Spur of the moment beer, spur of the moment blog and a wee competition

Last week I told you of a few things we needed to get done before we head overseas in 2 weeks. They didn't include brewing a new beer, in fact that was the last thing on my mind. Never the less, that's exactly what has happened.

I've been puzzling with a recipe for an Amber/Red Ale for a while, made a stunning test batch and was planning on brewing it in July. Patience is not always our greatest forte but there was a couple of reasons for the wait: We wanted to release it in kegs only, no bottles, as I feel this is the perfect pub beer. Refreshing, tasty and moreish, best drunk fresh, by the pint and in the company of good friends. The problem was we don't have nearly enough kegs and would have to buy some first. Secondly, I knew that the mighty Yeastie Boys were releasing their amber ale 'Return to Magenta' and we don't like to wrestle with our comrades.
The keg problem solved itself when our awesome distributor, BeerNZ, offered to loan us the kegs and then it turned out that Magenta was a Belgian Amber Ale. Without having tried it, I am pretty confident that the two beers have very little in common apart from the colour. Besides, Magenta will probably be sold out by the time this beer hits the taps.
This all dawned to me on Monday and yesterday, Wednesday, we brewed it. The great thing about being a small company is that you don't have discuss anything with your shareholders and can act freely on your impulses.

The brew day was excruciating slow, 16 hours it took. On top of that the courier decided to send half of the hops we ordered to Christchurch, the other half arrived on time(makes you wonder?). Renaissance don't use the missing hop (Motueka) so we couldn't borrow from them. Luckily Dave Nichols at Moa Brewing had some to spare. Dave is a great guy, a very talented brewer and always keen to help out when needed.
The ingredients are Gladfield pale malt, Munich malt and generous lashings of 3 different caramel malts. It is hopped with Pacific Jade, Motueka and Cascade at levels most brewers would use for an I.P.A. (10 g/L of finished product). ABV should end up around 5.5%.

Anyways, this one is still nameless, so we've decided to launch a small competition. All you need to do is to come up with a name. There are no guidelines to what the name should be like.
Although it could be a starting point, it doesn't have to have to be anything to do with 'wired' and it doesn't have to be anything connected to 'amber' or 'red'. Let your creativity flow and suggest as many names as you think of. The prize is yet to be decided but we'll send the winner some beer, a t-shirt, glassware or other merchandise if we ever get around to making some... Post your entries here, on Facebook or send them to info@8wired.co.nz