Beer Jerk

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Beer Jerk A beer shop on the internet Beer Jerk is the home of great independent craft beer in New Zealand.

Our webshop stocks a huge selection of carefully curated beers from the most talented brewers around. We also have awesome subscriptions and a warehouse bar, The Fridge & Flagon �

29/10/2026

This week B**R CLUB members are drinking…

BREWERY // 8 Wired began, as so many good breweries do, with a home-brew kit. Danish-born Søren Eriksen was living in Perth in 2005 when his future wife Monique handed him a Coopers starter kit; the first b**rs weren't great, but he was hooked. A move to Blenheim followed in 2008 and a job at Renaissance, who let him rent their tanks whenever they sat idle. That arrangement became 8 Wired, a gypsy operation that brewed its first b**r in 2009 and, within two years, was crowned Champion Brewery at the Brewers Guild of New Zealand Awards, a startling result for an outfit with no home of its own. After five years borrowing space across four sites, Eriksen finally built a brewery in Warkworth, north of Auckland, where everything is now brewed and packaged. It has become one of the country's most important breweries, the home of Hopwired, arguably the first modern West Coast IPA brewed entirely with New Zealand hops, the mighty iStout imperial stout, and Tall Poppy, a landmark red IPA. Their barrel-ageing programme is one of the largest in the Southern Hemisphere, and you know we love their steady stream of faithful European historic styles. Which brings us to...
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B**R // Scotch Ale began life as an export label rather than a Scottish tradition. In the nineteenth century the great Edinburgh brewers, William Younger and William McEwan among them, followed Burton step for step: when Burton shipped hoppy pale ales to India, Edinburgh did the same, and when Burton sent strong, malty ales abroad, Edinburgh sent its own under the name Scotch Ale. Their production rivalled those of Dublin and Burton, and much of that strong b**r went to the West Indies. At home these b**rs sat at the top of a price ladder, 60, 100, even 160 shilling ales, the figures being the wholesale cost of a cask rather than a measure of style. The phrase "wee heavy" started with a single b**r, Fowler's Twelve Guinea Ale, sold in small bottles at serious strength. Much of what later writers added is folklore. Brewing historian Ron Pattinson has shown that Scottish brewers hopped at much the same rate as London ones (most of Edinburgh's hops came from Kent) and that peat smoke had no place in commercial Scottish malt, which was kilned with coke. The peaty versions are largely a modern American invention, presumably lost-in-translation crossover with peated Scottish wh**ky. The name on this can has its own history. Gallus is a Scots word, strongest in Glasgow, that grew out of "gallows": first it meant a rascal fit for hanging, later bold, cheeky and stylish. A Glasgow newspaper in 1928 described it as swank with a sense of humour, a man showing off while plainly laughing at himself. 8 Wired's take sits at 7%, the lower end of the strong range, and pours deep mahogany. Caramelised toffee, demerara and toasted bread lead the aroma, with raisin and treacle behind and only a thread of smoke, closer to the historical record than to the modern peated takes. Rich as it is on the palate, Gallus drinks drier than expected, ending long, moderately bitter and savoury. It is a Scotch Ale with the sweetness reined in and the swagger left intact.

BREWERY // 8 Wired
B**R // Gallus
STYLE // Scotch Ale
ABV // 7%
ORIGIN // Warkworth, Auckland
TEMP // 10-13°C
FOOD MATCH // Mushroom and lentil pie. Aged cheddar with oatcakes. Sticky toffee pudding.
VESSEL // Thistle glass

23/10/2026

This week B**R CLUB members are drinking…

BREWERY // Following a 22,000 km road trip through 50 US states and countless b**rs, George Duncan and Wai Familton were inspired to start brewing. Somewhere between the campfire dinners and endless Sierra Nevada Pale Ale, the idea of their own microbrewery took root. They eventually came home to George's town of Paraparaumu, with plans to start a family and a brewery at the same time, and decided there was no reason to choose. After years of brewing in his kitchen and a couple more years contract brewing, George opened a brewery and cellar door on the Kāpiti Coast, and picked up four medals at the Brewers Guild of New Zealand Awards when it had been open for only a matter of months. Since then he has fully embraced his inner W***y Wonka, releasing a steady flow of ice cream sours, pastry stouts and cake-inspired b**rs that make b**r purists furious, all wrapped in the hypnotic labels of Dr D Foothead. For drinkers focussed on their dessert creations, it was a surprise when Duncan's won the 2025 Smith's NZ IPA Challenge. But not to anyone who has drank one of their IPAs over the last decade.

