Best beer experience: The Free House, Nelson. Summer. Twilight. Hand-pulled Townshend’s beer. To paraphrase Josh Ritter (Me & Jiggs): You know it’s perfect because you have to leave. Best non-quite beer experience: Lucky enough to get a tour of Garage Project’s Marion St wild and barrel-aging brewery, co-founder Jos Ruffell proffered me a glass from […]

I preface the following list with the plain fact that it’s now impossible for me – or anyone – to sample all the beer produced in New Zealand in any given year. I’d struggle to keep up with the output of breweries in a 25km radius of my house … so there’s nothing definitive about […]

There’s a short list of breweries responding appropriately when challenged over poor marketing but Garage Project’s decision to discontinue the label and name of Death From Above, and perhaps stop brewing the beer altogether, is a positive reaction, and outcomes to an unfortunate episode. You could argue that Garage Project took a little too long […]

Pinning down the late Terry McCashin was no easy task. When I started researching my first book, Beer Nation – The Art and Heart of Kiwi Beer, the first person pencilled in for an interview was Terry McCashin, who died suddenly yesterday, aged 73. The framework for the book pivoted on the year 1981 when […]