It used to be that if you want­ed a good selec­tion of inde­pen­dent and craft beers, your options were lim­it­ed: Malt­house, per­haps Bar Bode­ga back in the day, or a bus out to New­town for Bar Edward. But since the arrival of Hashigo Zake, it seems that bou­tique beer is in, and there’s a sud­den rash of bars that care about good beer … or at least look like they do.

The lat­est is Lit­tle Beer Quar­ter, or LBQ for short, tak­ing over from the much-lament­ed Watusi. It’s much more spa­cious and pub-like than its leop­ard-print­ed fore­run­ner, but retains a rea­son­ably cosy atmos­phere with some cute touch­es (upside-down pot plants and beer bot­tle chan­de­liers). The beer range is impres­sive, and every­thing on tap (cur­rent­ly a nice mix of Tuatara, Emer­son­’s, 8 Wired, Three Boys and oth­er local favourites) is also avail­able in jugs or flagons. There was a nice moment the oth­er night when an intim­i­dat­ed out-of-town­er was going to default to Coro­na, but his com­pan­ions and the staff helped nudge him towards Tuatara Helles. Baby steps, sure, but friends don’t let friends drink bad beer.

I haven’t tried much of the food yet, but I can attest that the spicy sausage piz­za does exact­ly what one would hope of a pub piz­za … which is more than I can say for the offer­ing at Tap Haus across the road, where a friend’s piz­za order was burnt beyond edi­bil­i­ty. Despite what looks like a com­pre­hen­sive beer selec­tion, it seems to suf­fer from some of the prob­lems that plague its cousin Brühaus: a hasty con­ver­sion, lack of a heim­lich atmos­phere, a ten­den­cy to treat food as an after­thought at best, and ser­vice that, even with­out obvi­ous signs of incom­pe­tence, does­n’t give the impres­sion of a pas­sion­ate ded­i­ca­tion to good beer. It’s not just the incon­gru­ous left­overs of the creaky old Cur­ry Club decor (though thank­ful­ly now wood-pan­elled and gold-paint­ed rather than pas­tel): it’s the com­bi­na­tion of high ceil­ing, bright lights and uncer­tain clien­tele that leaves me cold.

That’s not a prob­lem at The Hop Gar­den, which rel­ish­es its qua­si-out­door set­ting and cher­ish­es its grow­ing sta­tus as a Mt Vic local. The selec­tion is exten­sive and per­haps a lit­tle more idio­syn­crat­ic than at die Häuser, and the place already seems as much a favourite among the brewerati as Malt­house and Hashigo Zake. But it’s the food that sets it apart, with brunch­es to die for … or per­haps from, if you have too much of their black pud­ding, pork bel­ly and streaky bacon hash com­bo. Or you could com­bine that with a pint of Renais­sance Choco­late Oat­meal Stout for the per­fect break­fast.

And there’s more to come. The Malt­house direc­tors are cur­rent­ly con­vert­ing the for­mer Loaded Hog (remem­ber when that count­ed as a “spe­cial­ist beer pub”? Shud­der!), Syn and Ruby Lounge premis­es into a micro­brew­ery and craft beer bar. Its rumoured name is “Fork and Brew­er”, and it will fea­ture a large car­cino­genic hell­hole roof gar­den as well as 40 beers on tap. It will go under the mot­to “Non time­bo cervisa”—“I will fear no beer”, though as fel­low Welling­ton­ista and beer geek Alan said, “some beer should be strong­ly respect­ed” (nev­er turn your back on a Rex Atti­tude).

Even if not all of the new craft beer bars deliv­er on all the dimen­sions that might be expect­ed of a qual­i­ty estab­lish­ment these days, the fact that more places are offer­ing impres­sive ranges of inde­pen­dent beers instead of the usu­al brand­ed swill can only be good for Welling­ton. If not for our liv­ers.