B**R // Long before hops became the default, brewers in Northern Europe were reaching for juniper, a hardy little conifer. It grew everywhere and it did a similar job: its resinous, piney bite cut through sweet malt and helped preserve the b**r. The tradition survives in Finland as sahti, a cloudy, strong farmhouse ale that has been brewed for centuries with juniper trees. The late b**r writer Michael Jackson called it the only primitive b**r to survive in Western Europe. Juniper is also famously used in gin, and the word itself comes from genever, the Dutch for juniper. The "berries" are not really berries at all; they are the fleshy seed cones of a conifer, which goes some way to explaining why they sit so comfortably alongside hops. Modern craft brewers have joined the dots in recent years (Rogue's Juniper Pale Ale was B**r Club #18 back in 2015) but I'm not aware of many who have kept a juniper b**r in their core range. Duncan's have, and it has become one of their most loved b**rs. It is a big, hop-forward IPA at 7%, brewed with juniper berries that bring pine and citrus to both the aroma and the palate. The juniper pairs perfectly with the hops, sharpening the resinous edges and pulling the finish towards something dry and aromatic. At 60 IBU there is a firm bitterness to hold it all together. It if an excellent West Coast IPA with an unmistakable gin-like snap, botanical and clean.
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BREWERY // Duncan's
B**R // Juniper IPA
ABV // 7%
ORIGIN // Paraparaumu, Kāpiti Coast
TEMP // 7-10°C
FOOD MATCH // Vegetable biryani. Reuben sandwich. Lemon tart.
VESSEL // IPA glass. Teku

16/10/2026

This week B**R CLUB members are drinking…

BREWERY // Southpaw's origin story dates to a couple of b**r loving left-handers being amazed at the craft scene in America and returning home to build their dream brewery. Cam Burgess and Penny Prescott started the brewery with a couple of friends after travelling through the States. Cam brewed at a few local breweries before Uncle Charlie American Pale Ale, Southpaw's first commercial b**r, appeared in 2016. It is still one of their best sellers. A gold medal at the Brewers Guild NZ B**r Awards for Riding Pine Red IPA followed, then in 2019 a 1200-litre brewery of their own in industrial Hornby. But the tagline, "bringing flavour home", always pointed east. Cam grew up in New Brighton, and the plan was to brew there. Thieves nearly derailed the move in late 2024, cleaning out thousands of dollars of Christmas stock and damaging equipment stored at the new site, but Southpaw opened as one of the first tenants of the Pierside development on New Brighton Mall in 2025, bright aqua facade and all. The road is still bumpy: last month's closure of Cantab Canning, the mobile canner many Canterbury breweries relied on, has left they questioning whether they will continue canning. Those of us not lucky enough to live near New Brighton are hoping they can find a canning solution that works for them.

