The Great Kiwi Beer Festival 2016

The Great Kiwi Beer Festival turns out to be… well, great.

While I am known for my passionate advocacy of Wellington (“The Craft Beer Capital of New Zealand”) and my home suburb of some sixteen years (“The Mean Streets of Thorndon”), my initial home in New Zealand was actually Christchurch. I became the first person in my family to step foot in Aotearoa, but only because my precocious five year old self ran down the steps from Flight NZ1 (London-Christchurch) despite strict instructions from my mother to wait my turn like a well-mannered boy.

Yes – I am an immigrant but somehow I do not think Winston Peters is talking about me when he refers to foreigners buying houses… My parents did buy a house – with a 100% mortgage at over 20% interest, oh the good old days – and I attended Thorrington Primary School in the leafy suburb of Cashmere. I went off to school with a Scottish accent and, within two days, returned home with a Kiwi twang. I kind of regret that transformation whenever I watch Sean Connery movies and/or drink whisky…

At Thorrington Primary School I rose quickly to attain the rank of “fish and chip monitor”, which meant I was entrusted to go the local shop and pick up the student and staff orders of fish and chips each and every Friday. I very much doubt I would be trusted to undertake the same role today. Remember – this was so long ago that I could cycle to school in the frost without an armed escort, a legal disclaimer from my parents or an audit from Worksafe.

Perhaps it was my power as primary school deep fried goodness monitor which first brought me to her attention, but I became friends with Victoria Newcombe. Our families used to have – ironically – fish and chips together, because paying 20% interest on the mortgage does not leave a lot of room for fine dining. On April 2, 2016, I took Ms Newcombe to her first ever beer festival – the Great Kiwi Beer Festival in Christchurch’s Hagley Park.

The big day dawned cloudy with a few early squalls of rain but it quickly cleared. Thankfully for those of us of the decidedly pale persuasion it was warm but not overly sunny for the seven hours of the festival. The Great Kiwi Beer Festival is huge – I want to say it has the biggest single session attendance of any beer event in the country – and, importantly, it was supremely well organised.

Grabbing our all access media passes sadly meant skipping past several long queues as thousands of others seemed equally determined to start at 11am. They were right to do so. Inside Hagley Park (which is looking much better than my last visit two years ago) there were 34 drinks stands serving, by my terrible maths, well over 50 brands of beer, cider and wine. Additionally, the festival boasted over 30 food outlets, 15 educational seminars and five local music acts.

 

Let’s go through those one at a time:

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Beer

It would be fair to say I spent most of my time at the beer tents. I had some new beers at some old favourites (Liberty Brewing Alpha Lord and Epic The Stone Hammer), found some new favourites at new breweries (Eruption Brewing’s Eruption IPA, Altitude Brewing’s Mischievous Kea IPA, and the B.Effect Tropic Cascade IPA) but still found time to indulge in an old guilty beer pleasure (King Cobra).

As a team, we did not just drink hoppy IPAs (thought would be a reasonably fair assessment of my selection). Victoria’s taste in beer is almost the polar opposite of mine so she would have the sweetest beer or cider, and I would have the hoppiest. We would sample each other’s glass and agree that we had chosen correctly. As my photographer, she did also get to go up to a platform on some scaffolding some 20m above ground level. It was apparently there for (brave) media to get some good crowd shots. For some reason there were three portaloos up there…

Food

As is becoming the welcome norm at beer festivals, the food selection was incredible – ranging from five hour pulled lamb shoulder sandwiches to dumplings to Hungarian langos (fried bread) to whitebait fritters, and beyond. Our passes got us into the VIP area where noted local chef Jonny Schwass was barbequing up a storm. You picked your artisan bread, your meat (I had lamb but there was pork, beef brisket and chicken), sauces and salad (if applicable). The result was a gourmet sandwich to remember. Oh, and the dumplings were great.

Cider

I am informed by Victoria that the Harrington’s Crushed Pineapple Cider was excellent and one of her favourite tipples of the day. I cannot verify this.

Wine

According to the official Great Kiwi Beer Festival guide there were some wineries there. Good luck to them. They got nothing from me.

Music

The music played all day and was surprisingly funktastic. Jon Toogood from Shihad played a lot of covers I did not expect from him and was brilliant. After being videoed doing an unfortunate dance at a recent beer festival in Martinborough, I was determined that it would not happen again. Then I saw in the programme that the last act of the day was Jordan Luck, my all-time favourite New Zealand musician. To my great surprise (and everyone else’s relief) I did not dance – well, maybe a little jig to “Victoria” but it was my university anthem.

Seminars

These were strongly attended though attendance did drop away noticeably in the last session after a long day. Tracy Banner and Richard Emerson were predictably popular, while Luke Nicholas did a beer and cheese matching session without seemingly knowing anything about the cheese. Chef Jonny Schwass’ session on “Meat, Fire and Salt” delivered on every ingredient.

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At the start of this article I mentioned the organisation of the event. The venue – Hagley Park – provides a lot of space so there is none of the claustrophobia which can occur in smaller facilities. Payment systems worked well, queues were never more than moderate (quite an achievement given the numbers), there was a minimum of trouble (there were plenty of security guards and police), and even a seemingly adequate number of toilets. The beer selection was a mix of established favourites and special releases – there was something for every taste.

This was my second Great Kiwi Beer Festival and it was fantastic – a big jump up in quality from even two years ago (which was very good). I understand planning is already underway for next year and I will be at the front of the line in my old hometown.

Neil Miller is the 2014/2015 New Zealand Beer Writer of the Year. He attended the Great Kiwi Beer Festival as a member of the media.