For my fourtieth birthday, I decided to have a decent party, put a bunch of kegs of beer through my recently finished bar, and do a hangi for 60 people. So I took some of January off work to brew up 200 l of beer.

A hangi is basically a shallow hole, with hot rocks at the bottom, food in the middle, and wet sheets and dirt over the top. The food kind of bakes from the bottom and steams from the top, so as long as you are careful about where you put each item in the stack, you can get it all cooked at the same time. Here I am heating the rocks (house bricks) in the afternoon, with a majorly hot fire using jarrah demolition timber. This fire burnt for two hours, after which the bricks were glowing red hot.

There are no photos of setting the hangi up, because Bob and I were just too busy and hot doing it. Also the wheelbarrow caught fire which distracted us a bit. Those bricks were damn hot, and the heat transmitted through the steel tray set fire to the wooden frame.

Once the rocks go in the hole, you need to stack everything together in a hurry, and get dirt over the top before too much steam escapes. One problem with a hangi, is you just dont know how it is cooking. If you dig it up before it is cooked, you lose the steam, and are in trouble. For the first few hours of the party I was uneasy, worrying if it would cook. After 3.5 hrs, Bob and I dug it up and extracted the food baskets.

And hooray, it was cooked! 7 free range chickens, 3 large beef roasts, 3 large lamb roasts, 2 pork roasts, 20 kg of potatoes, 10 kg of kumara, 3 large pumpkins, stacked in four wire baskets and wrapped in foil or cabbage leaves, all moist, cooked, yet tender. What a relief!

Having stood in a hot hole retrieving the baskets, why did I decide to carve by a roaring fire? I'm not sure now, but it sure was sweaty.

There were lots of great helpers, Bob with the hangi, Alida with the bruschetta, Nena with the food prep, and Nicolas helping with carving.

Fleur took control of directing the traffic during serving. John Perry has always been a sucker for a dominating woman. Al ignores Fleur and takes what he likes.

The queue was building up at this point.

And continued to build as Dave tried to decide which meat was which. Meanwhile Daves skirt action was attracting attention from the women further down the queue, and he was lucky to escape unmolested.

The bar was set up with soda water on tap, 4 beers on the permanent taps, 2 more beers served from the portable wheelie keg dispenser, and a gin and tonic and a vodka and soda being served from 2 temporary taps.

Once the stress of getting the hangi cooked was over, I was on a mission to empty a couple of kegs, as I had another 4 kegs waiting for the first lot to empty.

The dogs werent interested in the beer, but were keen on the hangi.

By this time some of the relatives (Diana and Alida) were a bit worn out, having helped out with the food and preparations.

While other relatives were getting stuck in to the chocolate porter (Harry) or the vodka and soda (Camilla).

Fleur isnt really that short, I am wearing steel capped boots for hangi digging up purposes. Bob isnt really that short, he is just shagged out as I made him dig the hangi hole.

Nanna supervises the cake, which was decorated with crown caps stolen from my brewing box.

Eventually, the bar turned into a mini disco, this was probably about 2 am so the neighbours must have been a bit grumpy at this point.

Meanwhile, John and Shane engaged in a little wrestling, as they are wont to do.

Asher scores the best present wrapping service. I have never needed side cutters to get into a present before. Oli also scores on the present status, a stuffed representation of the yeast cell that makes beer.

Present of the night goes to Doug and Jules. A set of beer glasses, each one etched with an image of Tex and labelled with the house logo. Very cool. So cool in fact that Asher tried to steal one.

My beer friends came through with a range of great beers, including a total of 6 Thomas Hardy Ales, so that I can try them each year and see how they change.