I was planning to go spend a day visited bars and breweries in Wellington New Zealand when I was there over the Easter weekend a few weeks ago. I knew in the back of my mind that Wellington was the stronger of the two North Island cities for Craft Beer. I'd heard people call it the 'craft beer capital of NZ'
So that in my mind I'd set aside the Saturday for a bit of a 'pub crawl' and set about doing some research into it, in this research I came upon a organisation called Craft Beer Capital who seem to be a collective (I little like Crafty Pint back home in Melbourne, Australia) who promote all sorts of beery things in Wellington, but more importantly it would seem that completely by chance I would be there for the 'HopStock Festival' which maybe was that hard to do because it is a month long festival in April which coincides with Fresh Hop harvest. The concept is simple, something like 24 bars/breweries beer a special one off beer using fresh hops which is then available for the festival at their venues.
But was was an amazing coincidence is that Saturday, the one day we had to drink in Wellington was when Craft beer capital ran their HopStock Bus Tour, where they get 20-25 people together and you go from venue to venue and taste their fresh hop beers. This would be easier than me trying to work out where to go in a strange city, plus new people to drink with.
So at 1pm on Saturday we walked into our first venue 'Fortune Favours' we spot someone with a 'HopStock' t-shirt on, and assuming they were the staff we are looking for approach them. Nope it turns out that what Jillian was wearing was an old HopStock t-shirt, she was just another drinker like us, but she had been to this event every year for the last 15 years, she introduced us to her Husband and we had our first drinking buddies for the day - it's that simple in Craft Beer world.
It turns out that they staff we upstairs. Jillian new this she was just having a sneaking drink downstairs before we started as she was running a little early. What I actually needed was the people in the bright yellow t-shirts.
And after a briefing, we got underway with our first festival beer and our first lot of food. The beer was a pretty solid standard IPA called Sticky Fingers. But after 30 minutes or so it was off to our second venue (07), which was actually walking distance, the bus would only get invloved when we made a 3 venue suburban leg. This place was a 200m walk away. It was called Choice Bros. Choice is a word New Zealander's use a lot to mean good, and their beer, called Riwalkie Talkie Man, which was made with a famous New Zealand Hop Riwaka.
Now is probably a good time to point out that New Zealand is a great hop growing region, a little like Australia there are strains of hops which are unique to or originally developed in NZ, and unsurprisingly they use them a lot.
It was also a great time to jump on the bus and take the 15 minute drive out to Lower Hutt. The geography of Wellington is a little odd, it's on a bay, and surrounded by mountains, there isn't much room, so Lower Hutt and Upper Hutt are the two suburban areas (upper and lower of the Hutt river), and there isn't take much other than a road
Abandoned was an important Brewery, Char, who is the person in the yellow t-shirt in the top photo and one of our leaders was head brewer there and their HopStock beer was her recipe. and walking in there were ready for us. It was another pretty fresh and interesting beer, names Pork Fresh after the graffiti artist who had decorated their taproom, they had a whole abandoned look, menus on ripped up cardboard boxes, grafiti on the wall etc.
The hot tip from Char was to try the Lager, Now I don't normally seek out lagers, but this one was amazing and probably one of the best beers I had all day.
From there it was another walk to two other breweries in Petone, Sprig and Fern and Baylands. Baylands was the better of the two, with the Waifly 11 Fresh Hop IPA made with another classic NZ hop Nelson Sauvin which give white wine flavours.
Then back on the bus again, as the rain started falling and it started to get a little darker for the trip back into the city a stop at a bar called Rogue and Vagabond, which I get the feeling is one of those places you end up at the end of the night, We had some more food, as it was approaching dinner time and added more people to our drinking crew, including someone who has moved to Wellington the day before and had come on the tour to meet some locals - mission accomplished, we even had time here to stray from the 'free' hopstock beers to try a Mango and Coconut Sour from 8 Wired which was excellent.
And there a quick walk to our final offical stop - Heyday brewing which we a great little brewery, as we all sat outside we cheers to the day, had time to drink a few extra non hopped up beers, the Passionfruit Miso sour a highlight and discuss where we would go next. We broke off into three group, mine headed to Garage Projects Wild Workshop, but that's another story.
Ohhh, and Craft beer capital are so organised that we had the videogrpaher along for the ride, I may feature more than once in this instgram story