Epic Beer

Recently I came across an old post which listed the top 10 things Epic Beer achieved in 2008. I thought it would be fun to do it again this Christmas eve and highlight the top 10 things of 2009.

2009 was an amazing year, which then begs the question "can 2010 be as Epic"?

So for 2009 here are the achievements/highlights which I would rate as the top 10 for Epic Beer (maybe not exactly this order, but close enough).

1. Traveled to the UK to brew 100,000 pints of Epic Pale Ale at Everards Brewery for the JD Wetherspoons International Real Ale Festival in March. Video footage from the UK & the brewing.

2. Exporting to Australia started in May. As sales started to grow I made a visit to Melbourne to see what all the fuss was about.

3. In April I returned to the UK for the JD Wetherspoons Interntaional Real Ale Festival, and had the privilege of meeting Pete Brown, prior to his Hops & Glory book launch, which lead to the inspiration for the Interislander voyage (see point 5) Anyway back to this point, brewing with Kiwi Brewer, Kelly Ryan at the Thornbridge Brewery and making a special batch of Epic Halcyon. Then Kelly shipped a couple of mini casks to NZ for us to do a special tasting.

4. Bringing back Epic Armageddon IPA, as a seasonal and bottling it for the first time, then winning a Gold & Best in Class trophy for it. Armageddon created a lot of excitement in the NZ craft beer industry this year, hence the extended effort of video to bring in the back story of how it evolved

5. Sea Conditioning of Armageddon IPA, in American oak barrels on the Inter-islander. Six weeks and 126 crossings of the Cook Strait to recreate the ocean voyage from England to India. This beer was then sold for $5.00 for a 100ml tasting at Beervana held in Wellington, end of August.

6.  Launch of the Epic Beer Video Profile produced by Made from New Zealand

7. Bottled Mayhem made a couple of brief appearances in 2009 (February & December) Expect to see more in 2010

8. Change from 6 packs to 4 packs to make Epic more affordable, plus for Christmas making all four Epic Beers available (Family of 4 = Pale Ale, Lager, Mayhem and Armageddon)

9. The Epic Shoe

10. Twitter saw a huge switch in awareness by the online masses in 2009. @epicbeer grew from 500 followers to nearly 4000 in just 12 months. Also @epicbeer is one of the top 10 New Zealand brands using Twitter, and was the first brewery in the world to adopt this new technology to communicate with its fans.

I'd like to thank everyone that has supported, followed, friended, retweeted and bought Epic Beer this year. Without you all Epic wouldn't continue to become available in more and more outlets around New Zealand and Australia, plus I would have an awful lot of beer to drink by myself. Consumer demand wins at the end of the day (go the Naki).

I hope you all have a wonderful Christmas and a prosperous New Year. Hope I get a chance in 2010 to catch up and have a beer with you somewhere on my travels.

Keep drinking the good stuff

Cheers

Luke Nicholas

P.S. Don't forget Santa

Luke Nicholas of Epic Brewing Company tries the first sample of Epic Armageddon IPA from the oak barrels that spent 6 weeks on the Interislander ferry that travels between the North & South islands of New Zealand.

The barrels crossed the Cook Strait 126 times. The beer was sampled at the public festival Beervana, on the 28th and 29th August 2009, to very positive feedback from the public.

The barrels were named Pete & Melissa after UK based beer writers Pete Brown and Melissa Cole.

The inspiration for this idea come from Pete Brown's book Hops & Glory

By the time Pete and Melissa finally arrive in Wellington in mid-August, they'll have crossed Cook Strait about 120 times!

Since boarding the inter-island ferry Aratere on July 9, the pair have crossed the strait three times a day without a break. But Pete and Melissa aren't a couple of fame-seeking tourists trying to get themselves into the record books they're two wooden barrels of beer.

The plan was hatched by two beer-loving Kiwis Colin Mallon, manager of Wellington specialist beer bar The Malthouse, and Luke Nicholas, owner and brewer of Epic beer after a recent beer-hunting trip around the UK. In their travels, Colin and Luke visited several famous British breweries and met up with beer writers including Pete Brown and Melissa Cole. Hence Pete and Melissa!

Putting the two casks of beer aboard the inter-island ferry is Colin and Luke's attempt to recreate beer's most famous voyage. In the 1880s, strong, hoppy pale ales from Burton-on-Trent in England took about six weeks on tall ships to reach thirsty customers in India. That beer became known as India Pale Ale, or IPA.

British writer Pete Brown recently retraced the long journey that helped create the iconic beer style and subsequently chronicled his adventures in a book, Hops and Glory: One Man's Search for the Beer that Built the British Empire.

Returning to New Zealand with copies of the book, Colin and Luke were fascinated to read how IPA was brewed with extra hops and stronger than ordinary beer to withstand the rigours of the long sea journey across the tropics.

Hops were first employed as a natural preservative in brewing and the extra amount used in IPA, in conjunction with the beer's increased alcoholic strength, slowed the oxidisation process and prevented souring.

