Origins of Food: The Origins of So Many Delicious Beverages: Wellington

Wellington: "The coolest little capital in the world." Known as the political and cultural capital of New Zealand, also known in the food world as the beer and cafe capital of this tiny but trend-setting country.

We are going to write a two-part blog on the city's food production, focusing on beer (and soda as a side bonus) first, and the cafe scene second. Wellington is often compared to Melbourne and Portland, in regards to the high proportion of microbreweries per capita, and while craft beer only makes up about 2% of beer sales in New Zealand, it is the fastest growing segment of the brewing industry, increasing by about 25% per year…. something to think about. Side note: hops is also a popular crop grown in NZ, which must help incentivize local beer lovers to make their own brews.

Bringing back Lionel Richie, yeah!

While traveling on a budget, and sticking mainly to wwoofing and a little site seeing on our days off, we knew that Wellington would be our one chance to indulge in a bit of city-slickerdom, eating at hole-in-the-wall Asian noodle houses or kebab joints, hopping around beer bars and cafes. We gave ourselves less than 48 hours to tackle it all, as well as the famous Te Papa, the national museum and art gallery, with a huge collection of Maori artifacts and history (yes, Mom, we still find time for museums!).

After our ridiculously good four-hour bus ride from Taupo, (a $9 ticket got us free hot drinks, wifi, outlets, cookies and hokey pokey ice cream!) we arrived in Wellington refreshed and ready to jump right into the beer scene, no dinner needed.

Wee! In a city again!

Note on NZ hostels. They are expensive. Like, really, really expensive. Average $30 for a TEN PERSON dorm without a bath (compared to $6-$10 max we paid in Guatemala). So we sucked it up and checked into the cheapest option, the international chain Nomad's, which also happens to be the largest backpackers hostel I think I've ever stepped foot in (think hundreds of 18-35 year olds, elevators and electric key cards). We lucked into a free upgrade to a 4-person with ensuite bathroom… and it was actually pretty sweet. Clean, comfortable beds. Even a double bed on the bottom bunk! Clean bathroom with private shower and toilet. Even a free pancake breakfast from 7-9am (keeping in mind if you procrastinate until 8:30 you have to fight about 100 sleepy kids for one of 16 stove burners for what turned out to be flavorless pancake batter and imitation maple syrup, but, still free!).

Noted.

Back to the beer! We wandered around the Cuba Street area and stumbled upon Golding's Free Dive Bar almost immediately, which was also at the top of our bar list. Serendipity I say.

Advertised as an "American style" dive bar, it was much cleaner, quieter and well-mannered than what comes to mind when I think American dive bar. And no peanuts on the floor. Wha?

But it still had the most charm out of any of the other bars we ended up visiting in Wellington, so that's something. We sampled a few of the beers on tap before Matt decided on the Parrot Dog Double Stout and I on a German sour beer, the Panhead Culture Vulture Salted Gose. The double stout was so toasty it reminded me of a liquid version of my favorite Essene toast, a dark and earthy bread made from sprouted wheat. The Salted Gose was crazy special, and reminded me of the sour (almost pickly) ciders I tasted in the Basque Country. (Just did some research on Salted Gose beer- it is indeed brewed with salted water and spiced with coriander). Both proved Wellington's beer hype is well earned.

The next day found us cafe hopping (more about that later), museuming, soda sampling, and, of course, beer tasting. We had noticed the night before that right next to Golding's was Six Barrel Soda Company, a small local soda business. Six Barrel was on the menu at every cafe we had visited in the morning and we were stoked at the community's support for other small businesses.

Not regular soda drinkers, we were nonetheless intrigued at learning how artisanal sodas are made, how creative one could get with soda flavors as well as supporting a small food producer. Up the stairs we went and into their production area/ retail cafe. Cute in a factory-come-cafe kind of way, with boxes stacked everywhere, soda syrups on display, board games at the ready, and an open view of their production area, we sat by a window and decided to kill a few hours drinking soda and playing Scrabble.

Matt thinking hard about his next Scrabble word.

(L-R): Celery tonic, kola nut, cherry pom.

Well, we couldn't choose just one or two of their twelve flavors (!) so asked if we could have sampler glasses, which surprisingly was not something they regularly did but were happy to accommodate us. We went with the classic kola nut, fruity cherry pomegranate, spicy celery tonic and refreshing orange dandy. Six Barrel makes the syrups using fresh and dried whole ingredients, nothing artificial, and mixes them with SodaStream soda water on demand. Bottles of the syrup are also available to take home, should you want to make liters of the stuff on your own.

And Coca-Cola guards its recipe like it's the holy grail. This is all it should take, folks.

The colors of the sodas are bright and inviting, and we could definitely see this being "a thing." Celery tonic was the leader by far (hellooo Gin and Celery Tonic cocktails!), followed by the kola nut, orange dandy and cherry pom taking last place.

Too many flavors. Can. Not. Process.

Where the magic happens, as they say. Pretty basic!

Energized from the sodas, we made our way to the museum for a few hours and then it was finally beer o'clock. Our first stop was the Garage Project, about a 15 minute walk from central Wellington and in a cool, bohemian part of the city.

The tasting counter and retail area to the right of the garage.

Beer tanks in the garage. Sorry for the fuzziness, I didn't want to look too eager beaver taking pictures of the cool kids' beer operation, so I snapped this photo hastily.

What's in those tanks, if you were wondering.

On tap, to sample as we pleased, or to fill up your growler/flagon on demand. Imagine the keg stand potential!

We had about 10 samples this size, gratis. See how the hop plant resembles a certain high herb?

Only a few years old, Garage Project started out like most micro breweries, by making beer at home, eventually bought the garage and, voila, a local microbrewery flourished, now exporting to Australia, Norway, Hong Kong and Singapore. They sell out of nearly everything and have orders they can't fill. After spending about an hour tasting at the counter (we were personally led through all 8 beers on tap, as well as two special brews in bottles), and after observing the constant stream of locals coming in and out with their own growlers or flagons to fill from the tap, it is obvious that this is still very much a local beer company, serving the artists, the misfits and the connoisseurs. Among things we learned: hops and cannabis look very similar, and are in fact cousins. Cannabis beer is a thing. We also learned the beauty in Keeping It Simple, Stupid. They make a very simple beer made with just 3 ingredients: Pilsner malt, Saaz hops and Czech yeast. And they call it "Beer." Matt loved it.

Cereal Milk beer! Inspired by David Chang's Milk Bar.

After our 10 tastings, we ended up with a 2 liter bottle of the Baltic Porter, whoops!

After that, it was beer or bust. We hit a few more beer bars from the "must visit" online lists but we were done. Garage Project won our hearts and we were happy. As seen below.