Last week I told you about a brewery called 3 brewers in Lemon Bay in Noumea, New Caledonia. Well this week I'm going to tell you about the other craft brewery/brewpub in Noumea called Brasserie Village or Village Brewery. It is in the downtown area of Noumea and is much closer to what we would see from a craft brewery back home in Australia, or indeed a craft brewery pretty much everywhere in the world.
That is to say - hop driven beers, all hazy and whatnot, beer names with puns in them, some stainless tanks down the side of the bar and I have to say given how busy this place was on a Friday evening I can tell you the people of Noumea are looking for this type of craft brewery.
Let's talk about the space first - this is in a place (possibily also called The Village where it appears every person in Noumea aged between 20 and 40 is - it is an old colonial style building which is a shared space of about 8 or so resturants, bars, and one brew pub, everyone is sitting outside and it appears, foodcourt like you can take stuff from one place to the other. Tucked in the corner, below the arches is this little craft brewery
But what of the beer I hear you ask. Well here is the list of what we had to choose from...
The best three- well the one pictured right at the top of this post - Cashmere if you can (you see the punny names) It was made with Cahmere hops, but it wasn't too overpowering, rather it was a very well balanced, very drinkable hoppy lager.
These two - which are Bob's IPA (in could be from anywhere surfer guise which there isn't much of in New Calendonia on the label, or is he kite surfing? which there is a lot of in Noumea) it was a fairly standard IPA, but all very well made. The very amber looking one is actually the Etienne Idaho, which claimed to be a Americian Pale Ale, clearly with a bit of sun tan from the New Caledonian sun, made with Idaho hops it was pretty good without being spectacular, but given we are a long way from hops fields and Idaho it's a fair effort.
And finally this one - call Stalactite, which was a reasonable golden ale, next to a ashtray which was of course everywhere in Noumea as everyone is French and therefore constantly smoking which as an Australian where almost no one smokes I find very strange.
Oh and just to prove this is a brewpub here are the tanks, I should mention this is a brewpub of a (maybe) larger craft brewery called Neocallitropsis which (maybe) brew somewhere else in New Calendonia, but appear to have awful distribution as I didn't see their brews anywhere else. It's all a little confusing, but I do know that if you find yourself in Noumea on a Friday night you should follow the crowds to Village, and seek out their beers becuase they are pretty darn good.