Shining Peak Gung Ho!
Last year, in a review I introduced the term “dankidy-dank” and Gung Ho! from Shining Peak deserves the same loving description!  Shining Peak have been smashing it out of the park recently and their entry in this year fresh hop line up is up there with the best! The beer itself is rather light and very clean which allows those big grassy characteristics to shine through.  The beer is nicely bittered, full of resins which leave your lips lovingly coated in oily goodness!  Gung Ho! now sits in number one position in my fresh hop ratings for 2022 — who will knock them off in the coming weeks?

Brewing Up A Storm In ‘Chiefs Country’

by | September 14, 2026 | Cover Story, Features | 0 Comments

Their team might have been thrashed in the Super Rugby final but brewers from Chiefs' country were the big winners at the NZ Beer Awards, turning the tables on their rivals from the capital by eight trophies to one. And frankly, it could have been 10 to one if we play...
Read More

Riding Auckland’s City Ale Link

by | September 10, 2026 | Cover Story | 0 Comments

The City Rail Link has been Aotearoa’s biggest infrastructure project. Aucklanders have got used to the city centre being a mess of dug-up streets, barriers and road cones for what seems like decades. But over recent months, excitement has been building as the...
Read More

The Hoptimist — Double Vision Brewing

by | September 9, 2026 | Cover Story, Features | 0 Comments

How do you connect an all-terrain stroller with Double Vision Brewing’s Expatriate American Pale Ale? Well… it’s not exactly written in the Phil & Teds instruction manual, but the answer involves four workmates: Mario, Warren, Evarn and Harry — proof that...
Read More

Urbanaut install bodyguard against ‘silent killer’

by | September 9, 2026 | Features | 0 Comments

Urbanaut Brewing in Auckland are the first craft brewery to install a LogiCO2 carbon dioxide monitoring system to protect staff and patrons against a “silent killer”. Urbanaut founder Bruce Turner said CO2 monitoring was on his to-do list when he started the brewery...
Read More

Shining Peak Shining Bright Three Years Running

by | September 9, 2026 | News | 0 Comments

You have to go back to 2023 to find the last time Shining Peak missed a medal at the New Zealand Beer Awards. The champion small brewery — for the third time in four years — scored a perfect 20 out of 20 medals at the 2026 event. It was the most medals won by a...
Read More

Pilsners Power to Podium

by | September 8, 2026 | Features | 0 Comments

The two best competition beers in New Zealand this year are pilsners — and two absolute classics. Curiously they both come from craft breweries under the Lion umbrella, and they both use Riwaka hops (of course). What they also have in common is the way they push the...
Read More