hoptimus prime

A new all-American hopped West Coast IPA from Taupo’s Lakeman, with Amarillo, Citra and Zythos in the mix.  There’s lime and grapefruit up first on the nose, with a distinct Zythos’y tangerine note rising further back.  Remarkably focused grapefruit on the palate, with some pine and very faint passionfruit mixed in with the light and fresh malt base.  All good stuff, but the most striking thing about this 6.9 per cent IPA is the bitterness.  It kicks in right from the front of the palate, like chomping straight down on a grapefruit (skin and all), and it stays meshed with the citrus flavour right through to the finish.  Impactful, arresting and laser focused on its style.  One of the top IPAs I’ve tasted this year.

Eddyline Hoptimus Prime Fresh Hop WCIPA

by | April 7, 2025 | Recommended | 0 Comments

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...
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Hazzy Hunter vs Browns Bay Brewing Co

by | April 7, 2025 | Cover Story | 0 Comments

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...
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Mac Hops Celebrates 125 Years Growing Hops

by | April 4, 2025 | Features | 0 Comments

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...
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The Beer Project — Mount Brewing

by | April 2, 2025 | Cover Story | 0 Comments

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...
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Coromandel — One Door Closes, Another Opens

by | March 31, 2025 | Travel | 0 Comments

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...
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Mr Good Bar — Liberty Beers & Burgers

by | March 31, 2025 | Travel | 0 Comments

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...
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A photographer, a bass player and a businessman walk into a bar… 

by | March 31, 2025 | Cover Story | 0 Comments

… And the rest is history for the quaint Arrowtown Brewing Co. The brewery was founded in 2017 when three Arrowtown locals — photographer Michael Thomas, The Exponents bass player Dave Gent, and businessman Tim Hemingway — were enjoying a couple of pints and decided...
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Fresh Hops — A Cheeky Guide

by | March 21, 2025 | Opinion | 0 Comments

Having written about fresh hops for around 15 years I sometimes wonder if there’s anything new to say — but after talking to American hop professor Tom Shellhammer recently, I find myself not only wanting to sample as many fresh hop beers as possible, to try all the...
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Aussie Pirate Washes Ashore in NZ

by | March 14, 2025 | Features | 0 Comments

Former Aussie “pirate” Jared Proudfoot is now a Kiwi landlubber. Proudfoot, known as Red, co-founded the hugely successful Pirate Life in Australia — a brewery that was sold to global giant AB InBev for $10 million in 2017. He’s now settled in Geraldine where he’s...
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First-Timers Win 2025 Rare Beer Challenge

by | March 14, 2025 | News | 0 Comments

New Plymouth’s Shining Peak Brewery were crowned — or capped, as it were — the winners of the fifth annual Rare Beer Challenge on March 7. Hosted by Wellington’s Fortune Favours Brewery, this year there was not only a sister bar in Auckland serving the beers on the...
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Moa Superdelic IPA

by | March 10, 2025 | Recommended | 0 Comments

As much as it was exciting to see the recent Superdelic hop step onto the stage of commercial New Zealand varieties, it’s one I’ve been struggling to really love when put in the lead of an IPA. That red berry confectionary note has always come on a bit strong. Perhaps...
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Sunshine Brewing Wants Sale or Merger

by | March 10, 2025 | News | 0 Comments

New Zealand’s oldest craft brewery, Sunshine Brewing in Gisborne, looking for new owners or — more intriguingly — seeking expressions of interest for a merger with an existing brand. The move comes as the trio of existing owners, who have been at the helm for the past...
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Green, Fruity, Dank … Tom Shellhammer On Hops

by | March 4, 2025 | Features | 0 Comments

For a hop scientist, a months-long summer holiday coinciding with the annual hop harvest in New Zealand is a dream sabbatical. Tom Shellhammer is a Professor of Fermentation Science at Oregon State University where he leads the brewing science education and research...
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Hop Federation Concrete Jungle

by | March 3, 2025 | Recommended | 0 Comments

Fresh off the line this week Hop Federation Concrete Jungle is this bright version of the (also rather good) Inflation hazy IPA that dropped a little earlier in the year.  Sporting an identical 6% ABV and hop bill of Idaho 7, Rakau, and Nectaron, the difference here...
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Instagratification: Dusty’s Best of the Summer releases 2025

by | March 3, 2025 | Opinion | 0 Comments

Photographer, beer-lover and Instagram influencer Dusty, picks his highlights from the latest releases heading into summer. Sprig + Fern Ridgy Didge Crikey! What a lil ripper! Sprig + Fern’s latest sud tube Ridgey Didge is an all-Aussie hopped 4.4% hazy pale ale...
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Homebrewing — Dry Vs Liquid Yeast

by | March 3, 2025 | Features | 0 Comments

One of the great things about home brewing is the new avenues of exploration and opportunities to improve that open up to the inquisitive mind. There is always something new to learn and a way to improve that last batch of beer. Consider yeasts. There are umpteen...
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Chinchiller Yeti Fuel Cold IPA

by | February 18, 2025 | Recommended | 0 Comments

Once Canterbury brewers have picked it up, then a style has officially hit the mainstream… that might be a slightly facetious take in these modern times, but as a Canterbury drinker, I think I’m qualified to say that’s still a little bit true. Nevertheless, Cold IPA...
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Salt District Brewing Closing Down

by | February 17, 2025 | News | 0 Comments

A bright newcomer to the beer scene is closing up after less than three years — and not because they weren’t successful. Liam Blunden started Salt District Brewing in Whangamata in 2022 with a tiny 100-litre brew kit located in a relaxed tasting room. It was the first...
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McLeod’s Brewer Jason Bathgate Moving to Nelson

by | February 14, 2025 | News | 0 Comments

Martin Townshend will keep brewing his “ales of the unexpected”, Jason Bathgate will return to his spiritual home, and a yet-to-be-known brewer will get the chance of a lifetime at McLeod's in Northland. That's the win-win-win scenario unfolding after Townshend sold...
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Beers Banana Man Hefeweizen

by | February 10, 2025 | Recommended | 0 Comments

Hefeweizen is one of those slightly cursed styles that seems to be forever relegated to the margins of craft beer, and I get why. As an intrinsically different drop, the more a brewer embraces what makes them special, the further the beer will land outside the...
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