Last night I sat down and drank a glass of my very own home-brewed IPA (India Pale Ale). It was­n’t my finest work (I’d rate it alongside/just under Tui in palata­bil­i­ty) but it was mine, I made it and I enjoyed mak­ing it.

I’ve made bet­ter beer. In fact I’ve even made one that I thought decent enough to inflict upon peo­ple oth­er than close friends. I entered said beer in the Home Brew Comp at Beer­vana, which kicks off this Fri­day (22 August). Now I doubt it’s a win­ning beer that’s going to blow the judges minds BUT it’s a pret­ty damn tasty Oat Stout!

I like a lot of things about beer. Brew­ing it, learn­ing about it, the vari­a­tion in ingre­di­ents, the sto­ries behind spe­cif­ic beer ori­gins and of course tast­ing it. I can get involved with all of these things in one way or anoth­er over the two days that Beer­vana runs and this is why I love it so.

Homer Simpson dreaming of himself prancing around a tanker spouting beer like a fountain
I appre­ci­ate the sen­ti­ment but abhor the wastage of beer.

Beer­vana is now into its 13th year and this year is set to be its best and biggest yet!

There’s:

  • the New Zealand meet­ing of the Pink Boots Soci­ety, who are an awe­some organ­i­sa­tion who are “Empow­er­ing women beer pro­fes­sion­als to advance their careers in the beer indus­try through edu­ca­tion”;
  • three award win­ning brew­ers fly­ing out from ‘Big Welling­ton’ oth­er­wise know as Port­land as part of the inau­gur­al “Beer­vana Exchange”
  • the media brew com­pe­ti­tion is sure to be grand with 19 brew­ers teamed up with beer-lov­ing jour­nal­ists to make a Spring themed beer which can con­tain any yeast, any liq­uid, any grain and any hops but must also con­tain one intrin­si­cal­ly or native New Zealand ingre­di­ent.
  • a new Beer­vana App where you can log and rate the beers you sam­ple dur­ing your ses­sion at West­pac Sta­di­um
Screengrab of Beervana App lo
Be warned: You may encounter spam as a result of installing this app

There is far too much on offer to pos­si­bly hope to expe­ri­ence it all, nev­er mind the fact that you’d be spend­ing over $600 on tast­ing every beer and your liv­er would mur­der you in your sleep if you put it through such tor­ture.

BUT.…

With so much on offer you are prac­ti­cal­ly guar­an­teed a great time. You’ll have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to taste fan­tas­tic beers from NZ, Aus­tralia, UK & Amer­i­ca and apply the Buf­fa­lo The­o­ry as you wan­der about  expand­ing your knowl­edge on all things good about beer.