About the only touristy thing I did in Greymouth was to go on the Monteith's Brewery tour.
Monteith makes a big deal about how small it is, but it turns out it's actually owned by the much bigger Dominion Breweries. Nevermind. The site in Greymouth, although not the original, is pretty old. However, unlike Boag's in Tasmania there are none of the old buildings.
The brewery is very small scale – there are only 4 full time staff. Also it turns out that they actually make more cider in Greymouth than beer (that's made in other DB locations).
The tour I was on started at 6pm, so there was no chance of seeing anything actually working. It was a bit dull really, and it certainly lacked the impressive, almost hypnotic, spectacle of the Boag's bottling line.
To be honest the tour was really just a prelude to the tasting! All 6 or 7 Monteith beers were tasted as well as the cider. The only ones I wasn't too keen on were the darker ones (they're all lagers) and the cider was nondescript.
My fellow tour goers/tasters were a mixed bag. A fair few were backpacker types, thankfully not overloaded with Brits on gap years.
No comments:
Post a Comment