B**R // Of course b**r was made with freshly picked hops is hardly a new idea, but it is very rare in modern brewing history because dried hops taste fantastic and are far more practical. In Poperinge, the heart of Belgian hop country, the town council commissioned fresh hop Hommelbier in 1981 to toast its local growers, and it is still regularly brewed. In the early 90s Wadworth brewery in England brewed a fresh hop b**r and California's Sierra Nevada got in on the act a few years later and brought the concept to the attention of a much wider audience. Brewing with fresh hops gives a brighter and greener character than the dried versions but brewers need to get them from the bine into the b**r as quickly as possible, within a day of being harvested, while their aromatic oils are still at their most volatile. There is a misconception among drinkers that fresh hop b**rs need to be drunk immediately, but that's not the case - once the b**r is packaged, it requires the same handling as any other. Of course, hop-forward b**rs (IPAs) should always be stored cold and drunk fresh. The Motueka hops come from Bold River Hops, who began growing on the banks of the Hurunui River in North Canterbury after realising the climate these hops were bred in has crept South over the years. Motueka is a cross of Czech Saaz and a New Zealand selection, which was originally sold as "B Saaz" (Belgian Saaz). It's cool to see a brewer use these hops in a slightly unexpected style rather than an IPA, Pilsner or Pale because we get to see how the hops work in partnership with the other ingredients. This farmhouse style has a rustic edge with a round body and the yeast playing a large part with some gentle pepper character.
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BREWERY // Southpaw
B**R // Home Field
STYLE // Fresh Hop Farmhouse Harvest Ale
ABV // 4.5%
ORIGIN // New Brighton, Christchurch
TEMP // 8-10°C
FOOD MATCH // Herb roast chicken. Goat's cheese and pea salad. Thai green curry
VESSEL // Tulip

08/10/2026

This week B**R CLUB members are drinking…

BREWERY // Double Vision began in 2013 in the lunchroom of Phil & Teds, the Wellington company, where Mario, Warren, Harry and Evarn spent their working days designing prams and their downtime talking mountain bikes and hops. They all chipped in for a homebrew kit, a friend's Hataitai garage became the first brewery, and more than a hundred recipes followed in eighteen months, policed by one brutal house rule: if a batch was bad, everyone had to drink it. The name came from Evarn's partner Jane, inspired by the double garage doors (and, presumably, by the side effects of the product). Double Vision was incorporated in June 2016, launching with Expatriate APA and Red Rascal Red IPA, and in 2018 the four built a brewery and taproom in the Miramar Industrial Park with help from their tradie mates. Design is still half the business; every can is drawn in-house and their packaging has won at the Brewers Guild Awards. B**r Jerk regulars may also remember Black Narcissus, the 12.5% Mumme they brewed with Small Gods. In 2025 they became the official b**r match for Burger Wellington, and this week's b**r was brewed for the 2026 edition.

B**R // The shandy originated in 1850s England as the 'shandygaff', b**r cut with ginger soda. Over time lemonade replaced the ginger and the name shrank. The Germans and Austrians arrived at the same idea and gave it a better story. Radler means cyclist, and the popular tale credits Franz Kugler, an innkeeper outside Munich, with mixing his l***r half and half with lemon soda in 1922 when a stream of thirsty cyclists threatened to drain his cellar. New Zealand's relationship with the style took a stranger turn. DB launched Monteith's Radler in late 2002 and soon trademarked the word, so when Dunedin's Green Man brewed a radler in 2008 it was told to stop, and ended up sticking "Cyclist" labels over its own bottles. The Society of B**r Advocates fought to have the trademark cancelled and lost, with IPONZ ruling that radler wasn't known here as a style name when the mark was registered. DB has since let the trademark lapse, but for the best part of twenty years only one brewery in the country could legally call a b**r a radler. Double Vision sidestep the whole saga by calling theirs a shandy, then ignore the rulebook anyway. A traditional half-and-half mix lands at roughly half the strength of the b**r underneath it; Schandalous sits at a full-strength 4.4%, built for long afternoons in the sun rather than as a lighter alternative to a proper pint. Brewed as a b**r match for Burger Wellington, it was designed to stand next to grease and salt, and the bright, natural citrus does exactly that, cutting through richness the way a squeeze of lemon lifts a plate of fish and chips. Schandalous is far better than a traditional Shandy in that it is also far less sweet and avoids the cloying stickiness.
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BREWERY // Double Vision
B**R // Schandalous
STYLE // Shandy
ABV // 4.4%
ORIGIN // Miramar, Wellington
TEMP // Cold!
FOOD MATCH // Cheeseburger. Obviously
VESSEL // Willi Becher

