[Responsible] Dunedin Drinking

I passed the twelve week mark of my New Zealand trip yesterday – as much as I don't like comparing one experience to another (if you're not careful, you run the risk of taking some acclaim from one, probably the latter since hindsight is beautifully rose-tinted), it would be a sin not to at least mention that, on my Harlow timeline (y'know, my other big, life-changing trip), today I would have waken up in St. John's for the first time in three months. That means a couple of things. First, today marks the longest I've been away from home in my life. It also means that the second leg of this adventure begins, the second half really, and as I begin looking at flights home much more seriously and thinking of the rest of the trip as time I've got left, it suddenly feels like no time has passed at all.

It was a bright afternoon on Saturday for the Waikouati Food Festival, a big ol' gathering of wineries and food venues on a field north of Dunedin, complete with a cover band and cooking demonstrations. I'm probably making it sound cooler than it was though – truth be told, it left a bad taste in my mouth (not because of the cheese roll, a South Island snack delicacy, mind you). The ad in the paper never mentioned a door price, so when we drove up to the gate and found out that it was twenty bucks, each, with no free samples or anything, I couldn't help but wonder why we didn't just go out for a picnic instead.

At the very least, I did get to try a Pilsner from the Green Man Brewery, one of about a handful of microbreweries in Dunedin. And that brings us to the crux of today's story: beer.

I'd been hemming and hawing about going to the Speight's Brewery Tour almost since I arrived in Dunedin. Their Gold Medal Ale is the best-selling beer in New Zealand (so named because it took home all the glory at a beer exhibition at the 1880 World's Fair in Melbourne, despite actually being a lager, not an ale), and you can't go anywhere in the South Island without seeing the orange and blue logo somewhere (it's touted as the pride of the south, after all), but I wasn't sold on the idea – I learned as much about the brewing process as Shakespeare in my undergrad years, and went on a few different brewery tours in Canada.

But, it is a Dunedin thing to do. Granted, it's the advertising guys for Speight's that warn you that no trip to Dunedin is complete without visiting the brewery, but I guess it was persuasive, because I ended up going on the evening tour last night.

There was a small group – about a dozen – waiting for the tour guide in the foyer of the original (and still operational) brewery from 1876. The building, built into a hillside near the Octagon, sits right on top of a natural spring, the water from which has been one of the most important ingredients of Speight's from day one (there's actually a pump outside the brewery that anyone can go to for some spring water). Our tour guide was a short, plump, bearded dude who clearly knew a thing or two about beer – not only was he once a history teacher and a born storyteller, but he was from Halifax, Nova Scotia.

 No relation? I don't know if I buy that . . .

The tour started long before James Speight's time, instead with an explanation of the painstaking process (but absolutely necessary, before the introduction of the aluminum barrels) of making barrels from Persian oak: how the craftspeople made the identical planks, treated them to give them their curved shape, and went on to use metal rings from blacksmiths to finalize the barrels. A lot of those jobs have been made obsolete in recent years (before the Christchurch brewery staff were relocated here a few years ago, there were only 11 full-time staff members, a far cry from the more than 100 that were here a century ago), but there was a real art to it back in the late nineteenth century.

Back then, by the way, the brewery was a wet brewery – which means that, while you were working, if you wanted to lay down your tools and go to the staff bar for a free drink, you were allowed to do that. You were allowed to stay for another even. And another one after that. You probably assume that this is ridiculous, but there was a caveat – if you're drunk on the job, you're done. No explanations, no second chance, just good and fired. Apparently (and this is probably even harder to believe), people didn't abuse the system, and our tour guide had never heard tell of anyone getting fired. That staff bar still exists, and it's still free for the staff – you just can't be on the job or about to go to work. But since the brewery is now 24 hours, so too is the bar – so becoming a brew tour guide seems like a solid retirement plan.

The beer that won renown at the World's Fair and inevitably helped propel the popularity of Speight's was brewed to be a bit stronger than the stuff you can get today – as in it was 12% ABV. Not bad. Turns out that nowadays the New Zealand government taxes according to alcohol percentage, which is why you're hard pressed to find a brew stronger than 4% (the norm in Canada is 5%). Anyway, James Speight didn't have a whole lot of time to enjoy the success, because he died in 1887 – from cirrhosis of the liver. If you were trying to make your dollar stretch in those days (and a lot of people were, apparently), you'd probably opt for the beer that was so strong even the founder couldn't completely handle it – in effect then, Speight became the company's cardinal martyr, even if it was probably whiskey that did him in (don't tell!).

History aside, we ascended to the top of the factory (it was set up to be a gravity feed plant, meaning that all the initial steps take place up top, and the ingredients work their way downwards as the process goes on). There are four main ingredients in beer: water, sugar, malt, and hops, and the different varieties and combinations are what create different flavours (temperatures and brewing time also have a major influence, obviously). The fifth ingredient, which usually isn't classified as an ingredient even though every university student in the history of the world would probably call it the most important, is the yeast, which kicks the fermenting process to life and makes the sugary, hoppy water (the wort – I hope you're learning something here, by the way) alcoholic. Up here, we got to see what these simple grains looked like – the hops came in little green pellets from the Nelson area, a taste of which was like a chalky rush that would wipe out the most severe sinuses.

I can honestly say that that was the least amount of hops I've ever had that made me want to throw up.

It's a few floors below that the solid ingredients get mashed together and liquified by that natural spring water (treated by chlorine to appease health and safety codes, and then de-chlorinated), and then on to the fermentation process for a few weeks. They've got some massive industrial drums to do the job – we used a hallway closet and plastic tubs on Bonaventure Avenue as our fermentation plant. Kegging and some canning happens on site, but the bottling is all outsourced. At any rate, that's the story of how beer is made in Dunedin – but it wouldn't be fair to hear about it without trying some, especially since you know that your tour guide is just waiting to clock out so he can bolt to the staff bar.

There were six draughts on tap in the tasting room: the Gold Medal, the chocolatey 5 Malt Old Dark, Distinction Ale, Cider, Triple Hop Pilsner, and the slightly citrous Golden Pale Ale. We got to pour our own for a half hour or so, which gave plenty of time to indulg— erm, enjoy.

It was a crisp Monday night, and as I headed back to the North East Valley, I decided to stop into a squat little pub that I've passed a dozen times before. The Inch Bar isn't far from Grey Street, and it happens to have Emerson's on tap, another local microbrewery (for a relatively small place, Dunedin is pretty prolific when it comes to beer). I forced myself to get over that social anxiety of walking into a bar by myself (I'll go to the other side of the world by myself, no problem) to try a pint of the Brewer's Reserve they had.

For a night that was literally all about beer, it was pretty responsible.

The sun's trying to come out now, hopefully to warm the clothesline. The last thing I want is a backpack full of damp clothes tomorrow morning when I take to the motorway to try to hitch a ride through the Catlins to Invercargill. I've made contact with a Tasmanian guy through Couchsurfing who is keen to host me for a few nights – he sent me a few pictures of his holiday abode in Orepuki, which I'll hopefully get a chance to check out while I'm in the neighbourhood. Here's a spot where there's only 2700 km of uninterrupted ocean in front of you before you hit Commonwealth Bay, Antarctica. 

 

If this is the end of the world, I'm feeling quite fine.

Cheers,

rb