At Tuatara, we take beer quality seriously and we like to think our stockists and venues do too. That certainly does not mean everything has to be boring though. One of our favourite venues is Monterey in Newtown, Wellington. As well as being a top bar and café, we love their funky, cheeky attitude. Here is how they describe themselves on their website:
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To celebrate the tenth anniversary of Tuatara, we finally let Head Brewer Carl Vasta make the huge, crazy, strong Belgian beer he had wanted to make for years. The result was Tuatara X which we launched at Beervana 2010 and it promptly sold out. Now, X is back. We have bottled some X and it is currently available in bottles only at Malthouse, Hashigo Zake and Long Beach Café in Waikanae.
Last week we received the great news that not only had Tuatara Brewing Company retained our place in the annual Deloitte Fast 50 Index, we had actually improved our ranking five places from 39th to 34th. The Deloitte Fast 50 has measured the fastest growing Kiwi businesses for ten years. Tuatara was one of just fifteen companies to be listed both years and was the only brewery on either list.
In March 2010, Tuatara Brewing Company made the decision to embrace the digital era. Granted, the timing of that decision didn’t exactly put us on the cutting edge of technology but over the last seven months we have steadily built and improved our internet and social media presence.
Nothing beats a freshly poured pint of great beer. At Tuatara, we are delighted to see more and more venues making the effort to put craft beers, including ours, on tap. In this post, we highlight long-standing Tuatara customer Havana Bar putting our Pilsner on two taps and brand-new client Heaven’s Pizza offering both draft Hefe and draft Pilsner.
The Tuatara crew celebrated the results of the annual Capital Times Best of Wellington survey when the good people of the Capital once again voted Tuatara Brewing Company their favourite beer brand. We were ranked first ahead of Monteith’s and Emerson’s, the same placings as 2009.
After a decade in the beer business, Tuatara is putting a real focus this year on getting our beers out to new markets and new drinkers. We are interested in getting into the huge Japanese beer market and so David Bernard went over to Japan to see if he could start opening up some leads for Tuatara.
Beervana was bigger and better this year and so was the fledgling Beer and Chefs competition. This contest, also run by the Brewer’s Guild of New Zealand, challenges chefs from around Wellington to offer their very best beer and food matches using any beer they choose. There were fifteen entries this year, up from ten in the first year, and the overall winner was our friends over at Logan Brown.
Hardly anyone saw them coming as a culinary trend but ‘pop-up restaurants’ are simply huge right now. Empty spaces – anywhere from theatres, shops, closed eateries, warehouses, car parks, tunnels and parks – can be quickly but temporarily converted into a restaurant. The same can be done with a private home but it is not really legal. Well, not legal at all.
There are a lot of websites out there which let drinkers, both expert and amateur, put up ratings and comments about the beers they have tasted. The one which has really taken off – and which has a vocal Kiwi contingent – is Ratebeer. In a post-Beervana moment, we thought it would be useful to see what the Ratebeer crew had to say about our new Tuatara American Pale Ale (APA):
