Yeastie Boys Serve Up Hobbit Beer

Yeastie Boys Serve Up Hobbit Beer

Press Release: Yeastie Boys

Tuesday, 27 November 2012

For immediate use

This week Sam Possenniskie and I (known more widely as the Yeastie Boys) are releasing a special golden ale that will be served to guests from all corners of the globe at this week’s world premiere of The Hobbit. We’re rather excited!

I started writing a press release that could be copied and pasted into the columns of newspapers and websites around the world and then thought “Fuck that! That is not what this beer is all about. This beer is a personal gift and should come with the personal story”.

The inspiration for the beer was the thought of sending a personal gift to Fran Walsh and Peter Jackson - our neighbours and friends. At big events like these the personal touch often gets lost in amongst the occasion and hype. For most of the world, for most of New Zealand even, this is a major movie made by a large corporation and hosted by a city that is great at self-promotion. Sometimes Yeastie Boys appears to seem like this to the people who meet us and they all seem very surprised when they find out that we both still have day jobs in other industries – and that we struggle to pay the bills, to get our invoices paid, and to get the kids into bed. The film industry is made up of a lot of people who have the same work through the same day to day issues as us. Their job, like ours, might seem glamorous but they all work their arses off. And, like us, some of them might stick with it until they’ve actually reached the point where it seems like they have made a decent hourly rate off it. But mostly we all do it because we love it! We love the process and the final product. So... Golden Perch is a personal gift to Fran and Peter, who have worked harder than all of us, but it is also dedicated to all of those who have made New Zealand, and Wellington, and especially Miramar, the place that it is today. It is dedicated to human beings and to the unexpected journeys that we all find ourselves on.

Finally, because I’ve failed to actually describe the beer, here’s the description of Golden Perch that the “mainstream media” (also human beings, we acknowledge) might have wanted to hear…

Golden Perch, an aromatic summer ale that will be simultaneously sipped by movie-goers and beer lovers alike, features ingredients from all across the world to showcase the diversity of the local film industry itself. German and British malts form the backbone of the beer, a little bit like the history of our brewing industry, but there is a strong new world influence from the clean American ale yeast and the pungent Nelson Sauvin hops. Our hop growing and brewing industries, like our film industry, are now world renowned and that is not just for a stereotypical ‘clean green’ image but for the quality and character of what we actually produce.

But, in the end, Golden Perch is just a beer with enough flavour to satisfy the most ardent beer geek and remain subtle enough to not scare the attendees at the premiere. It is an easy drinking summer ale with little bits from all around the world but remains a great big showcase of New Zealand. The best beer in the Eastfarthing, some may say.

The label for Golden Perch was designed by our friend and award-winning designer Simon Courtney of Christchurch’s Deflux Design. Simon quite fancies mermaids but realised they wouldn’t make great bar staff, given their obvious issues with walking between the bar and the tables, so the Perchmaid was the obvious answer. It’s probably cooler than any of the special effects in the movie but we can’t be sure until we’ve seen the movie ourselves.

Golden Perch is initially available in bottles at the world premiere of The Hobbit, in Positively Wellington gift packs for selected visiting media, on tap at selected outlets over the next week. A general release of the beer, in both 330ml bottles and kegs, will occur just prior to Christmas.

Thanks for reading our story all the way to the end. May you be rewarded with good beer in your immediate future, whether that be one from Yeastie Boys or any one of the other 67 other breweries in New Zealand at this time. And a good movie too, of course!

Slainte mhath

Stu McKinlay, Yeastie Boy

About Yeastie Boys:

The Yeastie Boys - Stu McKinlay and Sam Possenniskie - are a dynamic duo of beer activists within New Zealand's craft beer scene. They burst onto the beer landscape with two trophies for their flagship porter Pot Kettle Black at BrewNZ 2009 and have remained firmly ensconced there ever since. Their latest achievements include a trifecta of major international awards in the last year including Champion Beer at The Asia Beer Awards, People's Choice at The Great Australasian Beer SpecTAPular and the Morton Coutts Trophy for Innovation at the Brewers Guild of New Zealand Awards. The Yeastie Boys stay ahead of the game by being food and drink lovers first and foremost and post modern craft beer cult heroes on the side.

Stu McKinlay

Professor of Peat

Yeastie Boys

w: www.yeastieboys.co.nz

Champion Beer, Asia Beer Awards 2012 -- Pot Kettle Black

Champion Beer, Great Australasian SpecTAPular 2012 -- Gunnamatta

ENDS

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