Two new breweries open in resort
QUEENSTOWN has a couple of new breweries.
Canyon Food and Brew restaurant and micro brewery, owned by tourism company Real Journeys, has just opened at Arthurs Point. It has a range of six beers made by Jonathan Kauri, a Kiwi who spent several years brewing in Melbourne. It is, at this stage, producing only for taps.
And Altitude Brewing now has an actual brewery.
The label was created by Queenstown local Eliott Menzies in 2013, when his beer was brewed and bottled at Three Boys in Christchurch. He has just started doing it himself at a new brewery at the Frankton marina complex, in Franklin Rd on the way into the town centre.
Eliott is a selftaught brewer, learning the craft in Scotland as a teenager during his OE and, on his return in 2009, working at Arrow brewery in Arrowtown and Dux de Lux’s brewery in the resort. He will produce his range of seven beers in kegs, with bottling still done in Christchurch, and plans to produce a monthly seasonal beer on tap.
A bar and takeaway outlet will open at the brewery in the next week or two.
New brews
Across the range at Wanaka, B.effect beers are made and bottled in Dunedin and Blenheim.
It has slightly changed its Pool Fire pale ale and renamed it Press Send (apparently, skiers and mountain bikers have a habit of saying ‘‘just press and go for it’’ when they are about to launch themselves into the air). And just appearing (already in New World in Queenstown) is Double Drop (8.2%), a lightish IPA with a hint of wine from wine yeast he uses. It has a couple of relatively new German hops in it — huell melon, which can impart fruit and melon characters, and arian, with its citrus, vanilla, gooseberry.
Fizzy
Brewing in Britain is a bit flat at the moment because of a shortage of carbon dioxide (CO2). But not here, thank goodness.
During fermentation, yeast converts sugar into ethanol alcohol and CO2 gas. DB Breweries, for example, collects the CO2 from the fermentation process, cleans it of beer flavour and liquefies it for storage for reuse for, for example, carbonation.
However, because it also makes soft drinks, RTDs and cider, it still needs to buy in CO2. Most of that, liquefied and stored in cylinders, comes from fertiliser works (many of which have shut down in Britain for maintenance during summer, when demand for fertiliser is not high), where the gas is emitted during production of synthetic ammonia and some from natural gas (some of Marsden Point oil refinery’s waste CO2, for example, is harnessed).
One wonders, with all our emissions of CO2 being blamed for global warming, why someone has not figured out how to suck the CO2 out of the atmosphere and bottle it.