In a world-first, Mash Up, the world's largest collaborative brew, has been created - with most of New Zealand's small independent breweries contributing. The project was filmed for an upcoming online TV series about New Zealand's craft-brewing culture.
The first episode is now available online at http://www.NZCraftBeer.TV
Luke Nicholas,
president and founder of Epic Brewing Company in Auckland, and new recruit Kelly Ryan, who recently joined Epic after a successful brewing career with multi-award winning Thornbridge Brewery in the UK, took up the challenge of visiting as many breweries as they could over a 17-day period. Film crew in tow, they travelled the country by campervan, covering almost 4500km as they documented the craft beer scene. Coupled with the production was the collaboration brew project, which aimed to capture the passion and concepts of the craft brewers in one tipple that acted as a summary of what was happening in New Zealand beer in 2011.
A total of 44 breweries from Invercargill to Auckland were included in the project, with several turning up for the brew day at Steam Brewery in Auckland.
The resulting beer, Mash Up, is a pale ale with 6 per cent alcohol content that is an ode to New Zealand's deliciously refreshing hops. It uses a blend of Kiwi and British malt (many Kiwi brewers are British or got their inspiration from the UK beer scene) and is touted as being the world's largest collaboration beer.
Nicholas and Ryan originally discussed the idea when they were guest international beer judges at the World Beer Cup in Chicago in 2010.
"It sounded like an amazing concept and we hoped it would give others the chance to see how great the Kiwi brewing scene actually is," says Nicholas.