01/10/2026

This week B**R CLUB members are drinking…

BREWERY // Volstead takes its name from the 1919 Act that enforced American Prohibition. It opened on Riccarton Road in 2011 as one of Christchurch's first craft bars after the earthquakes, a lounge of battered sofas and a wall of taps and handpulls. Fast forward to 2019, and their neighbours at Golden Eagle Brewery were relocating to their shiny but doomed riverside crowdfunded location making it the perfect opportunity for Volstead to take over and start brewing their own b**r. They focussed on hop-forward b**rs, prioritising freshness with the Single Hop Hazy series (Sir Sauvin, Riwaka, Mosaic, Simcoe, Nectaron and more) becoming the house signature. A few months ago owner-brewer Jason Ray sold up to focus on his law career. The new owners are the team who recently took over Concept Brewing and includes Steve Sloan, an American who was previously named the Great American B**r Festival's Large Brewpub Brewer of the Year. The bigger brewhouse and canning line will carry Concept's b**rs too with both breweries benefitting from the efficiencies of consolidation. The new owners say the plan is investment, not reinvention. We're excited to see what will come next.

B**R // I recently heard someone describe the Hazy IPA style as a hop delivery system. Which is obviously wank-y nonsense but it kind of has a point too. The soft, cloudy, low-bitterness style born in Vermont leans on oats, wheat and enormous late hopping. Volstead brew a lot of single ho b**rs and this is probably the most popular of them thanks to the NZ superstar that is Nelson Sauvin. Bred at HortResearch's Riwaka Research Centre from a Smoothcone crossed with a New Zealand male, it is a triploid, effectively seedless, and was released in 2000. It was selected deliberately for fruity, floral character and surprisingly similar in flavour to a certain grape variety. The resemblance turned out to be chemistry. In 2009 Japanese researchers identified thiols in the hop, the same family of sulphur compounds behind the gooseberry and grapefruit punch of a Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc. American brewers took to it fast, and by 2019 it was the most widely grown hop in the country. Early advice was to use it sparingly or blend it with something gentler, because the unique flavour dominates. Hazy Sir Sauvin ignores that advice entirely. It is hopped with 100% Nelson Sauvin and a fantastic way to experience the hop. Crushed gooseberry, white grape and Sauvignon Blanc arrive first, followed by the hop's darker side, the pungent diesel edge the brewery cheerfully describes as kerosene and jet fuel. Under the soft body sits concentrated tropical and herbal flavour, a touch more bitterness than most hazies allow, and a long, slightly oily finish that drinks bigger than its strength.

BREWERY // Volstead
B**R // Hazy Sir Sauvin
STYLE // Hazy IPA
ABV // 5.8%
ORIGIN // Christchurch
TEMP // 6-8°C
FOOD MATCH // Goat's cheese and asparagus tart. Thai green curry. Fresh broad beans with feta, mint and lemon
VESSEL // Teku or Tulip

24/09/2026

This week B**R CLUB members are drinking…

BREWERY // In 1989 two Gisborne surfers, Geoff "Lumpy" Logan and Gerry Maude, were sitting out the back waiting for a set when they decided to brew the perfect b**r. That b**r was Gisborne Gold. GIt was the first NZ craft b**r poured at Wellington's original Malthouse, where it caused waves among the big brewers, and it became a student staple through the 1990s. Plenty of Wellington's reputation as the country's craft b**r capital can be traced back to that humble l***r. New owners arrived in 2013 and moved the operation to Awapuni Road, a couple of streets back from Waikanae Beach, with a new brewhouse and a taproom where you can watch the brewing through a glass wall and order a tasting paddle served on a miniature surfboard. the brewery was recently sold again and is now in the good hands of the people behind Three Sisters. That means both breweries can enjoy the benefits of having a large efficient brewhouse (for core range volume) as well as a small one for experimental and seasonal releases. The house yeast is a l***r strain and Gizzy Gold still makes up more than half of everything they brew, but the brewers have wandered well beyond it, from black bière de garde to Flanders red aged in chardonnay barrels. The Eclipse Series is their foray into darkness, and it opened with this b**r.

