VANESSA LAURIE / Stuff
Taranaki Beer Festival promoter Brett Cursons and manager Emma Puletaha are looking forward to the weekend, after Covid-19 delayed their event for three months.
This is the region where craft beer is said to have been brewed for the first time, is home to a number of award-winning breweries, and is about to host its first large-scale beer festival.
The Taranaki Beer Festival takes place on Friday and Saturday at New Plymouth’s TSB Stadium, with 35 local and national breweries showing off between 130-150 drinks.
“It would be nice to see it here – the market is here, the opportunity is here,” said promoter and organizer Brett Cursons. “Craft beer has really taken off, and it’s good for the region.”
The opportunity has been coming for a long time. It was to take place in early April, but Covid-19 restrictions kept it in its tracks.
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Cursons said he sighed with a sigh of relief that everything would be finished by the weekend.
“It’s quite nice to see something happen,” he said. “Hopefully we will make it an annual thing.”
VANESSA LAURIE / Stuff
The TSB Stadium may have been earlier this week, but it will be filled with 35 brewers and between 130-150 drinks on Friday and Saturday.
He and festival manager Emma Puletaha said it was the first time a beer event “of this scale” had taken place in Taranaki.
The region has hosted a number of smaller festivals in the past, such as the Mountain Ales Craft Beer Festival and Oktoberfest.
Cursons said there will be a mix of all craft beers this weekend, from haze, “which is big at the moment,” to seasonal winter dark beers.
And while craft beer is the main item on the menu, there will also be ciders, cocktails and non-alcoholic drinks on offer.
“There’s something for everyone,” Puletaha said.
People can buy tickets, and then have the option to buy 75 milliliter tasters, or 250 ml of drinks, at any of the breweries.
Taranaki group The Slacks will play both days, there will be games, including a barrel lift, and lots of snacks to eat offered in the “food village” outside the stadium.
While tickets sold “really well”, the couple said they expect more to be snapped up this week as they can fit around 2,500 people each day.
Cursons warned that people would feel “foamo” – a beer game with words of “fear of missing out” (FOMO) – if they did not go along.
“It will be good.”