hoptimus prime
I’ve been slightly obsessed with idea of Cold IPA for a while now. The idea of a lighter bodied, dry beer with the full hoppiness of an IPA sounds like something I should love, but I’ve struggled a little bit with a few I’ve tried. They’ve all been OK-good but not amazing-good. Simplistically I see Cold IPA as the other side of a line from an India Pale (Japanese?) Lager. The “cold” references the fermentation temperature in that they can be brewed with an ale yeast at lower temperatures to minimise esters, or alternatively a lager yeast at a higher temperature for slightly more vigorous fermentation that reduces the trademark sulphur notes of lager. Either way it’s about creating a blank enough canvas for the hops to shine. And when I had Good George’s Cold IPA this week, it clicked for me: it was dank, tropical and citrussy with low esters and good bitterness pushing towards astringent relative to the light body. It was slightly low on carbonation but too much CO2 would have pushed the perceived bitterness too high. The question is whether these beers have a home with consumers. For lager drinkers it could be way too hoppy, for IPA lovers it might be too light-bodied. But I loved this one.

Eddyline Hoptimus Prime Fresh Hop WCIPA

Fresh hop season is well and truly upon us now, with a deluge of fresh releases landing day by day. It’s been less a case of hunting them out and more one of deciding what to choose… The beginning of the season usually means a lot of hazy beers in the first wave while...

Hazzy Hunter vs Browns Bay Brewing Co

Andrew Ranum joined Deep Creek in 2016 as their General Manager. When the brewery sold the brewpub in Browns Bay, Andrew left his GM role and became a part-owner and brewer at Browns Bay Brewing Co.  He goes face to face with Joshua Lee aka Hazzy Hunter. Hazzy...

Mac Hops Celebrates 125 Years Growing Hops

Mac Hops in Motueka celebrated 125 years of growing hops with a bumper harvest, but it was also a harvest that summed up the tough nature of hop-growing — both now and historically. “We had some great yields come through but unfortunately it's not a great year to have...

The Beer Project — Mount Brewing

Paweł Lewandowski, head brewer at Mount Brewing, isn't supposed to be here. He was travelling around the world with a plan to spend a little bit of time brewing in New Zealand and Australia before heading home to Poland to start his own brewery. Eight years later he...

Coromandel — One Door Closes, Another Opens

When we began brewing at the Coromandel Brewing Company, “craft beer” was barely on anyone’s radar. The most common response when offering new customers a craft beer was, “craft what?”. Fast forward to today, and the landscape has changed dramatically. While...

Mr Good Bar — Liberty Beers & Burgers

What sweeter thing to do on a sunny Auckland Saturday, I thought, than hit the road northwest for a bite and a beer in a town called Helen. Just 50 fairly easy kilometres from the city, here’s Helensville, named for a woman no-one much remembers anymore. She was Helen...