Henno
Beermologist
- Joined
- 19/2/07
- Messages
- 644
- Reaction score
- 12
First night in Christchurch was great. We lobbed at our room and found out that the Dux de Lux was about 200m down the road. Stopped in for one beer and to hit their ATM and see our first currency. Their notes aren't as pretty as ours but at least the size of their coins makes sense. We ended up at The Twisted Hop and were treated great by the bar manager, Dave when I told him I was a member of this site and the place had been recommended by guys on here. Sampled all their beers and the food was fantastic. I can't remember getting that excited by fish and chips before and Teri's salmon was cooked to perfection. Dave then suggested we come back tomorrow to meet the head brewer, Sean, and one of the owners, Stephen who I had been in contact with via email. We agreed to this and had a great tour of the brewery with Sean even though for some reason we both seemed to have sore heads from the night before. My faves here were Twisted's Challenger, Goldings Bitter and their new Oatmeal Stout. Teri loved the Three Boys wheat, this was a very refreshing lemon driven hoegaarden style, on a hot day I would gladly consume several litres of this myself.
A relatively new player in Christchurch is the Three Boys brewery. I rang the owner, Ralph, the next morning before going back to the Hop. Unfortunately he was too busy to hook up but said he had some beers he would drop down to the Hop later that day for me to try. Free beer, oh dear. Who am I to say no? I was so impressed I bought a few glasses before we left this wonderful city.
A quick note on another Christchurch establishment called the Dux de Lux. It's a pub. The bar staff looked at me blankly when I asked if I could see their brewery and I got 'Naa mate, we don't do that anymore' from a large tattooed gentleman. Don't get me wrong their beers were nice but to me they all tasted like the same hops, likely the famous kiwi sauvin, had been used in every one of them. When we got to Queenstown I decided to give the one there a go. The brewer actually let me in and he was making a 'wheat' beer. He recieves his yeast in a bucket which is sent down to him from Christchurch. The wheat beer uses an ale yeast and is brewed at 18 degrees. It did not taste like a wheat beer surprisingly. Again don't take this the wrong way, if they set up one of these here I would do backflips. Their beer is superior to anything you can get at my horrible local bottlo. They seem to have lost that hunger to excel though IMHO. When I go back to Chch it's straight back to the Twisted Hop for little ole me.
Stay tuned for my next post about Dunedin. We got treated even better down there!
A relatively new player in Christchurch is the Three Boys brewery. I rang the owner, Ralph, the next morning before going back to the Hop. Unfortunately he was too busy to hook up but said he had some beers he would drop down to the Hop later that day for me to try. Free beer, oh dear. Who am I to say no? I was so impressed I bought a few glasses before we left this wonderful city.
A quick note on another Christchurch establishment called the Dux de Lux. It's a pub. The bar staff looked at me blankly when I asked if I could see their brewery and I got 'Naa mate, we don't do that anymore' from a large tattooed gentleman. Don't get me wrong their beers were nice but to me they all tasted like the same hops, likely the famous kiwi sauvin, had been used in every one of them. When we got to Queenstown I decided to give the one there a go. The brewer actually let me in and he was making a 'wheat' beer. He recieves his yeast in a bucket which is sent down to him from Christchurch. The wheat beer uses an ale yeast and is brewed at 18 degrees. It did not taste like a wheat beer surprisingly. Again don't take this the wrong way, if they set up one of these here I would do backflips. Their beer is superior to anything you can get at my horrible local bottlo. They seem to have lost that hunger to excel though IMHO. When I go back to Chch it's straight back to the Twisted Hop for little ole me.
Stay tuned for my next post about Dunedin. We got treated even better down there!
