Beer­vana kicks off on Fri­day with four ses­sions over two days and there’s a LOT of beer relat­ed activ­i­ties on before then. The Road to Beer­vana began on Sun­day and there are events tak­ing place in bars all over the city and even fur­ther afield in Auck­land and Christchurch.

I’m not going to attempt to tell you about every­thing that’s on offer and I’ll assume you will use both the Beer­vana and Road to Beer­vana web­sites to find all the info you need to have a qual­i­ty beer filled week. What I will do is give you my picks and tips on what to do, try and see.

Today/Wednesday 10th August

Vicky from House of Dumplings will be serv­ing up fresh hot dumplings and pair­ing them up with the brews of Black Dog at 19 Blair Street. You’ll get to drink the beer at its source as part of Dog­house Dumplings from 5–9pm.

If you head along to Lit­tle Beer Quar­ter (6 Edward Street) OR Crum­pet (109 Man­ners Street) from 3pm for A lit­tle Bit of Crum­pet you’ll get to try a vari­ant of 8 Wired’s Hip­py Berlin­er with crum­pets to com­ple­ment the brew.

And if you’re more inter­est­ed in the things that aren’t in the cen­tre of the city head to One Fat Bird (162 Karori Road) for a Welling­ton Beer first: a British Craft Beer Tap Takeover. You’ll even be able to talk to an ex-brew­er from Brew­dog (mak­ers of Tac­ti­cal Nuclear Pen­guin — the strongest beer in the world)

Thurs­day 11th August

Every­one knows that craft beer isn’t cheap swill. BUT if you fin­ish up work and head along to Library (53 Courte­nay Place) at 6pm for Cheers to Cheese you can try North End Brew­ery beers and cheese from around New Zealand for free!

Par­rot­Dog have teamed up with Ade­laide brew­ers Pirate Life and the team at Ser­i­al Grillers to put on Pirate­Dog a pop-up bar and burg­er joint in what will even­tu­al­ly be Par­rot­Dog’s ‘old’ brew­ery at 29 Vivian Street as they kick off their Equi­ty Crowd­fund­ing cam­paign today so they can open a big­ger and bet­ter brew­ery and bar in Lyall Bay.

If it’s not the drink­ing specif­i­cal­ly that appeals then per­haps The Great Beer Debate at 6:30pm at BATS The­atre (1 Kent Ter­race) is more your cup of tea. The inter­na­tion­al pan­el will be dis­cussing the impor­tance and rel­e­vance of who owns the brew­ery and who con­trols the sup­ply. It’s sure to be a blast with Megan Whe­lan and Phil Cook host­ing, two pas­sion­ate­ly well-spo­ken, beer lov­ing folk.

Beer is a seri­ous busi­ness, wor­thy of protest and debate!

Fri­day and Sat­ur­day — The Main Event: Beer­vana (Tick­ets)

With around 60 bars and 300 beers it’s an over­whelm­ing prospect work­ing out how get the most out of your entry fee.

My rec­om­men­da­tions for Beer­vana:

  • Work out a plan before head­ing to the sta­di­um. Do you want to taste par­tic­u­lar styles, or par­tic­u­lar brew­eries? Per­haps you want to look at the map and work out a plan with a high num­ber of beers in rela­tion to steps tak­en — Beer­vana has tak­en over the entire sta­di­um!
  • Get a pre­loaded wrist­band so that you can avoid the queues and have a beer in hand while oth­ers are still lin­ing up to load $$ onto their bands.
  • Try some­thing new! There’s so much new beer avail­able it’d be fool­ish to try beers you can have any old time. You may even find a new favourite that you’ll be able to have in the com­fort of your own home at a lat­er date!
  • Drink lots of water. While the serv­ings are small it’s worth remem­ber­ing that you can be try­ing a LOT of beer in a five hour ses­sion
  • Most impor­tant of all: BE NICE! If you’re nice to the vol­un­teer staff and your fel­low beer drink­ing pals, they’ll be nice to you, there’ll be smiles and every­one will have a great time.

Excit­ing Beer­vana Events/Spots:

“The Think Tank” (aisle 28) — a 20 tap, spe­cial­ty bar that is this year ded­i­cat­ed to show­case sour beers. While sours aren’t for every­one they are cer­tain­ly on the up — there’s more sour beers than ciders this year — so it’s worth giv­ing one a try!

Unit­ed Colours of IPA (aisle 11) — women like and brew beer! Rev­o­lu­tion­ary idea, I know! Every beer avail­able here is an IPA of some descrip­tion and has been spe­cial­ly brewed for Beer­vana by some of the won­der­ful women we have work­ing in the beer indus­try. 

Free walk­ing tours (the guide, not the beer) are a GREAT way to get around the sta­di­um, try a bunch and learn a lot! My two picks are:

The Basics (aisle 32 @ 14:30pm/21:30pm depend­ing on your ses­sion)

‘Real­ly new to beer, or think­ing about start­ing home brew­ing your­self? We’ll talk you through the basics – hops, malt, yeast and water – demon­strate how the process works and sam­ple some beer which show off why each ele­ment is impor­tant.’

The Vis­i­tors ( aisle 23 @ 11:30am/18:30pm depend­ing on your ses­sion)

‘If you’ve only ever sam­pled the delights of the New Zealand beer scene, expand your palate as we check out who’s come from over­seas. What’s going on over in Ore­gon, and why is it fast becom­ing beer par­adise? We’ll stop buy some of the stands from over the ditch, and find out what their beer indus­try is doing dif­fer­ent from ours, and com­pare some brews.’

Sun­day 14th August

As the Road to Beer­vana has been tra­versed it’s time for the Road to Recov­ery. Head along to Bebe­mos (88 Rid­di­ford Street) in New­town and try some Pale Ale shandies, an all day break­fast menu AND the music will be play­ing at a rea­son­able, Sun­day morn­ing lev­el.

Go forth, imbibe, take care of those around you and have a won­der­ful time!