Recently there has been some dispute over who is NZ’s beer
capital, Nelson or Wellington? Who really cares so long as whilst performing
the beerienteering, the journey between each brew bar is short? Nelson has its cycleways
and a brew ride whereas Welly has the buses. For $9:50 you can have an
unlimited amount of bus rides per day, getting as far north as Upper Hutt,
visiting the 16 watering holes listed on the Welly brew map, before arriving at
Upper Hutt, where coincidently is Upper Hutt’s first brewery ‘Kereru Brewing’.
If Kereru sounds a bit ‘oh naturale’, well, they are.
Priding themselves on “making beers vegan and free of chemical preservatives”, something
I’m certainly in favour of, not wanting any animals in my beer.
A fine example of Kereru’s ethos is a gluten free beer
called ‘Auro’ the Latin word for gold. It’s precisely that, a golden liquid with
a white wine aroma. How they get such a crisp clean almost sour taste without
any malted barley or wheat grain is beyond me? If I was gluten intolerant I’d
be thanking the hop gods for this easy to drink refreshing drop that belies its
5%abv.
Another all natural preservative free Kereru brew is the Silverstream
Pale Ale: The style is called an ’ordinary bitter’ but this one is a mildly-hopped
session beer. It’s malt biscuity, slightly sweet and has hints of a balancing
wheat sharpness. At 3.8% this is an all
day cricket watching quencher, with enough flavour to keep you hoppily sipping
between overs.
The armchair beer of the Kereru range is ‘Hop To It Pale Ale’,
5.9%. An assertively-hopped IPA. Hoppy
wood aroma, smooth fullish body with citrusy almost lemony bitter hop flavour and
a bisecting maltyness through the middle. A taste rollout from the ‘not over
the top’ bitter, to sensitively sweet, perfect at the end of a stressful day.
Here’s the thing, Nelson officially is NZ’s craft beer
capital and the bus fortunately goes past the Nelson Fresh Choice, which is
Nelson’s craft beer capital.
Denis ‘crack the good stuff’ Cooper
