Last year, The Catfish hosted a Waitangi Day celebration in conjunction with a crew of Kiwi beer lovers and with the support of the City of Wellington and the city's Beervana festival.
It went off like a rocket and is back. And bigger too.
The Catfish is once again hosting an event to mark New Zealand's national day and will pouring some of the very best beers to cross the Tasman all through the surrounding weekend.
And, this time around, there are events taking place at other top beer bars around the country too with organiser Paul Steiglbauer keen to create a similar sort of buzz for Kiwi craft beer that the Hottest 100 poll has helped build for Aussie craft beer on Australia Day.
Joining The Catfish are The Scratch in Brisbane, The Wheaty in Adelaide and Frankie's in Sydney (see event times below).
We will also be giving away a $50 bar tab for each venue in the Crafty newsletter on Friday, January 23, so sign up if you haven't already.
As well as tap lineups showcasing the likes of Tuatara, ParrotDog, Garage Project, Yeastie Boys, Epic, Renaissance, 8 Wired, Panhead and Liberty, there will once more be a raffle prize to win an all expenses return trip to Beervana 2015 including flights, accommodation and more (see below for details).
NB: There are four trips up for grabs this year – one at each venue!
Paul says that last year's event came about during one of his long periods between jobs in the NZ film industry as, while trying to keep his brain busy, he got chatting to mates in the Wellington beer scene about how Kiwis didn't seem to celebrate Waitangi Day like the Aussies did and "it all just fell into place".
"It went so well and everybody in Wellington really enjoyed what went on," he says. "Beervana is such a fantastic event and Wellington really is the craft beer capital of New Zealand so we're always looking for ways to get people over.
"[With this] we can give people a taster of what Wellington is about and say to people, 'Why don't you come over and check out the real thing?'. We've got good food and coffee and art and culture."
Event times:
- The Catfish (Melbourne) – February 5 to 9
- The Scratch (Brisbane) – February 8 and 9
- The Wheaty (Adelaide) – February 8 from 2pm to 9pm
- Frankie's (Sydney) – February 9
The Raffle
To enter costs $10 per ticket capped at 500 tickets max with the prize a return, all paid for trip to Beervana in Wellington that includes:
- Return airfares for two people
- Two nights accommodation
- Tickets for two to Beervana session on Sat
- Brewery tour Tuatara or ParrotDog
- Dinner at The Tasting Room
- Brunch at Caffe Lafarre
- Breakfast at Sweet Mothers Kitchen
