Very stout

After a long wait I finally managed to get my hands on the Porterhouse's 10th anniversary Celebration Stout. This is an extra extra strong (10%), bottle-conditioned porter. It is a very traditional Irish stout in the style of the Porterhouse's Wrassler's: sharp and dry with little by way of a head. Yet its strength adds an extra complexity and there's a faint sweetness to it as well, a little reminiscent of Belgian double-figure-strength ales. Complex, and worth waiting for.

And so to the pub

The fourth and final part of my observations on the beers of New Zealand: the brewpubs.

The Loaded Hog is a fairly ubiquitous chain and I visited branches in Wellington and Christchurch. Brewing is done centrally, in Levin, where they make four signature beers. Draught is the standard New Zealand amber ale. It's a little lacking in flavour but redeemed with a barely-detectable smoky caramel taste. Wheat comes with a slice of lemon, suggesting that they are going for a Belgian witbier. However, it's rather sharp and carries an offputting aftertaste of chlorine. They also make a dark, roasted, German-style dunkel, imaginatively titled Dark Ale. My chief criticism here is, like just about all New Zealand beers, it is served way too cold. Finally there's Gold, the best of the four. It's a rich, fruity, dry lager with a taste that just goes on and on.

On to Dux de Lux, a smaller chain based in the picturesque Arts Centre in Christchurch and less salubrious quarters in Queenstown. I didn't quite get to the end of the beer menu at the Dux, but there's quality there. Hereford Bitter is the least special in the range -- cold and fizzy with a dry bitterness. Nor'wester is similarly inoffensive, being a rather bland American-style amber ale. Ginger Tom is a whole different matter. It's a real ginger beer made of ginger and beer, making it very dry and excitingly spicy. The gold continues with Black Shag Stout, an incredibly silky sweet creamy stout of the sort brewed by angels. That set me up to expect big things of their seasonal extra-strong stout Sou'wester. I was disappointed, sadly, finding a rather fizzy and slight-tasting stout, despite its 6.8% alcohol.

The last brewpub I visited was the Shakespeare in Auckland. Nine homemade beers on draught led me to an unusual course of action: ordering a sample tray. Naturally they have a Draught, a slightly dull amber pale ale with a hint of smoke, and a couple of token lagers, one called Barraclough which has an interesting touch of lemon to the flavour, and the other called Bohemian which is sweet and malty but a little lacking in taste. The selection leans heavy on the ale side, including Pistol's Old Soldier an intense hoppy copper ale which I found a little overpowering. There's also Macbeth's Red Ale -- dark, toasted and bitter with a pleasant smoked cheese taste, and Falstaff's Real Ale -- floral and light with the tea-like flavour of English bitter. Getting heavier, there's King Lear Old Ale which is utterly black, heavy and very dry. The stout is a fairly easy-drinking affair called Willpower Stout which has gentle coffee and chocolate notes in the background. There's one last ale at the Shakespeare called Puck's Pixil(l)ation a mega-strong, super-sweet ale, much smoother than its Belgian counterparts like Bush, having a candy sugar foretaste and a wonderful toffee aftertaste. Satisfyingly complex.

Right, that's your lot from NZ. Long may its varied beer culture thrive.

More beer from Aotearoa

Where was I? Oh yes, small New Zealand breweries. "Small" covers a sizeable range, however, so I'll try to do this with some sense of scale.

Moa claim to be the boutiquest of boutique breweries, with every bottle enunciating its rareness. It's certainly quite hard to find. Methode Moa is their wonderful lager - cloudy and strongly flavoured with a very tight frothy head. Moa Noir is a deep dark stout with smooth coffee and chocolate notes. Moa Blanc is a witbier in the dry French style which I'm not terribly fond of, but is nowhere near as severe as most of them. Where I would criticise Moa is the difficulty in opening their crown caps. Those three bottles all took a couple of lumps out of me before they fulfilled their destinies.

