Winter Beer
Altitude Brewing are nestled on the shores of Lake Wakatipu in beautiful Queenstown. For this year’s fresh hop season, they have created two beers – both using the same base but hopped with Nelson Sauvin hops grown in two different parts of the South Island. The beer I’ve chosen today is hopped with Nelson Sauvin grown in the Nelson region and easily demonstrates those fresh-cut grass characters we all love. Some nice apricot aromas are in the mix and the beer is very smooth. The best part for me was the light oil slick left on my tongue that only fresh hops can deliver, a truly great time of the beer brewing year!

Winter Beer Selection — 20 Beers For The Colder Months

by | July 24, 2025 | Features, Cover Story | 0 Comments

Looking for a beer to keep you warm during the winter months? We've got you covered with our Winter Beer Selection Emerson's Deaf By Chocolate 9% / $17.99 500ml bottle Richard Emerson loves it when his ears burn. It either means he’s being talked about, or he’s...
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Brewing Up Fun — Double Vision Brewing

by | July 23, 2025 | Cover Story | 0 Comments

It all started when four friends, Mario, Warren, Evarn and Harry, decided to brew some beer together for fun. It soon got serious, leading to them building a brew bar in Miramar, just down the road from Weta, in 2018. Cash-poor, they did a lot of the work themselves....
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Instagratification: Dusty’s Best of the Winter releases 2025

by | July 23, 2025 | Opinion, Cover Story | 0 Comments

Photographer, beer-lover and Instagram influencer Dusty, picks his highlights from the latest releases from this winter. 8 Wired Betelgeuse Red IPA Cold snaps require comforting brews and 8 Wired brewing fill that brief here with their 6% Betelgeuse Red IPA, it's...
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Peter Lines — ‘Rest Easy Mate’

by | July 23, 2025 | News, Cover Story | 0 Comments

Peter Lines (July 29, 1957 — June 28, 2025) grew up surrounded by hops and spent more than 50 years working the land — which is exactly what he was doing when he died in a freak accident on June 28. Peter died when he was struck by a tree when trying to clear flood...
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UPDATED: How Many Breweries In NZ?

by | July 11, 2025 | Features | 0 Comments

What follows is an updated version of the list of how many brewing brands (Updated July 11, 2025; re-edited July 15 based on reader feedback). I started out in 2022 asking the question: How often have you seen the “fact” that New Zealand has around 220 breweries? It’s...
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Mr Good Bar — Two Thumb

by | July 9, 2025 | Travel | 0 Comments

Sniff in the right direction and Christchurch might smell a little more hopped up than it used to be. There’s more beer here than before, so much, in fact, that the Canterbury conurbation has been making cheeky claims to be the new crafty capital of Aotearoa New...
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