Posts Tagged ‘Brew Pub’

About half an hour’s drive out of Auckland along State Highway no 16 is the lovely rural area of Riverhead. The area has plenty of farmland, vineyards and fruit producers.  We came across a great little brewbar and restaurant which had an incredible range of quality beers called Hallertau.  They produced beers using the traditional artisan processes with nothing other than water, yeast, hops and barley and rainwater. The brewers produce four regular beers and a range of seasonable brews, we were lucky enough to try a few of them including the Copper Tart or No 3 beer which as the name suggests is a red ale with a very tasty caramel and chocolaty taste. Delicious. Their Statesman Beer or No 2 was a very rich pale ale which had a fairly bitey hops kick. They also did a nice Kolsch style beer called Luxe or No 1 which had some delightful fruity aromas and aftertastes and plenty of character. The venue had great food, there was a as they called it grazing menu in the bar area with a range of tasty treats and more of a restaurant style menu in the main part of the complex.  The beer has been recognised by many leading critics in New Zealand and due to the small quantities produced is pretty hard to get outside the brewery but several places around Auckland are stocking it as a boutique craft brew.

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We were recently in Portland, no not the $%$# one a few hours down the road from us but the one in Portland Oregon USA. This was beer utopia for two beer loving Aussie guys like us.  The whole town is based on craft beers. The big names like Coors, Bud and Miller are rarely seen, its just craft beer after craft beer. There’s a few fantastic brew pubs too. One we tried was Rock Bottom Brewery boy they had some tasty drops including this wheat beer shown on our picture. The beer called Volkswizen Wheat was as their brochure described a unfiltered Northwest Wheat beer with the added twist of ginger and coriander to give it a crisp thirst quenching zing.. it had a ABV of 5.3% and IBU of 19 and boy was it tasty. They served it with a slice of orange which was popular with many wheat beers in the US including a wheat beer called Blue Moon which was available in many of the pubs.  We will do a few more stories on Rock Bottom’s beers over next few weeks as they were pretty tasty.

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Goose Island Beers

Goose Island Beer originates from Chicago in the USA and they have been producing fine beers for about 20 years and are regarded as the city’s finest and freshest hand crafted ales and lagers. They produce a great range of classic brews and some very tasty seasonal beers including a Christmas Ale which is currently being served for the winter. It’s not hard to see a draught tap of Goose Island at the bar they have a very stylish goose neck handle as the pourer- you cant miss it. Goose island have two brew pubs which any visitor to Chicago shouldn’t miss one called Wrigleyville which is in North Clark Street not far from Wrigley park and the other in beautiful Lincoln Park called Clyborn- there is no better place to taste this great beer. We visited Chicago recently and just loved the Goose Island beers, the Honkers Ale is delicious and India Pale Ale is one of the tastiest we have ever tried- and we were very partial to the Harvest Ale too. Look out for Goose Island Beer it ships to about 15 states in the US and even to the UK….Hopefully they will remember us guys down here in Australia and send some our way soon- we can’t wait! Read the rest of this entry »