We had a wonderful afternoon visiting the Tui brewery and headquarters in Mangatainoka New Zealand, which is a short drive from Palmerston North on the North Island. What an awesome little set up the guys have, it is fantastic.  Set amongst farmland the historic Tui tower can be seen for miles so there’s no problem finding it.  There’s an amazing welcoming centre complete with bar and giftshop, plenty of outdoor seating and a huge expanse of grass to enjoy a beer or meal. The bar features some pretty interesting drops of beer too, not only do they serve the Tui we have come to love on our Beer tour of New Zealand but they also stock a couple of beers not sold anywhere else- so it’s pretty special.  Tui offer tours of the brewery which is amazing, seeing how they produce beer from the freshest of ingredients. The friendly staff not only show you behind the scenes of the brewing process they end the tour as all good tours should end finishes with a taste of their tasty brews you even get to take home a Tui glass- how good is that!

For more information: http://www.tui.co.nz/default.asp

Coopers is one of Australia’s great brewers and now you can make their magnificent beers at home with this great microbrew kit we found in the USA. The kit comes with everything you need to make beer.  There’s the brew tub, all the plumbing, spoons thermometers the lot. All you need to do is mix the supplied ingredients add some water then wait for the brew to bubble away and turn into beer. Then when ready bottle it in the bottles supplied and keep for a little while and before you know it, you will be drinking your very own Coopers Beer. Doesn’t sound too hard does it- well there’s an easy to follow DVD and book just to make it easier. This kit is a great kit for people starting out brewing and is sure to start what will be a rewarding and fun hobby making beer at a fraction of the price of the packaged stuff.   For more details

For more details

To find out more on this book click here

What better way to welcome in the new year and keep track of 2009 with this cool beer desk calendar. Every day- just like Hoppsy there’s a new beer story for you to read- you will be the envy of the whole office.  Pick one up cheap from Amazon and they will have it delivered to your door in a couple of days.

Well Christmas is only a little over a week away so its time to start panicking about those last few Chrissy gifts. How about a beer T-Shirt. Our friends at Amazon have some real funny ones- this one was one of our favorites- Out of Beer- Life is Crap…. Pretty well sums it up.  Take a look a their range there are some beauties- might just solve that gift problem.

Check it out here

If you want an enjoyable and interesting day out when visiting Singapore book yourself into the Tiger Brewery where you can not only learn how this tasty drop is produced but sample a little bit of it the end of the tour. For about $10 you can visit the brew house, the packaging hall and the beautiful Tiger Tavern. Located behind the Raffles Golf Course it is in easy reach of all of the island city by MRT and Bus. The brewery offers three tours most week days and is conducted in English. For most visitors other than the sample at the end the historic presentation of advertising and beer memorabilia is the highlight of the tour, there is some very cool antique beer making equipment and paraphernalia. Tiger is one of Asia’s biggest beers being brewed in both Singapore and Malaysia, it has won a whole trophy cabinet of prestigious awards for excellence over the years and is available in over 50 countries.

The brewery is located at 459 Jalan Ahmad Ibrahim Singapore 639934.

http://www.apb.com.sg/exp-breweryTour.html

I found this great book earlier on Amazon, Titled “300 Beers to try before you die!” and its well worth a read. Written by Roger Protz who has written some other great beverage books including “Beer Glorious Beer”, “Heavenly Beer : A Taster’s Guide to Monastery Tradition Ales and Lagers” and The Organic Beer Guide just to name a few. The book is a large format paperback with some great spreads on 300 beers. There is a good story for each beer, tracing it’s history and of course its taste. The book features plenty you have probably tried but there’s some interesting ones which no doubt you have never seen, this book might be just the thing to help you decide which bottle to purchase next time you are at the bottleo. The book has a really neat feature with a spot where you can tick off which beer you have tasted and even a spot to put your own review- so you can be the co-author- how cool is that! Check it out here!

We love robots just about as much as we love beer and this new product comes close to combining the two. First shown at the 2008 CES in Las Vegas the RC Remote Beer Cooler is just like a remote control car but with a Beer Cooler (read Esky in Oz or Chilly Bin in NZ) on top. The video above shows the unit in action at the show and if that tickles your fancy you can now preorder them. The unit runs on two C size batteries with the remote taking a 9 volt job. the cooler’s center part is made of a soft insulating material so the whole unit folds down to a flatish pancake shape. So if you dont have a butler, wife or kids to bring you a beer we recommend you invest in one of these… or just walk to the fridge, its your choice.

Available from

http://www.firebox.com/product/2078

http://www.solutions.com/jump.jsp?itemID=12577&itemType=PRODUCT&iProductID=12577

Story via http://toyology.typepad.com/play_a_while/2008/05/remote-control.html

Check out these great official Duff Products. We have two types of red T-shirt, a nice new red shirt with Duff Logo and a really cool vintage worn look red T-Shirt with matching worn Duff T-Shirt. You will look like the coolest dude this side of Springfield wearing them.  They come in various sizes including some real big ones to hide that proud beer belly. We have also found a Duff Baseball shirt which are fairly hard to find, so get into Amazon and snap them up. They ship worldwide.

Duff Logo Red Shirt
Duff Vintage Red Shirt
Duff Baseball Shirt

Imagine rocking up to your next fancy dress party as a beer bottle just like the Duff Man at the Simpson’s Duff Themepark, or a Beer keg or even a Beer Wench, well we found these amazing costumes on sale at Amazon, and they will deliver worldwide. The costumes look really fun and there’s plenty of room for arm movement so you can do what you need to do at that party open your can and drink beerCheck out a few of the options:

Beer Bottle Man
Beer Keg Man
Beer Can Man
Beer Wench
Tequila Man
Slice of lime Man