Beer Friday! - Speight's, Pride of the South

Welcome to what will hopefully be a weekly series examining the wide range of brews on offer here in New Zealand. Each week I will endeavor to try something new and update you on how delicious (or not) it is. Ratings will be given in a completely arbitrary manner, because really, is there such thing as a truly bad beer? Didn't think so. This week, a look at the range of beers produced by Dunedin-based Speight's Brewery.

Billing it self as the "Pride of the South", Speight's Brewery offers a range of eight beers, ranging from their flagship, Speight's Gold Medal Ale, all the way to Speight's Distinction, a darker, heavier style. I have had the privilege, thanks to the wonderful Speight's Brewery Tour, of sampling six of these brews, and below I will attempt to review them for you.

Speight's Gold Medal Ale
Some light googling has led me to some very interesting information: that this beer, due to the style in which it is brewed, is actually a lager, not an ale. I am not an expert in differentiating between lagers, ales, etc., so I (and you I suppose), will have to take Wikipedia's word on that. Regardless, this particular beer is woven tightly into the (student) culture of Dunedin. As the pre-eminent beer produced by Speight's, it is generally the beer of choice for the good folks of Dunedin and much of "the South" (Otago and Southland regions) as a whole. There are a few wonderful traditions involving the beer, my favorite being a trivia-based game. On the underside of the cap on each bottle of Gold Medal Ale there is a Kiwi-related trivia question. If you know the answer, you're safe; if not, you've got to skull (Kiwi for chug) the beer down to where the three stars run across the label. For foreigners like myself, it can be a bit of a dangerous game, but always a learning experience.

As for the beer itself, it is a solid, if unspectacular beer. Comparatively for those reading at home, it functions an upgrade on the standard fare of Molson/Labatt's/Coors. As one of the more popular and widely available beers, Gold Medal Ale certainly fills that role, but does it with a little more aplomb and panache. It is golden in colour, tastes pretty good and can be paired with food. All in all, I give it (drumroll)...7.5 Flaming Couches out of 11! (What better way to rate the quintessential Dunedin beer than with the quintessential Scarfy nighttime activity?)

Speight's Distinction
Overshadowed by it's much more popular and illustrious brother (like some readers of this blog, no doubt), Distinction is nevertheless an outstanding beer in it's own right. In all honesty, I prefer Distinction to Gold Medal Ale, as it is a darker, more flavourful beer. Probably a dark amber in colour (it's been a while since I had one), it is full of rich flavour and would also go well with food. Overall, 9 out of 11 Flaming Couches.

Other Beers in the Speight's Range
As there are six other beers produced by Speight's (plus one cider), for the sake of brevity I'm going to cut this review short. Summing up the remaining beers:
Speight's Old Dark: Standard dark beer - 7/11 Flaming Couches
Speight's Porter: Pretty good run at the porter style, if that's what you're into - 7.3/11 Flaming Couches
Speight's Pilsner: My second favourite in the range - 8/11 Flaming Couches
Speight's Pale Ale: Don't recall ever having this, I'm sure it's good though - ??/11 Flaming Couches
Speight's Harvest Gold: See above. Sound delightful though - ??/11 Flaming Couches
Speight's Traverse: The Speight's take on low carb beer. As these thing go, pretty tasty - 6.9 (heh)/11 Flaming Couches
Speight's Apple Cider: Very delicious and quite refreshing - 7.5/11 Flaming Couches.

That about wraps it up for my first attempt at a beer review. Hope you found it informative and made you want to go out and have a few pints. I would also be remiss not to mention Speight's' establishment of the pub chain "Speight's Ale House." They're dotted around the country, and serve up wonderful food (I had a delicious Easter Feast at the one in Invercargill) along with the full range of Speight's products.

So concludes the first edition of Beer Friday!, surely the only beer review to contain words such as "aplomb", "panache", "brevity" and "quintessential". Just trying to class it up a bit for the folks out there. Check back next week for another edition of Beer Friday!, and in the interim for continuing recaps and updates of my day-to-day life in this remote little country at the bottom of the world.

Dave

Note: No couches were burned in the writing of this article. Not by me anyway.