B**R // You know we are all about a good story, and the history of this style is rich with them - some are even true. It began in the 18th century as an extra-strong porter, brewed by London's big porter houses for export across the Baltic. The most famous came from Thrale's Anchor Brewery in Southwark, the brewery Samuel Johnson helped sell in 1781 with the promise of riches "beyond the dreams of avarice". In 1796 the painter Joseph Farington drank a porter from Thrale's that he was told had been brewed specially for Catherine the Great and "would keep seven years". The popular story that it was brewed strong so it would not freeze on the voyage is obviously nonsense (if the temperature were cold enough to freeze b**r, it would freeze the ocean too). It was strong because the Russian aristocracy in Saint Petersburg, in the grip of Anglomania, liked it that way. Curiously, nobody called the b**r "Russian Imperial Stout" until the 1920s, once the Russian market had gone for good. Sunshine's version, at 10%, is jet black and opaque, and properly true to style. Dark chocolate, coffee and roasted malt build in layers, with a warming finish that reminds you of the strength. What is surprising is how dry it drinks. Many modern imperial stouts lean heavily on residual sweetness, lactose or dessert additions; this one stays lean and roasty. That restraint makes it far easier to drink than its strength suggests. The brewery suggests drinking it now or cellaring it for a few years which is often a fun (delicious) experiment with these type of b**rs.
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BREWERY // Sunshine
B**R // Russian Imperial Stout 2025 Vintage
ABV // 10%
ORIGIN // Gisbourne
TEMP // 10-14°C
FOOD MATCH // Braised beef cheeks. Aged Gouda. Chocolate and espresso tart.
VESSEL // Teku

17/09/2026

This week B**R CLUB members are drinking…

BREWERY // Three Sisters is what happens when a mechanical engineer decides his hobby has got out of hand. Joe Emans grew up in Buckinghamshire next door to a pub his grandfather owned, took a first-class master's from Aberdeen, spent more than twenty years in the energy industry, and in 2012 moved with his German wife Sarah and their three daughters to Taranaki. The brewery started under their house near the Oakura surf break with a fifty-litre pot, went commercial in April 2017 after Rain In The Face won the first Taranaki SOBA homebrew competition. In December 2020 a crowdfunding campaign moved them into the old Taranaki Savings Bank in New Plymouth, old TSB to new TSB, and the vault became the b**r chiller. Then everything happened quite quickly: Champion Micro Brewery in 2021, Champion Small New Zealand Brewery in 2022, back-to-back Champion International Small Brewery trophies at the Australian International B**r Awards in 2023 and 2024, a Chinese distributor emailing out of the blue wanting ten thousand cans as a "sample", four crowdfunds, a Wellington bar, and in March this year the purchase of Sunshine Brewing in Gisborne.

B**R // Oakura Blonde was their first b**r and it's still standing, still winning things and still the flagship. It is not the same b**r it was in 2017, mind. The recipe has been picked at and refined for the best part of a decade. Blonde ale is the crossover style that lives between a pilsner and a pale ale, and it's a style with no place to hide. Everything has to be done perfectly, including sourcing the ingredients. Pilsner malt for a clean, crackery spine. Wheat for head retention and a softer, rounder body, which is where the gentle cushion in the middle comes from. A touch of toffee malt for colour and a biscuity edge. The Saaz hops date back around 700 years in Bohemia and are at the heart of many classic styles, including Czech Pilsner. It's not too showy - far lower alpha acids than modern bittering hops and a relatively restrained aroma: mild, earthy, herbal, gently spicy, with a floral edge. It's the perfect session b**r that I'd be very happy drinking every day. It drinks clean and rounded, light bread and biscuit through the middle, with a light bitterness.
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BREWERY // Three Sisters
B**R // Oakura Blonde
STYLE // Blonde Ale
ABV // 4.8%
ORIGIN // New Plymouth
TEMP // 4-6°C
FOOD MATCH // broad beans smashed on toast with feta and mint. Pan-fried snapper
VESSEL // Willi Becher

