So I headed to Nelson on the South Island Saturday morning. Simon picked me up at 5:30am and we met Trevor at the Airport for a 7:30am flight. We landed and picked up our car and headed to the New Zealand Hop processing plant. We got an awesome tour from Doug and we were in awe of all of the hops.

After our excellent hop tour, we headed over to Moutere Inn. It’s New Zealand’s oldest pub! I had an awesome bangers and mash and a couple of pints. Trevor and I played some pool, and I lost miserably. We met a couple of Rugby dudes who stopped by before their match. Funny enough, they had a pint before they left. After lunch, we headed to Simons cousin’s house to check it out and get a spot of tea.

After our visit and tea, we made our way over to the rugby field to watch the guys that we met earlier at the Moutere Pub play ball. I don’t really understand the rules all that well, but it’s a crazy game with a lot of contact and no pads.

After watching Rugby for a while, we decided that it was time for a beer. We headed over to Stoke Brewing. The place had a really cool atmosphere with a great comfy pub and even some live music. We sampled all of their beers and were quite pleased with them. The day in Nelson was shaping up just fine.

We went back to the hotel to refresh and then headed out for some beers at the Freehouse. After a couple of pints, we walked to downtown Nelson and had a great meal at Ford’s. We started with green tipped mussels and then all three of us had the filet off beef…yummy! We also managed to drink two great bottles of wine, one Pinot and one Sirah.

After dinner we went back to the hotel to get some sleep before our adventure to Blenheim on Sunday.

We got up and ate breakfast before our 1 1/2 hour drive to Blenheim to meet Geoff Griggs, a local beer writer and all around nice guy. Geoff brought us to meet the guys at Renaissance Brewery. The brewery was in a small barn like building and was set up very well for the small amount of space they had. We hung out with Brian Thiel the owner, and a couple of his brewers, and then we all went to MOA another brewery nearby.

The MOA brewery looked small inside, but as we went out back, we soon realized that he had a bunch of fermenters in back to boost capacity. We were pleasantly surprised when the brewer offered up some of his barrel aged beers that were aging out back. Very interesting beers! It was really nice to see MOA going out on a limb and really doing some experimental barrel aged beers.

We had to catch our flight and we were an hour and a half away. We headed back in the rain and ended up at Founders Brewery before our plane took off. We had a sampling of all the beers, lunch and got a brewery tour by the owner/brewer.

We made our way to the airport after our visit to Founders, and got on a plane to Auckland. We landed and Simon gave me a ride home to Ponsonby. I dropped my stuff, checked my e-mail and then went up to the food court to grab some dinner. I came back, did my blog and I’m headed to the showers and then bed. It’s been a busy weekend!

Cheers!

Spike