baylands waifly 8

Baylands Waifly, now in its eighth iteration, is one of the recurring fresh hop releases on my “can’t miss” list.  It’s routinely one of the very best every season, and this year’s is no exception.  Fresh Nelson Sauvin leads the charge on the nose, with gloriously fresh passionfruit sorbet alongside Waifly’s signature gummy bear lollies.  Ripe and fresh on the tongue with sharp citrus rind and a streak of cooling menthol before the firm bitterness grips the finish. Another exceptional vintage for a beer that Baylands can confidentiality regard as a New Zealand fresh hop classic.

Haagen Lager

As consumers, we all have two lines that constrain our habits.  Above, there’s the price ceiling, when the cost of beer gets above a certain point we’ll turn away.  That price ceiling has been talked about to death over the last five years (at least). ...

Boneface X Brave Cold IPA

Cracks are already appearing in the fresh hop dam… but before we’re completely awash in those impending releases — one more conventional IPA. The third in Boneface Brewing’s rolling series of collabs (this time from Hasting’s Brave Brewing) and quite possibly the best...

Sawmill Barrel-aged Imperial Porter

As a tribute to the official end of summer (or perhaps a final nail in the coffin, for those of us in Canterbury), I’ll turn to a more fireside coded drop, crafted by Matakana’s Sawmill brewery. In terms of its principle construction, this is a fairly simply patterned...

Boneface Knuckle Duster West Coast Pilsner

The ‘West Coast Pilsner’ style continues to wander through the craft beer labyrinth somewhat without a bearing, and drifts further from its (admittedly flawed from the beginning) descriptor in the process.  It’s as much as I can do to classify them as ‘good ones’ vs...

Bach Skinnay Ultra Low Carb Hazy Pale Ale

While low carb beers are bigger than they’ve ever been, it’s still uncommon to see the styles range too far from the lager safe-zone.  You’ll find a few zero% hazy IPA’s, but an actual low-carb-full-strength example is rarer.   Never idle for long,...

Epic Stout

While not to say that Epic is a total stranger to dark beer (they’ve made some extremely good ones over the years) it would be fair to say that it wasn’t exactly the style they’re known for.  So it was a surprise to see this one show up (and slickly presented too, I...