The Great New Zealand Ale Trail

Our love of beer has forced us to seek out a number of breweries across New Zealand.  In total we have been to 9 breweries - 2 in the North and 7 in the South.  The beers tend to be based on English and German recipes, and we have become fans of quite a few! 

In Auckland we did Galbraith's Alehouse, but then never saw its beer since - obviously not a crowd favourite with the kiwis.  We both liked their wheat beer from their tasting menu.

In Wellington we tasted Mac's brewery beers. We enjoyed all of the beers here - and kiwis do too - they tend to be quite pricey in the supermarkets though.  My favourite was the 'Great White' wit beer and Syd enjoyed the original lager.

Our first brewery in the South Island was in a town called Westport, called West Coast Brewery but is known as the Miners' Brewery.  This was basically a tiny little place where we just tried beer straight from the taps, and then bought a rigger (2 litre bottle) of their golden lager.  He threw in a bar towel for free so that was pretty sweet.

We then did a full-on brewery tour of Monteith's brewery in Greymouth on the west coast.  It was a well-guided tour of a large establishment and they have an engineer that has worked there 43 years that invented some helpful machines such as a keg un-denter that has saved the company lots of money.  Really neat to see the bottling machine as well.  The tasting section of the tour was well done with elaborate stories told about how each beer came to be, before drinking the sweet brew.  Our unanimous favourite here was the unique Radler - a 5% beer based on a German recipe (much like a shandy) where lager is mixed with lemon & lime juice for a refreshing glass.  I quite enjoyed that she opened the taps up for us to drink at will for the next 20 minutes. Much to Syd's chagrin who just observed as the DD.  We both agree that this brewery was our favourite overall.

In Wanaka we went to beerworks.  It was a very small shop/brewery and we weren't a fan of their beers in general. But if we had to choose, Syd would choose the lager called Brewski and I would choose the dark porter beer (though forget its name).

In the mining town called Arrowtown, we visited their brewery called Arrow.  They made lovely steak pies that we gobbled up for lunch along with some English wheat ales that we fancied.  Though the black beer, Roaring Meg (named after the rapids in the area) was quite tasty as well.

In the Southland we went to Invercargill Brewery.  It was also small and only ran tours once a day (which we missed) so we just tried their beers.  Syd loved a honey beer called Biman (pronounced BEE-man) but he had the last glass of it, so ended up buying a rigger of Wasp (another type of honey beer) (sidenote:  it does feel kinda weird walking out with a 2-litre of fresh tap beer).  They use NZ manuka honey in the beers here and they are quite tasty.  I was fond of the dark porter called Pitch Black, but bought Boysen-Beery (summer fruit ale) for a novelty.

In Dunedin (the Edinburgh of the south), we went to Speights Brewery.  This is the most popular (and highest selling in NZ) beer in New Zealand, and is highly marketed as 'the pride of the south'.  There is also commercials about the 'southern man' which kind of reminds me of the Malboro man.   We met some fun people on this brewery tour and at the end got 15 min to pour our own mini-pints of the 6 different beers (no DD this time!). Our favourite was Distinction Ale because it tasted like caramel and was 5%.  Gold Medal Ale is the most popular and we have bought it this month at the supermarket on occasion (twist off caps of these stubby bottles have been quite handy, and there is nifty trivia under each cap!).

Lastly, in Christchurch we went to the Twisted Hop brewpub and bought another tasting tray of 6 beers.  My favourite was the Honeydew (yet another manuka honey beer) while Syd's was the Sauvin Pilsner.  This pub was located down a cobblestone alley with brick buildings everywhere - characteristic of Toronto's distillery district actually!

Overall, it was great to taste the subtle (and sometimes great) differences between beers based on the type and quantity of hops/malts used in the making of the beers.  The beer here is actually very good, and we're sad to leave it behind to go to Australia.   But maybe they'll have new beer avenues to explore...

Astrid.