11,894 miles

I do love the Google Maps street view thingy. For this month's Session we've been asked to talk about a beer from the furthest brewery we've ever been to -- a topic hand-picked for a checklist beer tourist like me -- and Google Maps lets me wander up and down Rattray Street in Dunedin, home of the Speight's Brewery which I visited back in 2006 and is the most distant one I've been to. Look: you can even see the free water fountain to the left of the front door which the brewery provides for the townsfolk.

It's just a shame that the beers made by Speight's (a division of all-conquering antipodean drinks giant Lion Nathan) are mostly not very good. I really enjoyed a couple of them though -- the Old Dark and Chocolate Ale -- but all you ever see here is the flagship Gold Medal Ale.

New Zealand must be one of very few countries in the world -- alongside Ireland and the UK -- where the default beer style isn't lager. Instead it's a bland, light red ale generally called "Draught". Like Irish reds, I assume that there is a full flavoured English pale ale somewhere in its ancestry, but big brewing interests have shaped the national taste to their own nefarious ends, and New Zealand Draught is the cold, dull result.

It took a fair bit of effort to track down a bottle in Dublin, but the redoubtable Deveney's in Dundrum was able to meet my needs. Mind you, since this is brewed in factories in Christchurch and Auckland as well as the headquarters down in Dunedin, I can be fairly sure that the particular bottle I had did not actually come from the brewery I visited. I hope that doesn't put me outside the Session rules.

My abiding memory of the beer, as recorded after first meeting it, was that it tasted like Carlsberg. Now, nearly three years later, I think it's actually worse. It's very watery and slightly musty, despite being several weeks inside its best-before. There's a trace of a caramel malt sweetness somewhere at the back, but it's gone in an instant. It may be an ale on a technicality, but this is far closer to generic world lager than the ale it probably once was.

For me, however, the pleasure of travel is far more in the anticipation than the memories. I've drank beer on all but one of Earth's inhabited continents; only South America has eluded me so far. To get a little bit of a vicarious thrill from a far-away brewery, I picked up two beers from a Brazil's Cervejarias Kaiser. First up is Palma Louca, their pale lager. Not much by way of a head on this one and the fizz is fine and balanced. I thought I detected a whiff of vinegar from it on pouring, but I may have imagined it as it is fairly odourless and as light in the taste department as it is in colour (very). But I have to say I quite liked it. It could easily have been an overly fizzy, sugar-laden monstrosity, or a watery concoction that barely resembles beer, but despite some scary E-numbered adjuncts, this is an easily quaffable no nonsense hot-country lager. If it's left to get warm, a hint of green apples appears, but letting it get warm is really not what this beer is about. It was slightly out of date so I paid €1 for it in DrinkStore and, drinking it on a stiflingly hot evening earlier this week, I couldn't help but feel I got my money's worth.

Xingu is the name of the brewery's black lager, also €1, but I don't think I did as well here. It looks attractive enough, with its tan head and dense brown body, and I think there's a pleasant, mild-like light coffee roastedness hidden in there somewhere. But for the most part it's as tasteless as the lager, and the little bit of flavour that does come through has a rather unpleasant brown sugar stickiness to it. Again it's far too bland to be actually considered bad, but it leaves you searching for the taste, and when you find it you feel you wasted the effort.

Like most of the world, I expect South America to be a mixed bag, beerwise. And isn't that half the joy of intercontinental beer travel? I wouldn't have it any other way.

Scoop life

Thanks to beer blogger Maeib for telling me what I am. I've been doing this blogging lark for over two years now, but it's just this month that I find I am a "scooper": one who samples beer widely and takes note of all. In Hilden on Saturday I felt my scoopness acutely. As far as I could see, I was the only one of my kind present. You could say it was me and my notebook that made it a proper beer festival. But you wouldn't.

Having finished with the Hilden brews, I turned first to Moorhouse's brewery in Lancashire. The pump clip of its Black Cat dazzles with bling from the Brewing Industry International Awards and CAMRA's Champion Beer of Britain. I was disappointed, however, and found the black ale rather bland. Their Premier Bitter isn't much better, being quite thin and the least bitter bitter I've ever encountered. I was similarly unimpressed with two beers from Sheffield's Abbeydale brewery: Moonshine, a dull and slightly musty pale ale, and Matins, a vaguely hopped even-paler blonde cousin. At the far end of the festival bar, ignored by everyone, was Damson Porter by Burton Bridge. The base here is a very light porter, touched on by some sour damson fruitiness. Flavourwise it could have done with a bit more of everything.

A total contrast was Flat Cap, from Bolton's Bank Top brewery. This is a light ale sporting a superb zesty hoppiness. E&S Elland in West Yorkshire are similarly unafraid of the hop plant, providing Bargee, a light, smooth but marvellously tasty bitter, and Beyond the Pale, a deceptively pale ale with a powerful dry hops flavour. Titanic Brewery in Stoke-on-Trent make Anchor, a weighty yet quaffable orange ale, with an excellent hop-malt balance. Triple Screw was their other brew, a foamy red-orange ale: smooth, caramelly and satisfyingly heavy.

My finds of the festival, however, came from Manchester's 3 Rivers brewery. Their Manchester IPA is mega-hoppy, full-tasting, aromatic and warming: ticking all the IPA boxes. They also supplied Old Disreputable, a beautiful sweet black ale, reminding me of the Speight's Old Dark I found in New Zealand and which I miss every now and then.

At this point the railway timetable forbade any further tasting, and I failed to achieve the full scoop. I can't overstate how much I enjoyed this sort of drinking and am already making plans for the CAMRA Belfast festival in November. I might even get a new notebook, special like.

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...