Part of the excitement and part of the terror of becoming an expat is leaving the things you know and love. You have to be willing to let go of the familiar and embrace what your new home provides in its stead. Here is our story of leaving the embarrassment of fabulous beers available in the United States and discovering beer in New Zealand…

1. Starting with Commercial New Zealand Beers
2. Then Trying New Zealand Craft Brewing
3. And Also Exploring Other Options

1. Commercial New Zealand Beers

When we decided to emigrate from the US, of course beer came into the discussion. As home brewers, beer judges and all around beer nuts, we often plan meals, dining out and even travel around beer. So obviously we would make beer part of our migration criteria. We enjoy a wide range of the world’s beer styles so we tried to be as open minded as possible. Acceptable destinations would only have to provide reasonable access to a decently crafted beer with full flavors made from quality ingredients. While our favorite beers tend to be heavily hopped IPAs or APAs, and thick rich stouts and porters, we weren’t going to hold out for specific beer styles.

When we began targeting New Zealand as our migration destination, we had to see what we were facing on the beer front. We didn’t remember much about the beer from our short pass through the country 20 some years ago, and our exposure to NZ imports was limited to Steinlager and Lion Red, which were not quite up to the threshold. Our Lonely Planet New Zealand mentioned local breweries in several regions. We also saw online that New Zealand has multiple national beer competitions and some online brewing suppliers. Our beer writer friend Bob scared us some saying he didn’t find much of quality when he traveled here. Still, we concluded that while it would not be like Europe or North America it would probably be better than most of Asia. We convinced ourselves that if we couldn’t find beers we like, we could make our own.

Upon making our great leap across the Pacific, we embarked upon some hands-on research. Of course we expected to find Steinlager. Ask an American to name a New Zealand beer, and if they know any it will be Steinlager. It’s the only major exported beer from this small country, and fairly widely distributed in the US. We were a bit surprised, then, to learn that in New Zealand it’s sold as a premium label and priced like imports.

Even so, Steinlager did give us a lot of hints about NZ beer. Starting from the lager in its name, we quickly learned that most run of the mill beer here is loosely based on German lagers. Despite a primarily British European history, the various regions of New Zealand developed regional lagers rather than British ale styles. Although those regional brewers have been steadily bought up and consolidated into two major conglomerates (DB and Lion-Nathan), they created a definite New Zealand Lager style with a consistent, if subtle, difference from Australian, American or traditional European lagers. Compared to run of the mill American lagers, such as Bud or Miller, Steinlager typifies the local taste for a rather sweeter, lower hop profile. Commercial NZ lagers tend to be darker, are a little less fizzy, and don’t need to be quite as cold, though Kiwis do profess to love cold beer (again, going against the motherland).

New Zealand has quite a few of these brews, including Lion Red, Tui, Speights, and DB Draught, and they have a bit of style variation. NZ generally ignores formal styles, sometimes giving their lagers names like IPA or Bitter, so it’s hard to pinpoint them exactly, but they are typically one of the following:

• Draught, sometimes called amber, is probably the most common; usually advertised as smooth and easy drinking 
• Dark is distinctly darker in color and a bit more roasty or caramel flavored; often a bit higher alcohol
• Gold or Golden Lager is closer to an Australian Lager, lighter in color, but still more focused on malt than hops

To our tastes, however, we have found a dreadful commercial similarity in NZ lagers, and lack of the yum factor imparted by more generous use of hops. We are hard pressed to pick a favorite when a bar has no other choices though it’s not quite as bad as that one night in South Texas when the bartender offered us “all three” kinds of beer, meaning Bud, Miller and Coors. Still, we tend to prefer something a little more crafted, with a little more hop and malt character.