Weird & wonderful brews of Beervana 2023

All that glitters

It wouldn’t be a party without glitter, so let’s kick off the list with a birthday brew:

• Hop Federation’s Lemon, Lime and Glitter (Sour Ale - 4.6%). Brewed to celebrate their 10th anniversary, this glittery elixir looks like liquid gold and tastes pretty great too. Don’t ask us what it looks like coming out the other end...

Let them eat cake

Celebrate your B-day with these tasty tipples:

• Duncan's Brewing - Black Forest Gâteau - Imperial Pastry Stout - 9.5% Inspired by the classic Black Forest Gâteau, this deliciously decadent Imperial Pastry Stout showcases cacao husks and nibs, sweet cherries, vanilla, kirsch and black forest rye malt.
• One Drop Brewing - On the Lam - Sour Ale - 7% Inspired by the humble Antipodean lamington, with its vanilla, coconut, cake, and icing sugar, with crazy amounts of banana, mango, and lactose thrown in for good measure.
• Altitude Brewing - Apple Pie - Hot Mulled Mead - 7.5% Just like warm apple pie - local honey fermented with apples, spices and vanilla. Best served mulled with a cinnamon stick.
• Altitude Brewing - Croquembouche - Salted Caramel & Hazelnut Pastry Stout - 11.6% Sitting on a huge soft sweet base of malt and milk sugar. Inhale layers of caramel and hazelnut praline and find nuances of subtle chocolate cream and milky coffee.
• Double Vision Brewing - Jam Donut - Chocolate & Coconut Milk Stout - 6% Imagine a donut dressed in coconut shavings and filled with raspberry jam. Malted maize, cornflakes, coconut, vanilla and honey, plus over 10% raspberry puree.
• Derelict Brewing - Passionfruit Cheesecake Pastry Sour - 6.3 Kettle-soured ale, brewed with lactose, vanilla, cinnamon and passionfruit puree, this careful blend of ingredients imitates the character of a passionfruit cheesecake.
• Morningcider - Hot Cross Bun Cider - Cider with Spice - 4.5% This beauty is a smouldering cinnamon and brioche spice infused cider. With notes of dried fruit, apples, heaps of cinnamon and warm brioche. 

I scream, you scream

We all scream for these ice cream-flavoured beers:

• 1UP Brewing - Alex In Ice Cream Land - Ice Cream Sour - 6.3% Ice cream sour ale brewed in the style of a jelly tip ice cream.
• Garage Project - Black Dragon - Coconut & vanilla porter soft serve - 5.3% Dairy free coconut and vanilla porter soft serve. Delicious dark sweet soft serve beer sorbet.

Savoury > sweet

Check out these umami beer bombs:

• Choice Bros. - Brewing - Pig Squeal - Smoked Lager - 5% An unholy marriage of Manuka smoked malt and a light lager base, this brew reeks of crispy bacon and a well-stoked fire.
• HeyDay Beer Co. - The Lost World - Peated Kelp Stout - 6.2% Brewed in collaboration with Southward Distilling, this stout uses Ecklonia kelp that's typically used for their Wave gin balanced out by dark chocolate and peat smoke.

Cocktail & Dreams

Beers for cocktail lovers, or beer lovers, or just lovers <3

• Altitude - Pete Skis in Jeans - Whiskey Porter - 10.5% While skiing in jeans one day, Pete thought Altitude should make a Baileys beer. Pete's gone, but the idea stuck. A big pastry stout base, lots of lactose, a little bit of chocolate, and finished with way too many bottles of real Irish Whiskey straight into the fermenter. 
• Deep Creek - Aloha - Passionfruit Guava Sour - 4.5% Inspired by tiki fruit cocktails, this guava passionfruit Berliner Weisse is made with 100% fruit pulp, giving a tart tropical fruit profile, with upfront passionfruit against the subtle backdrop of guava. 
• Crimson Badger Brewing - Dark & Grizzly - Hard Ginger Beer - 5.8 % The tasty combination of Crimson’s classic Ginger Bear with Queenstown’s award-winning Broken Heart Spirit spiced rum and fresh lime. Based on the classic dark and stormy cocktail, with a Southern Lakes twist. 
• Garage Project - Dirty Delicious: Espresso Martini - Hard Seltzer - 6%
  Espresso Martini inspired strong seltzer, infused with Supreme coffee and served on nitro. Absurdly smooth, with rich coffee and chocolate notes.

Mix Your Drinks

And finally, there's a whole bunch of weird and wonderful beers inspired by other weird and wonderful drinks: 

• Mean Doses - Horchata Stout - Spiced Milk Stout - 5.4 Horchata (or orxata) is a spiced drink that 's made with rice, or tiger nuts, or sometimes with milk. It's popular in South America, James I of Aragon drank it and Vampire Weekend did a song about it. A spiced stout made with cinnamon, milk sugars, and cocoa pops. 
• One Drop Brewing - Dragon’s Breath Smoothie Sour - Sour Ale - 6.9% A triple fruited smoothie sour harnessing the decadent and exotic flavours of dragonfruit, pomegranate, and banana all tied together with white chocolate and thick creamy milk sugar. 
• Double Vision Brewing - Colar Beer - Sour  5.3% A sour beer balanced with cola flavours and a bit of sweetness from lactose. 
• Sunshine Brewery - Orange Creamsicle Lager - Lager - 5% The classic American Orange Creamsicle is a vanilla ice cream wrapped in a bright orange ice lolly.  No lactose added, but plenty of local Gisborne oranges and Tongan vanilla. 
• Three Sisters Brewery - Chocolate Cream Thick Shake - Stout - 6% Toasted marshmallows, cacao, Biscoff biscuits in a cream stout thick shake.

Check out the full 2023 beer list here.