g,day all. back from our southern nz trip and cannot recommend it highly enough. spectacular scenery and sensasational beers to boot. stop 1 spieghts brewery/ale house in dunedin the ale house is a resteraunt in an old part of the brewery that is decked out with copper pipes, a wood and stone bar,etc absoloutly spot on. and bloody good food . i gave their distinction ale and pale ale a bash and both came up trumps.next in dunedin was emersons brewery and what a h,bers delight it was,i lobbed on the door step explained who i was,where i am from, as well as explaining that i am a h,ber and frequent the ahb brew site and the doors were thrown opened for me! i was given a guided tour, and a run down on the basic brewery operations (no i did not ask about the recipe side of operations ) ang was given a sample of their organic pilsner out of the holding tank which had 500 litres of the loverly gear in it.i was allowed to take photos and will post them as soon as my son comes home and shows me how.emersons are moving to a larger premises soon because their brews have become so popular they are having trouble keeping up with the demand on supplies.emersons pilsner and emersons 1812 india pale ale are with out a doubt fanbloodytastic.a huge thankyou to jeff for allowing me in and giving the tour,letting me take photos and for putting up with my little boy in a lollie shop mentallity cheers mate.next sampling stop was at dux de lux in queenstown nor'wester pale ale an award winning beer as with emersons and rightly so,beer lovers paradise does exist. stop3 wanaka beer works ,this unfortunatly was a whistle stop and was unable to take a tour as they are held in the afternoons and i was strapped for time,so i grabbed a sixmix a tee shirt,had a quick chat and hit the road much to my regret but hey i can always go back,which i will.just down the road is the warbirds over wanaka aircraft museum and as i pulled up an old p52 mustang fighter was preping for a flight and man when it fired up whhhoaaa imagine 100 harleys starting all at the same time.he lifted off opened the throttles and dissappeared (love beer love planes love flying) last stop dux de lux christchurch top spot no joke! nor'wester pale ale,blue duck draught,dux lager,hereford bitter oohh the memories (the whole purpose of this trip was just me and the better half cellebrating our 20 anniversrie and visiting some top class micros was a bonus oooohhh the memories ha ha) nz has so many breweries and micros the list is staggering one i missed in dunedin is mcduffs brewery in christchurch. harringtons,east west brewery,wigram brewery,milkshedbrewing.in queenstown the otago brew pub and the loaded hog brewpub.robson brewing co timaru,shamrock brewing co in palmerston.many of these beers i bought from local shops and sampled. as we were only there for a week it was impossible to visit and try them all and there are many more breweries in the northern end of the south island.so go on get over there we went via virgin pacific and it was cheap, 3 hours and you are there,the kiwis may not be able to play cricket but f%^& me they sure as hell know how to make a world class beer spog,s rank is finished for now atleast i will with the photos give the web sites i found cheers. :chug: