BEER-V-A-N-A

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So it has begun... Wellington on a Plate!!!

This past weekend was the start of the Wellington food festival which takes place throughout the month of August. As I mentioned in a pervious blog I signed up to volunteer for BEERVANA, which is a two day beerfest with four, four hour long sessions. I volunteered for the Friday night session from 5-10. As a volunteer I had to work one session and then I got to attend a session for free with twenty free beer tokens.

On Friday I walked down to Beervana which was being held in our Rugby stadium, with three of my friends. Upon arrival I got assigned to the Canterbury Bar. Before the doors opened at six all the bar tenders had to taste the beers that they would be handling, lucky for me Canterbury had eighteen beers on tap and four bottled... a lot of tasting. When the doors opened it was a rush of people, there were 1500 tasters on Friday and there was never a dull moment. As the night went on and the tasters became more and more intoxicated they were funnier and also generous by tipping me beer tokens. At ten the doors closed and we had to spend the next half hour cleaning our stations. However, we were instructed to take all the bottled beer that was opened and bring it to the volunteer room for consumption (otherwise it goes flat and they can not use it the next day). We spent the next half hour trying all the bottled beers from the different regions in New Zealand some where awesome!!! When we finally thought we were done the head of beervana came to inform us that they had just tapped three kegs for us and we should head down to the South Bar. Our night ended around Midnight after some very tasty beer.

Saturday I did not do much since it was very rainy and windy. By late afternoon the rain had cleared and it go very warm outside, which was nice. Me and my three friends had our free session from 6-10, so we left around 7 to be fashionably late. My first stop when we got in was back to the Canterbury Bar because they had a Pumpkin spiced and a Ginger beer that was out of this world. I also tried for the first time Cider which was surprisingly amazing. However the highlight of the night was at the Australian Bar. Saturday night was the release of "the rarest beer" at the festival. The guy who brews it does it in his family garage and it takes three years. There was a picture of his garage and in it was his minivan and then two vats for brewing. Beervana only had one keg of the beer and it got kicked in 30 mins.

I really enjoyed my first beer festival experience and hopefully can attend more in the future (maybe with Robert and Richard)

Sunday was the most beautiful day this week., it had to have been 65* outside with little to no wind. The flatmates and I headed to the farmers market for some early morning vegetable picking. After some lunch we had a pick up game of basketball which was hilarious because basketball is defiantly an American sport, the concept of dribbling the ball blew their minds.

Next Friday is the Chocolate festival and I can not wait.

Hope all is well!!!!

PS: MOM IS COMING TO NEW ZEALAND!!!!!!

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