to come and taste this beer with me at The Lumsden Freehouse today. It is being released for the first time at Epic’s 9th Birthday Party, starting at lunchtime.

Why 1991?

This beer is made with all USA grown ingredients (malt, hops and yeast). This is the first time I’ve had the opportunity in NZ to do this. Cryer Malt imported some US grown malt which we have used to make this beer.

The recipe was design as a hat tip to the moment in time where I had my lifes path changed by having a craft beer epiphany, which has ultimately lead me to making this beer.

In 1991 I was at university in California, and got my first taste of craft beer (this happened to be Sierra Nevada and it was first drunk in Chico).

The beer captures the light pale ale style that has influenced me, my beer tastes, and the way I like to brew. It is pretty simple, with the hop flavour being driven by old school aroma hops – Cascade & Centennial . 6% abv and 40 IBU. Intended as a light floral easy tasting summer pale ale (from Epic).

This beer will only be available on tap over the summer. (No bottles). So enjoy it when you see it. (and there will be some available in Australia in the New Year)

One of my favorite songs while living in California, was “Epic” by Faith No More (link NSFW, use headphones). I’ve wondered for years if this song and this influential time in my life, was the reason for the naming of Epic Brewing Company.

Some video highlights from last years 8th Birthday Party at The Lumsden

Here is another fun reason to come to our 9th Birthday party on Friday at The Lumsden Freehouse. The magnificent Giapo has created us some “Lupulingus Zabaione”

What is Zabaione? (YUM!)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zabaione

This limited edition T-shirt is only available for pre-order till 15th December. We will only be doing a single print run of this commemorative Epic 9th Birthday T-shirt. Please add size in comment box when paying.

The front has the shields from each of the new beers brewed in 2014.
*2014 – Imperium Stout
*Spider Pig – Loves Bacon
*Lightening Bolt – Lupulingus
*Unicorn – Mosaic OTP
*Imp – IMP
*42 – Apocalypse BIPA
*Chillies – Carolina Amber Ale
*’91 – 1991 IPA (new release for 9th Birthday)

The back lists all the beers we brewed in 2014, in order of release.

Epic Culley's Matador Pie from Green Meadow Beef We also have THE “Matador” pies from Green Meadows Beef. The pie is made with Epic Imperium Stout, and Culleys Habanero Sauce‪ #‎hotandtasty‬

Craft Beer in Auckland

#craftbeer, #auckland, #newzealand, #lumsdenfreehouse #epic9 #adventcalendar

These links might help you find out what is on tap around Auckland

https://twitter.com/TapHunterAKLD
http://auckland.taphunter.com/location/
https://twitter.com/NowPouringAKL

The Food Show – Auckland 2014 (Day 1 & 2)

Epic & Culleys Food Show Combo Currently I’m spending my days at the Auckland Food Show (31 July to 3rd August). We are half way through and things are going great. If you are looking for a reason or two to attend then we have them. There is the amazing super combo offer from Culley’s & Epic. 4 different 500ml Epic beers and 4 different bottles of Culley’s Hot Sauce for just $40. Plus we will even deliver it to you so you don’t have to carry it around the show (as it is kind of heavy). This offer is only available at the show, so you need to turn up. We also have some crazy pricing on single bottles of Epic beer for the show only (even though a couple of people purchased while cases of Armageddon, Hop Zombie and Lupulingus). You do have to carry these away though.

Even though there are lots of wonderful things to sample at The Food Show over the weekend, if you are looking for one of the best pies ever then try “THE MATADOR” from Green Meadows Beef (stand K38) that has both Culley’s hot sauce (Best In The World) and Epic Beer Imperium. There is a wonderful beer & beef flavour, huge chunks of awesome beef and the perfect amount of flakey pastry wrapping it together. Oh and the chilli? well when you are eating the pie, your tongue is telling you it is hot in temperature, but by the time you are half way through you realise that the heat is actually coming from the chilli, and the spicy heat stays with you well after you have eaten the pie, in a really really good way. YUM!

If you do come to the Food Show over the weekend come by and say “HI”. Make sure you taste the two new beers if you haven’t – Lupulingus and Imperium. We also have some 2013 Coffee & Fig for sampling and buy (as it is now hard to find out in the wild).

At the Food Show you can find Epic Beer & Culley’s on stand N4, which is in Hall 1. See you there.

Hot Zombie – Hopped Hot Sauce

After the super successful co-branded release of Epic Carolina and Culley’s Carolina Reaper hot sauce, we have come up with something new. “Hot Zombie” Hot Sauce.

Yesterday I spent the day at The FoodBowl with Chris Cullen from Culley’s. We made the first small batch of Hot Zombie. It brings two of my fascinations together – Hops and Chillies. We took my favourite flavours from Culley’s and we added hops.

This hot sauce isn’t about being the hottest, because there are plenty out there that do that. This is about delivering a good hot sauce, with awesome Habanero flavour, that has been jacked up with hops. The hops are in the aroma and in the flavour. But it isn’t until you add the hot sauce to food till you really notice how hoppy it actually is.

