For three months, a single sealed barrel sat mysteriously in a far corner of the Tuatara brewery.  In November, that same barrel then served usefully as the base of the brewery crew’s impromptu picnic table.  Now, finally, the barrel has been tapped and its heady contents are available exclusively at Malthouse.

The flash logos and slick imagery associated most mainstream beers are basically wishful thinking from the marketing department. 

For this, the one hundredth Malthouse blog post, I had a good idea.  My plan was to whip up a hackneyed ‘very best of’ column which would involve virtually no original writing at all.

Deferring to the knowledge of those even geekier than me, the Modus Hopperandus (Malthouse’s own Hopinator) apparently looks exactly like the central pointy-up bit from the control thing in Doctor Who’s whizzy time-space machine, The Tardis. 

When the Mussel Inn bar first threw open its doors in 1995, it served Mac’s Gold, Mac’s Black, Pink Elephant Mammoth and around 25 other New Zealand craft beers. 

During beer tastings, I like to throw in a few pieces of trivia to test the audience’s knowledge.  When asked which three countries drink the most beer per capita, the usual suggestions include Germany (correct), Belgium (wrong), Ireland (correct), Australia (wrong - just) and the Czech Republic (correct).  People tend to guess the answers to that question pretty quickly.