10/09/2026

This week B**R CLUB members are drinking…

BREWERY // This week we're drinking a collaborative b**r from two breweries that have suddenly found themselves related. Sunshine Brewing was dreamed up in 1989 by two Gisborne surfers waiting on a wave, and is now the oldest independent craft brewery in the country. Three Sisters is the young thruster from New Plymouth that came to life in 2017 after founder Joe Emmans decided to level up from brewing in his basement. A few months ago Three Sisters bought Sunshine outright. With their new Wellington taproom and large export orders to fulfil, they had just completed another successful crowdfunding run and were ready to invest in growing production capacity. The Sunshine owners were eyeing retirement and suddenly this became the perfect fit for Three Sisters to take the entire brewery (that would never have fit inside their New Plymouth site) along with their taproom, team, and IP. Both breweries are continuing doing their own thing but they are having a lot of crossover - The Sunshine brewhouse is 4x the size of the Three Sisters one meaning both labels can brew seasonal and experimental batches on the smaller kit and core range b**rs on the big one. This weeks b**r is a collaboration that was brewed for the Smiths NZIPA Challenge.

B**R // Cold IPAs came out of Portland about eight years ago. The idea was to build an IPA with nothing that gets in the hops' way: a lean pale malt bill with no caramel or crystal malt, a l***r yeast run warm so it ferments out clean and dry rather than throwing fruit of its own, and the hops loaded in late. What you get is a b**r with the aromatic punch of a hazy and the finish of a pilsner. It's a style that is all about the hops, and the ones on this b**r span thirty years of New Zealand plant breeding. Southern Cross is the old hand, released in 1994 and descended, via a 1950s crossbreed, from the hop bred to survive the black root rot that nearly finished the local industry. It smells of lemon peel and warm pine needles, a bit resinous, a bit herbal, and its low cohumulone means the bitterness lands soft and rounded. Then there is the shiny new hop Manilita, which almost nobody has tasted yet. One of the very few hops that makes it past Freestyle Hops' experimental breeding programme it brings grapefruit zest and sweet citrus with a tropical edge. I reckon it tastes a bit like Juicy Fruit chewing gum. Then there's the Nectaron, which went in as SubZero Hop Kief. It is concentrated liquid lupulin, made by freezing and separating the hop rather than dissolving it in anything that goes in cold, often right before the b**r is packaged. This process extracts exactly the compounds we want in a b**r like this with no vegetal character. Just juicy passionfruit guava stone fruit good times. It's a clean, lean, juicy, aromatic, crisp, hoppy treat.
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BREWERY // Sunshine & Three Sisters
B**R // Coastal Cuzzies
STYLE // Cold IPA
ABV // 6.5%
ORIGIN // Gisborne and New Plymouth
TEMP // 4-6°C
FOOD MATCH // Asparagus & poached eggs on toast. Rhubarb & ginger crumble
VESSEL // Tulip

03/09/2026

This week B**R CLUB members are drinking…

BREWERY // Brothers Geoff and Clayton Gwynne purchased the Northland institution, the Waipu Pizza Barn, in 2003. A decade later, they decided to open a brewery next door. The McLeod's name and design aesthetic pay homage to the Scottish settlers of Waipu, while their b**r names often celebrate the stunning seaside landmarks nearby. McLeod's Brewery is one of the most highly regarded in the country, earning praise from judges, drinkers, and fellow brewers alike. Their 802 series of unfiltered IPAs get haze bois frothing every time and their Smugglers Cove series of barrel aged and mixed ferment b**rs are heavenly. The brewery and their b**rs have won countless medals and trophies - far too many to list here. No trip North is complete without stopping in for a b**r and one of their famous pizzas.

