Standard of NZ craft beer

[Ben Dean]

I've just got back from my bi-annual trip to the UK visiting family. I usually use these opportunities to get my traditional cask 'real ale' fix but this time I drank a lot of UK craft beers. It really made me realise how lucky we are here with the overall standard of beers on offer. I've had a few average beers from NZ breweries but nothing I would class as bad, mostly they are world class. In the UK however I found buying a beer to be pretty much a gamble. There are some amazing beers from exceptional breweries, but in equal amounts there are some truly horrific beers on sale (some so bad they ended up down the sink) and a lot of very average stuff too. Seems there is a certain standard NZ brewers adhere to, where as in the UK quality varies drastically across the market.

[Ben Dean]

I was very disapointed with beers from Siren brewery, I tried a few of their beers (pale ale, IPA, and session pale ale) all were lacking in malt backbone and hop aroma/flavour leaving them tasting overly bitter, thin and unbalanced. There was one particular IPA I tried (can't remember the brewery), it was 7% but tasted like it was about 15%, tasted of alcohol and not much else. I had a few stouts with a sweaty foot aroma too. A lot of the poor beers I tried were from traditional ale breweries jumping on the craft bandwagon, they seem to just over hop various styles of ale and stick the word craft in the name/description. An exception to this is the Crafty Dan range from Thwaites brewery, their beers were outstanding especially the 13 Guns IPA, their traditional cask ales are great too.

Breweries that really impressed me were: Magic Rock, Buxton, Weird Beard, Crafty Dan (Thwaites), Beavertown, Thornbridge, Marble, Fool Hardy and Kernel.

[Ben Dean]

Just found out what the truly awful IPA was - Elixir of Invincibility from Hardknott brewery.

[Grant R Baker]

hmmm... not so in a rush to visit the UK now...

[Ben Dean]

I'm sure with a bit of prior research you could avoid most of the bad stuff. Aside from a few recommendations from friends I went in blind and just tried whatever caught my eye. The breweries I mentioned in my reply to chig ochei easily have over 100 different beers between them (probably closer to 200) and they are just a fraction of UKs well respected breweries. Also with a lot of beers costing the equivalent of $4-6 a bottle/can from bottle shops, a few crap ones doesn't hit your wallet as much as it would if you were paying NZ prices.

...so don't let me put you off :)

[Ben Dean]

There is an interesting article by Stu McKinlay in the latest pursuit of hoppiness that goes into this subject in more detail. Good read.