Report from gathering at NZ Beer Festival in Auckland

[Martin Bridges]

A surprisingly excellent day yesterday! A number of SOBA members and soon-to-be SOBA members (c'mon guys, you know you want to!) met up at the NZ Beer Festival in Ellerslie. Although the megaswill vendors were present it was good to see that there was a good range of craft breweries and all were busy. We spent most of our time in an oasis of calm and quality beer between the Tuatara and Croucher stands.

Beer of the day for me was the Tuatara Porter, with Yeastie Boys Kid Chocolate not far behind. Croucher Pale and Epic Mayhem were having a little argument about third place for me, unresolved by the end of the day. Oh, and not to forget the gorgeous Wild Thing that Nathan brought over from Murrays in Oz - good to meet you Nathan and I hope your liver enjoys its trip around NZ!

So good to see so may friendly faces - SOBA members, forum members, brewers, publicans....

Highlight of the day for me had to be seeing the "dead zone" of empty space around the Carlsberg stand, while the rest of the place was rammed! Even their slinky bar steff in their little red dresses couldn't save them! The Epic crowd next door must have been loving it!

[Reviled]

So this is the 'Mikes' stand everyones talking about, I walked past it a few times but the label (very RTD stu) didnt attract me very much... Plus didnt they only have 2 beers??

[denimglen]

The strawberry blonde came from either Wigram or the stand next to it. Couldn't tell if they were two separate places and didn't see the bottle for the blonde, just written up on a blackboard.

I quite liked the Wigram pale ale. I think I tried their vienna lager too.

[Reviled]

Thats right, I remember you having the Vienna Lager in your hand and me thinking WTF??? Reason is I brought a bottle of Vienna Lager a few months back and it was black like the dunkel and tasted like burnt toast.. Wasnt untill I saw your Vienna Lager that I knew mine obviously went horribly wrong!

Tried the wigram munich dunkel on sat which was good :o) Didnt manage to try any other wigram beers, they were too far away from all the other good beers :oP

[denimglen]

Yeah, Wigram's site doesn't list a PA so maybe I was a little jaded and acutually got something else? Haha.

Croucher's Hef > Tuatara Hef.

Kid Chocolate > all. I want to brew this beer.

[Stu McKinlay]

Cheers Glen. Great props! Between here and there you can get pretty close. Feel free to message, email, or call me if you want to know anything else.

The original is close to a wee brown porter, the commercial version bordering on an ordinary. Both are close to my perfect session ale.

[denimglen]

Awesome, thanks mate.

Is now on my to-do list :-D