Saturday 11 July 2009

Does My Bum Look Big in this Barrel?


Some odd things happen to me in the course of my work, not surprising when you consider the amount of booze that it involves, but this is a weird one even by my standards!

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!

So, a faux-indignant enquiry was made and I got back a very cryptic 'you'll have to wait and see' response - worst thing ever to say to a nosey journalist.

Unfortunately, my attempts to get more information out of Luke yielded even less fruit, which was even more frustrating - particularly when Tweets started appearing saying things like 'just filling Melissa' which, I must say, came as a surprise to me!

Anyway, I had pretty much forgotten about it until this morning when I finally got around to reading Colin's recent message - and all has been revealed.

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!

I can't wait to hear what the beer tastes like because, although it won't be the same length of voyage, it will be fascinating to see if there's a similar effect on the strength of the hop character in the beer to the one that Pete experienced with his.

p.s. I'm disturbed by how much Luke appears to be enjoying hitting 'me' in the picture, I thought we got on quite well!!

8 comments:

  1. Haha, that's great! I've always liked to think of myself as a receptacle for beer and now you have one named after you! Agree though, Luke looks like he's having far too much fun!

    ReplyDelete
  2. The Armageddon IPA is now on the Interislander ferry Kaitaki- looking forward to seeing how it turns out.... I think.

    Colin @malthouse

    ReplyDelete
  3. actually in the photo I'm banging Pete, and filling Melissa ;-)

    ReplyDelete
  4. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kVnilSR09x0

    ReplyDelete
  5. Interesting story and FUNNY comments!

    ReplyDelete
  6. Yes the existential doubt was killing me, as I said on Twitter - to misquote the Killers 'Am I human, or am I barrel?'.

    And I've stopped rolling out of bed... okay, I'll stop now!

    ReplyDelete
  7. Can I just say it's a privilege to be banged by Luke. Looking forward to hearing how the beer turns out!

    ReplyDelete
  8. I love this blog - the randomness of it all is just wonderfully life-affirming not to mention fricking hilarious at times!

    ReplyDelete