The World's Largest Collaborative Brew

If there was one road trip that would invoke jealousy amongst the
nation’s beer drinkers, it would have to be one that involved visiting
the majority of craft breweries in the country. Two of New Zealand’s
leading craft brewers have done exactly this. All with the hope of
putting together a series of episodes that document the excitement,
passion and flavour that the beers and brewers of this fine country
have to offer.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_JmRyB1ZEQ

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 camper van, covering
almost 4500 kilometres as they documented the current craft beer
scene. Visiting breweries, sampling beers, discussing brewery history
and the passion that had resulted in people from all walks of life
choosing brewing as their occupation, the pair’s progress was captured
on camera to be used in an online video series.

Coupled with the production was the idea that all of the passion and
concepts of the craft brewers be captured in a special collaboration
brew that was to act as a summary of what was happening in New Zealand
beer in 2011. A grand total of 44 breweries from Invercargill to
Auckland were included in the project, with a bunch of them turning up
for the brew day at Steam Brewery in Auckland.

The resulting beer, Mash Up, is a New Zealand Pale Ale at 6% abv that
is an ode to the deliciously refreshing New Zealand hops. It uses a
blend of Kiwi and British malt (many brewers are British or got their
inspiration from the UK beer scene) and is touted as being the world’s
largest ever collaboration beer.

“We thought of contacting the Guinness Book of World Records to get
this verified, but didn’t want to give them too much press,” quips
Nicholas.

Nicholas and Ryan are no strangers to collaboration. Having worked on
joint brews both at Thornbridge in the UK and here with Epic in New
Zealand, they originally discussed the idea as 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.

“We both think Mash Up is a great summary of where NZ beer is at,”
states Ryan. “With the popularity of our great brewing ingredients on
the rise abroad, it’s definitely time that we celebrate their quality
here at home.”

Let’s raise our glasses to that.

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