Beer Review

It's been a hellish wee week, things were heading downhill and kinda exploded on Thursday. In keeping with every organisation, we have people in roles who have no idea what they are doing. I had pointed this out, constructively, about 6 months ago. Since then I'd made some helpful suggestions (how to structure meetings, how to write a sentence, how to use active language, how to facilitate etc etc), to no avail - both to the person, their manager, and my boss and my bosses boss.
This guy wastes time, he cannot structure meetings, he doesn't know how to state something, he blatantly lies, he changes his story through a meeting, and he can't answer a question. Things came to a head on Thurs when I asked the same question for 15 minutes trying to get an answer - my boss and the next level up boss were there too. I didn't get anywhere, so stormed out pointing out this was getting anywhere, and if he can't answer a simple question what's the point of him having his job? My boss then pointed out a few more of his failings and the wee dear went home, apparently crying.
The various managers there did make a point of saying I hadn't done anything too bad. Whcih was nice.

So today I've been editing, I might take in a movie, and watch the rugger.

But this beer review is from last Saturday before the rugger. The beer concentrations were high (for 1pm on a Sat) and I certainly felt a bit relaxed by the end of it. The tasting focussed on beers from Marlborough from Roger Pink (Pink Elephant brewing), Renaissance brewing with Brian Thiel, and missing in action was 666 brewing. So all top quality NZ beers.

Renaissance Discovery APA 4.5% I love Renaissance brews, this one is full bodied, tasty, bitter with fruit (grapefruit) hints.
Renaissance Perfection PA 5% Sweetish ale, toffee hints, I found it creamy with a honey flavour, nice bitter aftertaste. Made using malt crystals apparently (I think I got that right).
666 Diablo 5.4% 666 brewing had made some beer especially for this tasting - how cool is that! so small (25L) brews as possible releases later. This was a dark beer, toffee, sweet, ruby coloured, malty, hops aroma. Very very very nice.
Renaissance Elemental Porter 6% I had this a couple of weeks ago, I love it. Very strong coffee taste.
Pink Elephant Golden Tusk 7.1% I have vague memories of this one at the old Malthouse, it was called something else back then. Parmesan cheese nose, big hop nose/flavour, toffee, wonderful stuff. Big big ale.
Pink Elephant Mammoth 7% raspberries (no really!), sweet, hint of cherry? huge flavour
Renaissance Stonecutter 7% superb beer, sweet, dark malt, chocolate, very malty, full mouth flavour
666 Avarice 7.5% fruity, sour, hops, good mouth taste.
Renaissance Marlborough PA 8.5% Very tasty, malty, smooth, sweet, huge alpha hops aroma, superb beer.
Pink Elephant Trumpet Barley Wine 10% Sweet, vintage, manuka honey, fucking huge, barley wine

This tasting was superb, if brain numbing. All of these beers would stand up to anything you threw at them in competitions. I wasn't grading them as we do for the whisky tasting, but the top two IMO were the Renaissance Marlborough PA, the Pink Elephant Golden Tusk. Brian Thiel, from memory, promised that the Marl. PA would be bottled at some point, so I'll be getting some. But honestly, you won't go wrong with any of these beers. When you consider the Perfection PA was my least favourite, it puts the others into context. The sooner 666 brewing start releasing beers the better...
Info I do remember, Renaissance brew in 25000L batches, although this equates to about 21000L-ish taking into account bubbling during the process. The Stonecutter used to be brewed in half batches, but they've recently sorted out the scaling (like baking, brewing isn't exactly double the recipe and expect it to work) so we should get more of that too. huzzah!

I imagine I'll be having a nice beer or two tonight. So slainte...

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