I spy with my little eye

With a large num­ber of the Tuatara brew­ery staff being based in Wel­ling­ton it does make sense for Tuatara to start some­thing more cent­rally so that at least not every­one has to spend a couple of hours every­day driv­ing to Kapiti. Think of the beer that could be brewed in that time! And there will be beer brew­ing!

The Third Eye, the new premises on Arthur Street, Te Aro, is named after a hatch­ling tuatar­a’s pari­et­al eye and has recently been set up by Tuatara – it’s been a good few months in the mak­ing and they quietly opened their doors on Fri­day 20th. There’s 14 taps (not all pour­ing Tuatara), some seat­ing indoors and out­doors, the Goose Shack food truck will be parked up out back (prac­tic­ally daily) AND… there’s a shiny 500 litre kit that will make beers on an almost weekly basis.

Scotty Boswell who is going to be run­ning things at The Third Eye and who I was for­tu­nate enough to meet up and chat with told me because the brew­ery will only be mak­ing 10 kegs of beer at a time the brew­ers using The Third Eye have the oppor­tun­ity to make more exper­i­ment­al brews. In addi­tion to that Tuatara “are want­ing to provide brew­ing space, not only for already well estab­lished brew­er­ies look­ing for con­tract brew­ing space, which is increas­ing in demand, but also homebrew­ers who are look­ing at tak­ing that next leap.”

I was told there’d be beers that per­haps don’t fit with­in an par­tic­u­lar style but taste really good. This is awe­some news! Tuatara have their stand­ard set of beers that you can get across the coun­try, beers that are fine examples of their respect­ive styles and I know of a num­ber of brew­er­ies that make fant­ast­ic beers that people love the taste of but don’t win any medals because they don’t fit the par­tic­u­lar style require­ments.

This desire to push the bound­ar­ies and change think­ing around beer can­not be a bad thing, right? This Temple of Taste is in an old build­ing that used to be, amongst oth­er things, a gym, a boys school, and a brothel. Prob­ably not at the same time. “As cheesy as it sounds we want this to be a place where you can open your mind to new think­ing about beer.”

In an effort to make it seem like I was worthy of being in an estab­lish­ment where deep­er thought and under­stand­ing is encour­aged, I men­tioned a bottle of Son of God I had sit­ting in my fridge that I was look­ing for­ward to sampling at home.

“Son of God? What’s that?”

Oh no, that’s not the name of the beer I have in my fridge! “Ahhmm, sorry not Son of God but… ahhh” I flail, want­ing to down my drink and run. Or just run. Or just sink into the ground.

“Act of God?”

“Yeah! That’s the one!” glad that Scott could decipher my stumble. While Scott did­n’t know what Son of God was we both agreed it’s a pretty great name for a beer. You’re wel­come Tuatara! That one’s on me!

Scotty said that Tuatara should “Stick to our knit­ting. Our craft is beer.” He explained that with the leg­al oblig­a­tion to serve food the option of get­ting someone in to provide food appealed and the rela­tion­ship with Hadyn Turn­er of the Goose Shack was con­firmed. They’ll be roost­ing out the back, offer­ing a range of items with some even con­tain­ing Tuatara beers.

The Third Eye is a pretty excit­ing addi­tion to the Wel­ling­ton beer com­munity, one that does­n’t want to just be anoth­er bar or res­taur­ant or brew­ery but all of the above. I think they’re a wel­come addi­tion to the Aro area and I look for­ward to passing by for a pint, eat­ing a sand­wich and tak­ing a rig­ger home for my fridge. I may even be able to pick up a Son of God one day?!