MANY, MANY THANKS MUST GO TO: Maxime Cavey from Hawke’s Bay Winegrowers for her superb stewarding skills.
While the last 18 months haven’t exactly been pumping times for the pub trade due to that pesky social retardant named Covid, you’d have to have been living under a chilly bin to not observe the exponential ascent of “hazy” beers. Shelves in craft beer-savvy supermarkets now creak under the weight of shiny, new cans and bottles of this emergent category, the search bars of online beer sites are seeing a sudden upshift in the word “hazy” and bar staff around the country serve eager customers all pointing to the hazy taps, itching to give this style a crack.
It’s become the most Instagrammable beer style on the planet, so we figured it was high time to and find out what this magically murky style was all about. Clearly the hazy craze is in good health and here to stay, because a whopping 55 entries arrived in our first ever Hazy tasting panel. Fifty five! They came from large commercial brewers, well-known crafties and tiny startups and they ranged from clear, almost reddy-brown ales, through to entries that were soupy-thick, pale and creamy. They’re also very different to what brewers are normally expected to produce, which is something bright, bitter, clear and clean. Instead, they’re creating beers that are hoppy but not bitter, fruity but not sweet and cloudy but not muddy. Brewers can use lots of techniques to achieve an even haze, from special yeasts that stay in suspension, lactose, aggressive dry-hopping or using ingredients like fruit purée or wheat germ to encourage the haze. But it’s no easy thing.
