Pilgrimage to the Best Beer in the World

Somewhere in the back roads of nowhere, two and half hours drive from Brussels, lies a Trappist monastery brewing world class beers following recipes that are almost as old as our country. Ratebeer.com lists Westvleteren 12 (or Westy 12 to its friends) as one of the highest rated beers in the world by the site’s...

Mash Palace Beer On The Market

We celebrated the release of Mash Palace’s Indra Fridgee IPA Saturday 22 August at Brew On Quay in Auckland. The brew team all arrived early to get our first taste of the commercial batch brewed by Hop Federation and we were not disappointed. Full frontal hoppy aromas of citrus and pine hit you first,...

Get Out and Get Beering

Auckland’s beer community is truly coming alive as of late. Auckland has been referred to many times as the sleeping giant of good beer by many more prolific bloggers than me, but that doesn’t make it any less relevant this time. What I want to focus on though, is the amount of great and...

Cheese and…. beer. Who knew?

Last week I was fortunate enough to get my hands on tickets to a beer and cheese matching night at Hallertau put on in collaboration with Kapiti. What was even more fortunate was that I also managed to get myself a sober driver for the evening. When we turned up I was a little...

Let’s go to The Hop, ooh baby

Saturday 21st of April, I awoke with the trembling excitement of a well-behaved child on Christmas morning. From midday, me and the lads would be out sampling tasty brews and rubbing noses with beer geeks from near and afar. In case you missed the memo; the latest addition to Auckland’s burgeoning craft beer scene...

Bourbon, Beer, BBQ

Bourbon, beer and barbecue. Individually these are all great things to spend a Sunday afternoon indulging in, but bring them all together and you have an inaugural collaborative event put on by Sam Snead and Nigel Kelly of House of Whiskey and Luke Nicholas of Epic Beer. The event consisted of plenty of samples...

Too many craft beer bars, too little time

Recently, I managed to wrangle a subsidised trip to Wellington to visit the many craft beer bars that are scattered around the windy capital. Work was generous enough to shout my airfares and transfers under the guise of Adobe’s Creative Camp. That’s not to say I didn’t go, because I did, and it was...