BrewNZ & Beervana '08

This was it, the first time Yeastie Boys went public - at BrewNZ, NZ's annual beer awards and Beervana festival.

Unfortunately there was no award for us. The low down is that though the judges enjoyed our Pot Kettle Black – and it made it to the second round – ultimately it was not considered for an award as it was deemed that it wasn’t entered in the right style. Apparently it should have been entered as an ‘International Porter’, rather than as the 'American Brown Ale' we entered it as. Word is that if we had entered it as an ‘International Porter’, it is likely we would have won a medal of some description. So that is a bit of a bugger, and I guess is a beginner's mistake we can learn from.

However, it was a good night for Steve Nally and Invercargill Brewery - who we brewed Pot Kettle Black with - as it took two best in class awards, for his golden lager 'Biman', and with his Boysenbeery. Well deserved. But it was Tuatara that took out the Champion Brewery award.

But it is the opinions of the punters that really matters, and it was at Beervana that Yeastie Boys was a huge hit. I don’t think it could have gone any better. Got such awesome feedback from so many people. Many were shocked at the taste and how it challenged their perception of what a porter should taste like. The most brilliant was the guy who, after taking his first sip, told me that we were “fucked up” and that the beer was "weird"…and then proceeded to have 3 glasses in about 15 minutes. Lots of people said it was the best beer they had tasted on the night and wanted to know where they could get.

The story was a real hit as well. Everyone loved the local flavour (a piece of genius having us labelled as 'Wellington') and the fact that we were just starting out, contracting brewing recipes from the backyard shed, and still in our day jobs. The ‘Yeastie Boys’ branding worked a treat as well, pulling people in and getting a lot of comments.

A lot of credit also needs to go to the 'marketing team' that was out on the floor. There were Yeast-T's everywhere, telling people where to go and try Pot Kettle Black. Lots of other stalls had fancy set ups, but this viral advertising was the coup of the night I think. People were tracking us down. We should have had some Yeast-T's for sale, everybody wanted to buy one.

We went through 2 full kegs over the two days in the end. We couldn’t have got through much more. I would say that would have been the most of any single beer sold. And if they had a Beervana public vote for most popular beer, I would have been surprised if Pot Kettle Black didn’t win it.

But this all came at a cost – my feet! I was absolutely beat. It was hard work for a desk jockey like myself. I pretty much manned the stall the whole time, so I pretty much stood for 2 days straight – when I went for lunch on the Saturday I literally couldn’t walk on my heals. And I pretty much talked myself hoarse – it was just a constant talk fest with the punters. I could hardly lift my arms they are so sore from lifting and moving kegs and boxes. This manual labour and customer service is hard work!! And most surprisingly, I hardly drunk any beer myself, I just didn’t get the chance.

So it was a great debut for the Yeastie Boys, it was a shame Stuey wasn't there to share in it. Since then we've already had orders for at least half our kegs, and there have been enquiries at places about when they are going to have it in. So now the planning starts for the follow up to Pot Kettle Black. At the moment we are thinking a low strength bitter for summer, and doubling the batch size. Hopefully it will go down as well as the Pot Kettle Black.

Some photos of the Beervana on the Friday night and an indication of how much the Yeastie Boys 'marketing team' enjoyed themselves...