We are looking at releasing this hot sauce the week of the 23rd June, at the same time as the first batch of fresh 2014 Hop Zombie kegs.

[UPDATE] Free tasting 5pm-7pm Friday 20th June at Brew on Quay

[website and online sales coming soon http://www.hotzombie.co.nz]

EPIC MOSAIC IPA – Auckland Release

Friday evening was the official re-release of Epic Mosaic IPA at Brew on Quay. They also suggested another Hot Wings Eating Competition, which we always agree too, as people love them so much.

Below is a video of the final round. The winner Phil, seems to have no real sense of the pain from the chilli till the end of the competition. (sorry the video is a little long, but it is the end part you really get to see how hot these Carolina Reaper chillis are). (…and what is it with the little hot chilli dance people do?)

If you missed the Mosaic on Friday night, then you can catch me at Vultures Lane tomorrow night for a Mini Midweek Tap Takeover.

On Tap:

Mosaic IPA
Carolina
Hop Zombie
Coffee & Fig
Armageddon IPA
Pale Ale
XPA (X as in experimental)
Lager

And of course a little chilli action

[NEW BEER] Mosaic IPA – back for a limited time

The One Trick Pony series is all about a single hop. First was Zythos, then Mosaic and finally Comet, which has all but run out. (best background story written about this was by Geoff Griggs – Epic no one trick pony)

Mosaic IPA we really didn’t have enough kegs available at the time so not much of it ever really made it too tap. Many bars complained as it sold very well. So as a special treat we brewed a one-off batch for the Beer Festival season.

It was released at the New Zealand Beer Festival last Saturday, and was our first beer to run out.

Friday 21st (tomorrow) it goes on tap at Brew on Quay, from after work time. Plus as you might guess we will be doing a hot wings eating competition with Culley’s hot sauce, because everyone has so much fun at these, especially me.

SO! Are you coming?

Can’t make it? You can try it at the Great Kiwi Beer Festival in Christchurch 29th March

FYI – Epic Carolina has sold out. So if you see it on tap anywhere in the next week or so, get a pint as that is it. We had a lot of fun with this beer, and many people have loved drinking it. The next question is do we make it again?

EPIC CAROLINA – Wellington Release

THURSDAY 6th March

Thursday was Culley’s Epic Hot Wing Eating Competition at the Malthouse in Wellington, as well as a beautiful morning for taking a flight.

Greeted with the sign out front letting everyone walking by know that the competition was happening.

Once inside the door, we were surprised to see the front half of the bar filled with 20 litre kegs from Stone Brewing Co. So many different types of Stone beer. It was all the beer for next the City Tap Takeover next Thursday 13th. As well as the beer for the Epic / Stone stand at the Great Kiwi Beer Festival in Christchurch on the 29th March.

https://vine.co/v/MAPWQ0aL3dP/embed/simple

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We were ready for a hot and steamy time. There were 17 people willing to enter the competition of eating really really hot wings covered in Culley’s Carolina Reaper Hot Sauce. Half the crowd didn’t make it to the second round. Second round took another big toll on entrants. The final round it came down to a couple of guys who were dealing with the extreme pain.

Check out the final round in the video below…

FRIDAY 7th March

The following day we did another Epic Culley’s Carolina event at Skysports Grill. This was a little more low-key which suited the location. It was still a bit of fun.

For $25 you got a pint of Epic Carolina, and 1kg of chicken wings which you could add the Culley’s Carolina Reaper hot sauce to.

It was worked out pretty quickly that a 1kg of hot wings was alot. So groups of people were only buying one bowl between a group. Which was a good move as most people could only eat one hot wing with the Carolina Reaper sauce as it was too hot for them.

SkySports Grill even busted out a final keg of Hop Zombie which added to the attraction of the evening. Not sure how well the Zombie went with the hot sauce. I think it made the hot sauce even hotter.

Friday was a pretty impressive day for Auckland #CraftBeer as there were also two other special events on. Galbraith’s Alehouse had a new beer release, and Brothers Beer had an IPA special on. Therefore if you were a #CraftBeer fan, you had some tough choices to make.

NZ BEER FESTIVAL SEASON – Looking forward, not back

Rather than doing a wrap up for February (you can look back over the posts here) I am doing a look forward for the coming month. Some feedback I received was people reading this blog wanted to know about what’s coming up rather than finding out about things that have happened, that they didn’t know about.