B**R // For most of human history, b**r was sour. The oldest known evidence of deliberately made alcohol comes from 13,000 year old stone mortars at Raqefet Cave in what is now Israel, where Natufian people malted and mashed grain and let wild airborne yeast do the rest. Lactic acid bacteria live on barley and wheat husks, so tartness was simply what happened. Only in the late nineteenth century, once Pasteur and pure yeast culture had explained the microbiology, did sourness get reclassified from normal to fault, leaving just a few regional holdouts with styles like Flanders Red and Gose. The method for souring these 'Kettle Sours' is to add a lactic acid bacteria (lactobacillus) to the sweet wort, waiting for it to reach the desired ph and then killing them off with a boil. A regular ale yeast is then pitched and the b**r ferments as normal. The first kettle sours were only released commercially in New Zealand about a decade ago and the style quickly found a lot of fans, as well as haters. Wicker Basket is a kind of Berliner Weisse and has a decent amount of wheat in the malt bill to give it body that counters the tartness nicely, the wheat also helps with retaining the fluffy head that enables aroma. There have been previous iterations of Wicker Basket and the current one has a failsafe pairing of mango for a lassi-like sweetness, and the unique character of passionfruit. There's also a hit of Pineapple Express that helps give the b**r an all round tropical lilt. A criticism I often have with modern fruited sours is that they can be too light-bodied, one-dimensional and acidic. Wicker Basket avoids all of these pitfalls and is a lovely well rounded and balanced b**r.

BREWERY // McLeod's
B**R // Wicker Basket
STYLE // Tropical Sour
ABV // 5.3%
ORIGIN // Waipū, Northland
TEMP // 4-6°C
FOOD MATCH // Goat's cheese pizza. Mango sticky rice. Lemon posset
VESSEL // Tulip

27/08/2026

This week B**R CLUB members are drinking…

BREWERY // It's shocking to think that it's been almost a decade since Urbanaut started brewing in beautiful Morningside in 2017. The original team are Bruce, Simon and Thomas who became friends during their days at Rangitikei College and they've been joined by a fantastically talented crew over the years. In the early days they were focussed on l***r and IPA styles but they now have a reputation for pushing boundaries with their experimental b**rs including a transparent IPA B**rvana release and brews inspired by donuts and gummy worms. Brewer Bruce honed his craft working with legendary breweries Fullers and Meantime in London while Simon and Thomas ran a property development company so their combined skills came in handy when converting an old props hire warehouse into a sparkling brewery & taproom at the end of the Auckland B**r Mile where Burgernaut serves up fantastic burgers.

B**R // In November 2017, Kim Sturdavant of Social Kitchen & Brewery in San Francisco took a punt on an idea which caught on like wildfire, becoming the hottest trend in b**r for a while. He added amyloglucosidase, an enzyme that breaks down the long-chain sugars yeast normally cannot reach to a regular IPA recipe. The resultant b**r was bone dry with no residual sugars and a reading or zero degrees Plato. It was explicitly the anti-hazy, a dry, spritzy correction to the soft, sweet, oat-laden juice bombs taking over the shelves and he called is creation Brut IPA. A few months later Urbanaut brewed the style to celebrate their first birthday and Copacabana quickly became their flagship IPA. We cannot know why they decided to brewed a 'hazed out' version of the b**r, but only presume that it was to confuse both our minds and out palates. The only thing that matters is that this b**r is damn tasty. It is still a pretty light bodied and dry b**r but the addition of oats and wheat give it a touch more weight and silky mouthfeel. The hops are Citra and Nelson Sauvin, which Bruce names as his favourite American and his favourite New Zealand variety respectively. Citra, released in Yakima in 2008, more or less defined the modern hazy: grapefruit, passionfruit, lychee. Nelson Sauvin was bred at Riwaka and released in 2000, and is named for how much it tastes like Sauvignon Blanc, all gooseberry and crushed grape and a dry, vinous edge found in no other hop. There is some bitterness to back up all that aroma. I'm confused yet delighted - fence straddling never tasted so good.

BREWERY // Urbanaut
B**R // Hazy Copacabana
STYLE // Hazy IPA
ABV // 6.8%
ORIGIN // Auckland B**r Mile
TEMP // 4-7 °C
FOOD MATCH // Smashburger with pickles. Mango and green chilli salsa. Fried halloumi.
VESSEL // Teku. Stemmed tulip.

Address

2/2 Shaddock Street
Auckland
1021

Opening Hours

Monday 12pm - 5pm
Friday 12pm - 10pm
Saturday 12pm - 10pm

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