Brew Your Own readers including Publisher Brad Ring recently spent eight days exploring the Southern Hemisphere hop harvest and the thriving craft beer scene of New Zealand. 

Over the last decade, New Zealand hops have increasingly captured the attention of both pro brewers and homebrewers around the world with new varieties packing intense tropical and citrus character. As a result, the group did a deep dive on New Zealand hops in the midst of harvest with in-depth tours of two hop farms (or in Kiwi phrasing “hop gardens”): Eggers Hops and Freestyle Hops, both located in the Moutere Valley on the South Island. At both locations, the 21 American homebrewers had the chance to walk through unpicked hop rows before heading into production facilities to watch the just-picked bines stripped of their cones, loaded into kilns for drying, and eventually pelletized. 

We also wanted to better understand why New Zealand is a leader in hop innovation by spending time with two leading hop breeders. We had lunch with pioneer Dr. Ron Beatson (the hop Nectaron® is named in his honor) to learn about the country’s hop growing history. Our group also paid a special visit to the national hop research center in Motueka with lead hop breeder Kerry Templeton to see where many of the most popular New Zealand hop varieties first got their start and learn more about the hop breeding process.

New Zealand produces great malt in addition to great hops. The BYO group also had a wonderful tour at Gladfield Malt to learn firsthand about how their New Zealand-grown barley, wheat, and oats go through the malting process and understand better how the different types of malts we all use for brewing are made.

With visits to 15 breweries, the group was lucky to experience the incredible beer culture of New Zealand on both the North and South Islands. We visited a broad spectrum of breweries from exploring the world of coolship spontaneously-fermented sour beers and barrel-aged stouts in downtown Wellington at The Garage Project’s Wild Workshop to driving our bus down a residential street in Christchurch leading to a different kind of garage project: Wilderness Brewing’s modest 80-gallon (300-L) nanobrewery located in brewer Oli Drake’s home garage producing outstanding beers the group enjoyed while standing in his driveway. All along the way we had the chance to meet with passionate and friendly local brewers happy to share their tips and techniques while the group enjoyed sampling their beers. We even had the chance to spend a few hours sharing local beers and brewing stories with members of the Christchurch, New Zealand, homebrew club – true bottle diplomacy at its best!

In addition to beer, New Zealand’s incredible scenery is known worldwide. The group had the opportunity to soak up some stunning views and earn their next pint of beer with daily hikes and even a waterfront bicycle ride ending with a river ferry ride to the Golden Bear Brewing brewpub for lunch and a tasting with the brewer.

New Zealand’s craft brewers covered a broad swath of popular beer styles, but one style began to stand out during the group’s travels as the perfect platform to highlight the tropical and citrus aromas and flavors of their local New Zealand hops: New Zealand Pilsner. The base beer sits somewhere in between German and Czech Pilsners with a softer malt profile and a neutral fermentation character that lets the special character of these Kiwi hops shine. We also learned quite a few New Zealand brewers produce their New Zealand Pilsners as a cool-fermented ale and skip lager yeast and aging altogether.

Since it was hop harvest season, we ended up touring quite a few breweries overflowing with incredible hop aromas while in the middle of brewing fresh-hop beers. All the brewers we visited used the same technique for their fresh-hop brew day by immediately cleaning the grains out of their mash kettle while the wort was busy in the boil kettle. Then the brewers would turn their mash tun into a hop back by adding the just-picked wet hops on top of the mash kettle’s false bottom and when the boil was finished with some moderate hopping added, the hot wort was pumped back on top of the hops and allowed to soak for about 20 minutes before draining off to chill and ferment. The group just wished we could stay around a few more weeks to taste all these fresh-hop beers we watched being made!

New Zealand is also known as a food lover’s dream with a heavy use of locally grown and farmed fruits, vegetables, dairy, meats, and seafood. We enjoyed many memorable meals from super fresh fish and chips and the country’s signature green-lipped mussels to a special multi-course dinner at the Free House in Nelson created with all local ingredients washed down with their own in-house brewed beers served on hand pull. 

With eight days filled with beautiful cities to the oceanfront towns ringed by towering mountains, from acres of neat rows of hop bines to the rolling hills of farmland, our group had a great taste of both urban and rural settings for breweries combining for the unique chance to experience New Zealand beer culture up close one sip at a time all with an incredibly warm
Kiwi welcome.

Our upcoming BYO trip this September to the Netherlands is sold out, but we’ve just announced a new May 2027 BYO trip to Denmark. We hope you can join us on a future brewery adventure. Details on our trips can be found here. Cheers!