McLeod’s Brewery

The origins of McLeod’s Brewery were in 2003 when brothers Geoff and Clayton Gwynne bought the well-established Pizza Barn in Waipu, the Scottish-settled beachside town two hours north of Auckland.

The brewery was opened a decade later but really took off in terms of national prominence when they hired Jason Bathgate as head brewer. Bathgate, a chef by trade and from Vermont in the United States, learned his brewing craft at Renaissance in Blenheim and then 8 Wired in Warworth.

He is renowned for his perfectionist approach to a broad range of styles, from the Longboarder Lager through to barrel-aged Belgian styles. But McLeod’s are now synonymous with the 802 series of unfiltered pale ales, named for the Vermont post code where the New England IPA was first created.