Hopulist Issue Eight

N
Z
IT WAS
STARTED
BY THREE
MATES WHO
ADMIT THAT
AT THE VERY
BEGINNING
WHAT THEY
WERE DOING
COULDN'T EVEN
BE CLASSED
AS MICRO
BREWING, IT
WAS NANO
BREWING.
FROM THE GARAGE TO YOUR GROWLER
Perhaps the brewer that best embodies what Wellington is all
about also happened to be the first stop on our beer trail tour of
the city: Garage Project. The company has been around since
2011 and still runs its brewery out of an old derelict petrol station/
automotive garage (hence the name), despite being one of the
real breakout success stories of New Zealand craft brewing. It
was started by three mates who admit that at the very beginning
what they were doing couldn’t even be classed as micro brewing,
it was nano brewing. Because of this they were able to take risks
with styles and flavours and quickly gained a reputation for being
one to watch for unusual beers and bold profiles. The beer began
to flow from the former Jaguar workshop garage and gas station,
which now has a cellar door where you can go to try some of the
best they brew for yourself. Expansion also lead to Garage Project
opening a small bar across the street from where the beer is born,
which was where we began our wander around Wellington. The
atmosphere crashed off the polished white tiles and mirrors that
adorned the walls of the long but narrow bar as we took on a few
of the Garage Project classics including East Coast anthem IPA
Party and Bullshit and triple hazy IPA Turbo Fuzz (featuring some
of that lovely Nelson Sauvin hops we raved about earlier).
From here, it was just a ten-minute walk down the famous Aro
Street to Arthur Street where we spied an old printing company
that had been niftily converted into a craft beer bar that is the
outlet for another of Wellington’s big hitters: Tuatara. Named after
that peculiar reptile we mentioned earlier, Tuatara’s beer can be
found all over New Zealand, but perhaps nowhere fresher than
this bar. It’s called Third Eye, a nod to the Tuatara reptile’s hidden
pineal eye located on top of its tiny head, and it gives you a chance
to open your own proverbial third eye in terms of what craft beer
should be. The Tuatara range isn’t too complex, it keeps things
simple but does them incredibly well – the Red Eye PA, Tuatara
Pilsner and Tuatara Hazy Pale Ale are all particularly fantastic
examples of the types of beer they are.