22 August 2016 - Best Beer HQ
Moa NZ Gold Ale Review
On New Zealand’s best day at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games I cracked open a bottle of Moa’s limited edition NZ Gold Ale to toast our nation’s success. Because I felt it was important to do my part for the team, by sitting on my lazy ass and drinking. I’m sure Hamish Bond and Eric Murray would approve.
ABV: 5.4%
The bottle: Somebody please give Moa a gold medal for presentation, because its special edition NZ Gold Ale looks suitably stunning, with a black embossed label, silver and gold trim, and even a cork and cage on top.
It really does feel like a “beer for NZ Olympians”, as it says on the bottle.
Blurb on the bottle: This golden colour ale is brewed predominantly with Pilsner malts, Vienna and a touch of Wheat, giving a mild malt sweetness. Both late hopped and dry hopped with NZ Motueka to provides [sic] an upfront passionfruit and pineapple characters that give way to some pine and lemonade-type citrus flavours.
This beer has a lingering clean after-bitterness with a dry finish, best enjoyed when celebrating a New Zealand Gold!
Tastes like: I’m glad I saved this beer to toast New Zealand’s best-ever performance at an Olympic Games on a day in which we’ve actually won five medals – including gold for sailors Peter Burling and Blair Tuke, silver for Jo Aleh and Polly Powrie, as well as Molly Meech and Alex Maloney, and bronze medals for both Lisa Carrington and Tom Walsh – because it goes particularly well with a heavy dose of patriotism.
Plus, it’s sunny outside, and this is definitely a beer to drink in the sunshine. Moa’s NZ Gold Ale is a crisply tropical beer that practically screams Copacabana. It also boasts a generous helping of malt, with a hazy, wheaty body that shines like gold in my glass (actually it’s probably more like the colour of straw, but I don’t want to ruin the illusion that I really am drinking a gold-medal beer for NZ Olympians).
The verdict: Okay, so Moa’s NZ Gold Ale may just be another stupid marketing gimmick, trading off the mass appeal of the Olympic Games like McDonald’s and Coca-Cola (two frankly ludicrous sponsors of such a global sporting event). But it’s still a very good beer.
You should definitely pick one up at your local Countdown (the only supermarket chain currently stocking it) and toast not just our super-awesome athletes, but the beer makers in this country who continue to produce the good stuff – and not just every four years.
Second opinion: A mate of mine seems to really hate the Olympics (traitor) but also really like this beer. You can check out his review over at his new blog.
Beer/movie pairing: We all know Chariots of Fire is probably the best movie to feature the Olympic Games (it did win Best Picture at the 1981 Academy Awards, after all) but Cool Runnings is probably my sentimental favourite.
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