The beer maturing inside Pete and Melissa is Epic's latest seasonal brew, Armageddon IPA.

"I sourced two 20-litre new oak barrels and filled them with fresh Armageddon," explains Luke.

"I recently brewed a real ale in England for a huge British beer festival, so I knew Armageddon was not a million miles away from what a traditional pale ale would have tasted like. For a beer to stand up to the kind of treatment we have in mind, it has to be pretty robust. Armageddon is definitely big, strong and hoppy.

"The idea is to see what effect changes in temperature and constant movement has on beer stored in wood. Most pundits believe India Pale Ales benefited from the conditioning they received during their sea voyages."

So what will the beer taste like? Given the small size of the wooden barrels and the fact that they're brand new, I anticipate the beer will pick up a huge amount of vanillin and tannin and I wouldn't be surprised if it requires blending with unwooded beer to soften the effect.

A ceremonial tapping of Pete and Melissa will be held at this year's Beervana, a series of public beer tastings being held in Wellington on August 28 and 29. Tickets are available now (at www.beervana.co.nz), so why not head to Wellington and sample the world's first I-IPA ("Inter-Island Pale Ale") for yourself?

Cheers!

Full Story

This series of videos explains the story behind the origins of Epic Armageddon I.P.A., The West Coast IPA Challenge, the reasons for putting Epic Armageddon I.P.A. into oak barrels, naming them Pete & Melissa before putting them onto the Interislander for a six week ocean voyage between the North & South Island of New Zealand (actually it is multiple sailings between the two islands three or four times a day) and then making the beer available to taste at Beervana, Wellington Town Hall, 28th & 29th August.

Epic Adventure Part 8 - Made From New Zealand
Introduction about Luke brewing in the UK for JD Wetherspoons Real Ale Festival, then brewing some Epic Halcyon at Thornbridge Brewery (UK), using two New Zealand brewers - Luke Nicholas and Kelly Ryan, plus some New Zealand hops and New Zealand water. Then two 5 litre mini kegs are shipped from the UK for tasting by an exclusive group in Wellington, and we see the unpacking of the keg.

Epic Adventure Part 9 - Made From New Zealand
Luke introduces Colin Mallon of the Malthouse in Wellington. Colin talks about how the two got to know each other, became friends(?), traveled to the UK together for some market research, Luke pours Colin the first pint of Epic Pale Ale at the JD Wetherspoons Real Ale Festival for his birthday. A meeting with Pete Brown author of Hops & Glory, Melissa Cole and a visit to the Rake in London. And a very cool idea inspired by Pete's book.

Epic Adventure Part 10 - Made From New Zealand
Luke talks to Stephen Plowman from Hallertau BrewBar, about the origins of the West Coast IPA Challenge, a trip to California in April 2008, inspired by some crazy hoppy beers, brewing for the 2nd Annual West Coast IPA Challenge, and unleashing of some pain on the beer drinking public.

Epic Adventure Part 11 - Made From New Zealand
Luke talks to Neil "Haiku" Miller about the naming of Armageddon, Pete Brown's book Hops & Glory (again), the second coming of Armageddon and a reference to the impish brewer.

Epic Adventure Part 12 - Made From New Zealand
Luke summarizes the epic journey to this point, meeting Pete Brown, reading about his own barrel called Barry (you will need to read the book to find out the full story), two oak barrels filled with Epic Armageddon IPA, an ocean voyage on the Interislander between the North and South Island of New Zealand, here's to Pete Brown and Melissa Cole for inspiring the current stage of this epic journey.

Does My Bum Look Big in this Barrel? by Melissa Cole

To set the scene for you, a couple of months ago Luke Nicholas from Epic brewery was over here brewing for Wetherspoon's and I met up with him and his mate Colin Mallon (a Scotsman who runs a great-sounding pub called the Malthouse ) had some beers, a bite to eat and an all-round good laugh.

They went back to New Zealand, we did the Facebook thing to stay in contact and I didn't think much more about it - until a tagged photo of a barrel appeared with my name on it on Colin's page, which I found a little odd/slightly insulting!

Basically, inspired by Pete Brown's new book Hops & Glory (which I've mentioned previously), Luke & Colin cooked up the idea to put two wooden casks of beer onto the New Zealand Interislander Ferry for six weeks to see what effect it has - the decided that the barrels should be named after Pete and myself, which is sweet... I think!

from the blog Taking the beard out of beer! - A Girl's Guide to Beer

=========================================================

Whatcha gonna do, Brother?

Whatcha gonna do, brother, when the hoppiest beers in the country run wild on you?

The Second Annual West Coast IPA Challenge: Battle of Champions has rightly been likened to a huge title bout with two cocky contenders out to win the spoils of victory and, perhaps more importantly, bragging rights over the other for a whole year.

This year, the Challenge kicks off on July 17 at Malthouse with Hallertau’s specially brewed Maximus Humulus Lupulus squaring off on tap against Epic’s brilliantly named Armageddon.

from The Malthouse blog

=========================================================
An these have been re-blogged here The Epic Journey Has Begun