Brave Brewing Co

After a relatively difficult week at work, an amazing boss offered to cover my Friday evening shift to let me start the weekend early. With a few colleagues I trundled down to Brave Brewery to try see what they had to offer. The expectations were set high, as I'm yet to taste a beer from Brave that I haven't liked. And they delivered! A cool little tasting bar, knowledgeable staff, good food and most importantly a great range of delicious beer!

I was quite impressed that they had about 10 beers on tap, and in addition to the 5 or so of their own beers, there were another 5 or so different styles from other NZ breweries, which did seem to be quite strategically chosen to give a nice rounded choice of beer styles to sample from. This made it difficult when choosing four beers for the tasting paddle, as I was torn between choosing four Brave beers vs choosing the four beers I wanted to sample the most! I had already had a glass of their limited edition IPA (which was absolutely superb) so I chose another three of their brews (left to right - a German style pils, American Brown Ale, Pacific Wheat Ale) and a New England IPA from Baylands Brewery in Lower Hutt (right on the image below).

I'm not going to give detailed tasting notes on these beers, but I had the German Pils first, which I thought was nice.. Had a bit of a malt kick a subtle hops note and smell and was easy drinking; the Pacific Wheat Ale next, which I thought was quite crystal clear for a wheat beer, and not particularly hoppy for a Pacific Ale... so overall was easy to drink but underwhelming; the American Brown Ale was delicious, although more like a dark beer than a brown ale to me with delicious roasty coffee and toffee flavours and a good punch of aroma hops coming through; and finally the NEIPA was yum as they always are, tasting quite thick after the others, but with a beautiful pungent smell and taste of hops hops and more hops.

One of the things that always seems to happen drinking a tasting paddle in the sun, is that the beer gets a bit warm and the yeast flavours seem to come through a bit strong.

The layout of the place is really quite cool, with a little tiny bar (that does have a couple of wines, ciders, kombuchas, etc...) and some merchandise as well as their tap beers. There's some inside seating, and a cool little bar area in a sideroom that overlooks the actualy brewery, so you can see the fermenters, etc... Then a little kitchen where you can kind of see the chefs chipping away at the food, and finally a little outdoor area with some umbrellas round the side (where we sat in the warm Hawke's Bay sun).

To summarise: great beer, good food, cool premesis... The ideal small NZ craft brewery.

www.bravebrewing,co.nz