This wee new release from Urbanaut is a true lite beer at only 2.5% ABV; well past the dubiously broad ‘session’ bracket.  As such, it has the incredibly hard task of bringing the absolute minimum amount of malt to bear without the flavour falling into an insipid fizzy abyss.  So can this one pull it off? The aroma absolutely does, bringing sweet orange citrus, peach and white grape with an impact you’d expect in something at least twice the strength.  But the nose is the easy part, it’s the palate where the balancing act so often topples for these lite beers, but Juno, I’m pleased to say, lands it confidently.  Rather than presenting any huge upfront fruit, the flavour starts off mild and stays mild, which allows those hop driven aspects to sustain through to the finish, avoiding the trap of collapsing the mid-palate by trying to balance too many hops on top of it. This is a lite beer that really nails it, and it’s also not the first really good low ABV hazy I’ve encountered this year.  As much as I’m not a fan of the hazy application in big double IPAs, I think hazy really has something going for it on the other end of the spectrum.

Small & Perfectly Foamed

The year is 1850-something. Karl Marx, Edgar Bauer, and Wilhelm Liebknecht are on a pub crawl down London’s Tottenham Court Road. In one public house, by now full of ale, they clash with the fraternal order of Odd Fellows. The clash turns to high jinks on the streets,...

Brewing Up A Storm In ‘Chiefs Country’

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...

Riding Auckland’s City Ale Link

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...

The Hoptimist — Double Vision Brewing

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...

Urbanaut install bodyguard against ‘silent killer’

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...

Shining Peak Shining Bright Three Years Running

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...