Beer and the Places That Sell It

As promised, here is a quick round up of the beer situation in Auckland, as experienced by us in the last week (egads! We've been here a week already? How did that happen?).

For the record, this post is fueled by a Hite (a Korean beer we had with dinner) and a Monteith's Black.

Where to start ... how about with the beer itself:

We had most of the beers that we have found when we were here in 2007, but we have now expanded our horizons with a couple rounds of Tuis (a Tui is a native bird here in NZ and a local brewery). It was surprisingly dark, but had very light flavor. Not "bad beer" flavor, just not much of any kind.


Also, Jen and I went to a Korean place for dinner tonight and had a Korean beer (Hite). The label on the bottle said "Clean, Crisp, and Refreshing". It was all of the above, but one would be hard pressed to describe the flavor as "beer-like" in any way. Again, it did not have a bad flavor, just not much of one at all.

We have managed to find several stores that sell a good selection of Monteith's, so we are quite content on that front.

On to the "Places That Sell It" portion of the post:

We have been to three pubs and one dance club (ironically, the night we went to the dance club was U of A's International Student Pub Night). Most have had a decent selection of local and import brews, though very few, if any, American beers.

U of A is pretty cool, in that it has a student bar in the commons called Shadows. It is a fairly large place, with a small stage where local bands occasionally play, a pool table, and lots of oddly shaped tables for students to hang out and carouse. They have a somewhat unique approach to serving beer at Shadows: the personal pitcher. It is a small pitcher, by pitcher standards, but holds a little more than 2 pints, so it will set you up quite nicely for an evening. Also, the personal pitchers are dirt cheap at $7.50 kiwi. They feature a lot of Mac's beer (a kiwi brewery), which are pretty good, but all rather heavy on the hops. Except the Sassy Red, which was very smooth.

Right down the road from campus is a little place called Ford's Bar and Museum. We're not sure what the "Museum" part was about, but it was a very cozy little place that looked more like a local watering hole than a student hang out. They had a rather limited beer selection, but looked like more of a wine place. Amusingly, they had a poker table where a spontaneous game of poker (for real money) broke out while we were there (neither of us participated, though).

Closer to the Queen Street strip is a unique place called Fiddler's Irish Pub. It is unique because of their interpretation of "pub". It is a tiny place, just room for a couple of tables, but they had several big screen plasma TVs showing bicycle racing (which was on the local sports channel) and were blaring modern hip-hop. When someone says "Irish Pub", many things come to mind. Plasma TVs and hip-hop music are not high on that list. However, we did meet a genuine Irishman there and had an amusing time hanging out with him and his kiwi friends.

Also just off of Queen is Globe, the location of U of A's official International Student Pub Night. The Globe made no pretenses at being a pub: they had a very limited food menu (frozen meat pies for $6!), a sizable dance floor, and a sound system turned up to 11. We still had fun, and learned quite a bit about pub etiquette from our new English and Welsh friends. We both felt quite old the next day, though, as we turned in early and were quite sore from the moderate amount of dancing in which we participated.

Thus ends the "Beer Post". We will be sure to update you all if we manage to find any new and/or interesting beers.

Cheers!