So this is what the coming month for me looks like

6th March – Epic Carolina with Culley’s Hot Wings Eating Competition – Malthouse, Wellington
7th March – Epic Carolina with Hot Wings sampling for all – Skysports Grill, Viaduct, Auckland
10/11th March – Visit to Hop Harvest, Nelson
13th March – Stone Brewing Co. (with Greg Koch) City Tap Takeover, Malthouse and Fork & Brewer, Wellington
15th March – The New Zealand Beer Festival, Auckland (1st day of Epic Mosaic IPA – KEG ONLY)
17th March – Get beer ready to ship to the Australian International Beer Awards
18th March – Brewing Green/Wet Hop Beer
19th March – Nine Inch Nails & QOTSA?
21st March – Epic Mosaic IPA Launch (and some hot sauce action thanks to Culley’s), Brew on Quay, Auckland
27/28th March – Christchurch
29th March – The Great Kiwi Beer Festival, .feat Stone Brewing Co. beers & Greg Koch (on the shared Epic/Stone stall), Christchurch

I’m sure there will be other things I do, and other things that are on that I could attend if I had the time, but this should be enough. Still have to fit in the everyday other stuff, plus some sleep. Maybe a link to Air New Zealand here would be good since I am going on 8 flights this month. (maybe even make a wish to the @AirNZFairy )

February 2014
There are a few additional things from last month…

I made the big move from Blogger to WordPress which took a few days to get setup and working. The one small issue with that is the first few weeks of posts now have slightly different URL’s than what I have post out in the wild so my link backs won’t be working. (Working on it).

– NZ’s beer style – Michael Donaldson also wrote about this in his column in the Sunday Star Times

Regarding training of bar staff which I pointed to in this post, I found out that an off flavours training was held last weekend. Here is a great write-up about it, but wished I knew earlier about it, so more people could have attended. Maybe something that could be repeated for interested bar staff/owners? I’ve been told that you would have been notified if you were part of this online community.
If you made it this far, then you might be enjoying my posts. I have been adding posts without notifications or sharing on social media. So if you want them all, please make sure you add your email address to subscribe (top of right hand column).
Please comment on posts if you have an opinion, or send me an email if you have a suggestion for a post or information you would like me to expand on.

Cheers
Luke

NEW BEER – Return of Hopocalypse

Thursday evening saw a quiet little beer launch at a place with no name on the door. Three of the Horsemen gathered for the 2014 release at Golden Dawn in Ponsonby. A handful of the craft beer purists turned up to taste the new batch

The 2014 return of the Four Horsemen of the Hopocalypse

The Four gathered again about a month ago to brew this rather large beer

On tap

the beer turned out pretty nice from the new brewhouse. We only netted 900 litres from the 2400 litres in the kettle, guess a little too much late kettle and dry hopping.

always a bit dark during the day

I brought a bottle of the XXX version of Culley’s Carolina Reaper hot sauce

https://vine.co/v/MKbmnZZA61r/embed/simple

Joe really wanted to try it, as did Steve. They agree its hot. Yes I poured some into Steve’s hand as we didn’t have any corn chips or delivery mechanism.

It was really cool to finally meet Hiro in person

Was a bummer the other horsemen could make it up from the Naki. We missed you Kelly. See you next time.

EPIC CAROLINA – Hamilton Release

I am a little behind in posting my content from last week, so here are a few photos from House on Hood, Hamilton when we released the Epic Carolina and Culley’s Hot Sauce ran the hot wings competition. Scroll to the end to see the video of the winner, and his winning round of eating hot wings covered in Carolina Reaper.

New beer – Epic Carolina Amber Ale

It was hot, humid and busy

First round, look at those cold beers, ready to soothe

Culley himself, is that a devious little smirk, knowing what is to come

the prize pack…

and the people are ready

first round of hot wings

round two, needs a little more hot sauce

GO!

eat it fast before the heat gets ya

next wing…

gee Greig, you are looking a bit hot there…

counting down… 3…2…1,,,

done

wings and beer…

gee I reckon I could eat on of those chillies…

beer and chilli

Eat a whole Carolina Reaper get a free botltle of Culley’s Carolina Reaper

The pain!!! But it was worth it for a bottle of Culley’s hot sauce

Missed out on eating the hot wings?

6th March – Malthouse, Wellington

7th March – Sky Sports Grill, Auckland

[CHANGES] New blogs coming soon

This has been a pretty massive week, including I have changed blogging platform from Blogger to WordPress.

Since “Tasting Tuesday”….

Wednesday 19th February – Sam Snead’s House of Whiskey – Single Barrel Bourbon Tasting (special appearance by Epic Carolina)

Sam Snead's House of Whiskey - Bourbon Tasting — Sam Snead’s House of Whiskey – Bourbon Tasting

Thursday – 20th February – Our first stag do tasting at Epic Beer HQ

Thursday – 20th February – Epic Carolina Hamilton Release – House on Hood (including hot wing eating competition)

Friday – 21st February – Auckland Art Gallery – Five Maori Painters Exhibit Opening (beer supplier for the event)

Auckland Art Gallery - Five Maori Painters - Exhibition Opening — Auckland Art Gallery – Five Maori Painters – Exhibition Opening

Saturday – 22nd February – blanc Brew Fest (most popular beers for us, Epic Carolina and Coffee & Fig Stout)

350 people, drinking craft beer at blanc in Henderson - Brew Fest 2014 — 350 people, drinking craft beer at blanc in Henderson – Brew Fest 2014

I’ve found it hard to find the time to write blog post over the last few days. The spare time I could have spent blogging has been spent on moving the domain, setting up WordPress, and importing the old blog posts. There is still a bit of fine tuning to do on setup (and learning about WordPress), but I expect to be back into it in the coming week.