The Baroona range I could have covered with the brewpubs as I tried them all on site at Onetangi Road on Waiheke Island. However, they are sold elsewhere, apparently. Original is a strongly flavoured and slightly cloudy golden ale, reminiscent of its Belgian cousins. Weiss is a remarkably clear and rather bland beer which claims to be unfiltered. Dark is the best of the bunch, being thick, flat and caramel-sweet. It was almost closer to a liqueur than a beer. Finally, the seasonal at the time was a dark ale called The Full Malty. Though 7.5% alcohol, it was quite light and easy-going with a gentle fizz and a mild roasted coffee taste.

I've already covered Cardrona Gold from the Wanaka beerworks. It has two stablemates: Brewski, a slightly bland pilsener, and Tall Black, which is a heavy, gently sparkling, dry stout reminiscent of that produced by Ireland's microbreweries.

The Tuatara brewery (named after New Zealand's rare native reptile) makes six beers, of which I tried four. Ardennes is another golden ale, perhaps a little lighter than Duvel but otherwise very similar. The IPA is everything an IPA should be: deep amber and slightly cloudy with lots and lots of hops thrown in. Heffe is a lighter version of German weiss -- fairly fruity but somewhat hollow and watery as well. Very unchallenging. Their Porter is a fizzy effort, yet remains headless. It's quite mild with only a trace of burnt caramel in the aftertaste.

Emerson's is a Dunedin institution, though not anywhere near as ubiquitous as its near neighbour Speight's. I only managed to try three of the many beers they have on offer, but I was very impressed with what I found. Old '95 is a rich and bitter ale, while their 10th Anniversary IPA is another strong and flavoursome IPA. Maris Gold is a strange but pleasant blonde beer with a vibrant citrus kick to it.

Dunedin's other big brewery is Speight's -- "Pride of the South" and a legend in New Zealand beer. Largely because of their TV ads, as far as I can determine. I've already covered their Gold Medal Ale but they have a few others. Their IPA is rather dull, and the red beer they call Distinction Ale wins the prize for Most Unsuitable Name, being quite indistinct and forgettable. Speight's Porter is better, being dry and fizzy with a great real stout flavour. Old Dark, however, is their champion: a super-sweet red-black ale which reminded me of the Netherlands' lip-smacking Oud Bruin beers. For a limited period, Speight's was also making a Chocolate Ale which is based on a fairly light ale, allowing the full chocolate flavour to come through. The end result is somewhere between Young's and Floris in the chocolate stakes, and quite delicious.

Mac's brewery runs a number of brewpubs, including one at its headquarters on the quays in Wellington. They also sell their beers through off-licenses and other pubs as well. Mac's Black is very popular with the locals, but I found it somewhat lacking in oomph, being nearly closer to a dunkel than a stout. Wicked Blonde is a decent grainy microbrewed lager while Sassy Red is an aromatic red ale, supposedly like English bitter but more like quality Irish red to me. Copperhead is a toned-down version of the Sassy, like a better class of Smithwick's. Mac's Blonde is a spiced wheat beer, clear with a slight citrus edge. They also do a German-style crystal weiss called Verboten Vice, light and fruity like Franziskaner, and a sharper Erdinger/banana tasting weiss called Great White. I think someone at Mac's likes wheat beer. Lastly there's Mac's Mojo, an extremely tasty, heavy, smoky dunkel.

The last brewery for this post brings us to the west coast of South Island and Montieth's of Greymouth. Their Original is covered below, but they also do a dry smooth Pilsener and a Munich-style lager called Golden (lighter than the likes of Spaten or Hofbrau, however). Their Radler isn't a true radler (shandy) at all, but a full-strength lager flavoured with generous amounts of lemon and lime, resulting in something much tastier than the likes of Hoegaarden Citron or Superbock Green. On the ale side, Montieth's Winter Ale claims flavouring with cinnamon but I found it quite disappointing with only the fainest trace of spice in the taste. There's also Celtic Red which is blander than most Irish reds, having only slight caramel notes, and Black, which is apparently not a true stout but tastes very much like one: strong and sweet, yet fairly smooth and easy-drinking. On tap at the brewery in Greymouth they had one further beer for me to try which they had not yet announced the name of. It's a super-hopped green-tasting ale, almost like a hemp beer, but not overpoweringly vegetal. It's due to be launched, with a name, in a week or two. I'll try and recognise it in order to report back.

Phew. So that just leaves the brewpubs...

Miscellaneous kiwis

New Zealand certainly has no shortage of breweries. As well as several big players and a couple of brewpub chains there are innumerable small-to-middle-sized operations all making a surprisingly wide range of beers. In the time I was there I could only hope to get a taster of what was on offer from these breweries, and with several I only managed to try one of their beers. So before I move on to the breweries I am most familiar with, this post is about the individual beers whose stablemates never reached me.

Duncan's Founder's range offers a broad selection of beers, of which Generation Ale was the only one I managed to try. It's a very smooth and satisfying dry nutty brown ale. Monk's Habit is an even more complex bitter with a strong burst of grapefruit on the nose and a taste both fruity and spicy at once. Green Man Organic Bitter is remarkably pale, but is most definitely bitter - probably the bitterest bitter in New Zealand. It has a full-on vegetal taste with notes of sprouts and broccoli, but in a good way.

On the lager front, the local Indian-style curry lager is called Monsoon which isn't a success, being blander and fizzier than Cobra or Kingfisher which it is presumably trying to emulate. The Pig and Whistle bar in Rotorua serve an own-brand lager called Swine which is very light, but carried an overtone of mustiness which spoiled it for me and I'm not sure if it was intended. Could be I just got a bad pint.

The Limburg brewery make a Witbier which is both orange in colour and taste. So overpoweringly fruity is this one that drinking more than 33cl would be a tall order, I think.

Lastly, and most interestingly, is Spruce Beer. The label claims this is based on an original recipe used on Captain Cook's voyages and incorporating the nearest thing New Zealand has to spruce, the rimua, as well as tea-tree leaves. The result is a fairly smooth beer but with a bizarre and distracting mediciney taste. It's certainly nothing at all like Scotland's real spruce beer Alba. Still, Kiwi as.

The Down Under fundamentals

Back from my travels with much to report. After Singapore the rest of my time was spent in New Zealand. I was quite surprised that it has a wide and varied brewing culture very unlike its larger neighbour across the Tasman Sea. Small breweries abound, and the variety of product is impressive. I think I scratched the surface by trying seventy different beers, so it'll take me a few posts to get through them all. This one is about the basics.

What struck me most of all is that the basic beer style, the one that almost everyone makes whether they're a mega-corporation or a small brewpub, is not a lager but a light amber ale. The biggest brewery in the country is Auckland's Lion Nathan and they make Lion Red. It's rather plain, light and unchallenging. Tui is another common brand, and one step up, I think, being drier and more interesting than Lion. (Like Tui, lots of kiwi beers are named after local fauna - before the end of this we'll have had tuataras, moas and a black shag). Waikato Draught is an odd example of this type of beer. It claims on the label to be "Bitter Beer" but is in fact very sweet, almost sugary. It's pleasant for all that though and goes down very easy.

Moving away from the industrial end of the market, Speight's Gold Medal Ale is ubiquitous in the South Island especially and is pretty decent if a little unexciting. Though it is definitely an ale it's light enough to remind me of Carlsberg more than anything else. Monteith's is the other small South Island brewery punching above its weight. It's Original is also quite plain and easy drinking. Cardrona Gold from the Wanaka Beerworks is probably the best of this lot - leaning away from the pale ale towards the more flavoursome IPA. It is dry and zesty as well as pleasantly light. There will be more from these three breweries in later posts.

Of course, basic lager is inevitable everywhere. Steinlager is probably the commonest in NZ. It's in the bitter German style, reminiscent of Beck's in taste as well as the label. Export Gold is a rather more non-descript fizzy lager, as is the rarer Canterbury Draught. Neither are recommended, given the many alternatives in every bar.

That will do for a taster. I promise more interesting beers to come.