Onehunga Spring Brewery
Makers of New Zealand's only Beer (says Norbert)
Because Silver-Fern and Old Thumper are made with the correct ingredients only, they are very healthy and hang-over free. Try a nice cold Silver Fern during the daytime... you'll never touch a factory-beer again ! New Zealand beer is generally about as bad as US-beer.. and that means something .... But Silver Fern and Old-Thumper have a recipe which can stand up to many German and even Czech beers, on the grounds of having the pacific freshness they lack. Being an all-malt beer, which is about 20 times more expensive to brew than sugar-"beer", it doesn't have the cheap-bitter aftertaste of fermented sugars ... its a real proper beer, and you can taste it. It contains lots more (real!) hops! Apart from what that does for the taste and the head, being a natural sedative, it makes you sleep if you had a few too much. This would certainly stop a lot of (pub-) aggression which is far too common in New Zealand. It must be said for German community here: This beer is the only one worth drinking. (God knows, I tried a few ...)
Old Thumper is my favorite, since it is very much like a dark Munich beer ... very nice flavour! But during the day, with a meal, and in early evening I often like to drink a nice cool Silver Fern.
If only ... If only we had a nice Hefe-Weizenbier in New Zealand ! THE summer-beer! Actually they make one, from Dunedin I believe, but it comes in a (urgh!) plastic bottle (yuk!) and although the consistency is right something seems decidedly wrong about it... maybe its just taste of the plastic bottle. UPDATE: its now in glass bottles (albeit no deposit-bottle yet..aaarggh .. see link below)
The no-deposit system we have here in New Zealand is a disgrace, of course. I plead to introduce the DIN 35 0.5 litre bottle, like it is common in Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Czecheslovakia, Hungary, Poland, Holland and other places around there. The crates should have 4$, the bottles 30¢ deposit on them. Think of all the kids bringing back the bottles for pocket money ! But of course kiwis are too lazy for this. Too much work to introduce such a scheme. Germany actually introduced a 50¢ deposit on plastic bottles, in order to discourage their use, or at least limit it. 90% of German beer is still poured from 0.5l bottles.. and what a difference it makes!

Visit the Brewery! Get a reasonably priced beer (not to speak of the value for money)

Onehunga Spring Brewery
2 Miami Parade
Onehunga
Auckland
New Zealand

ph +64 9 6341890 
fax +64 9 6341520

The German Purity Law (Das Reinheitsgebot)

This law from 1516 allows beer only to be brewed with the four magic ingredients: Water, Malt, Hops and Yeast. Today, this is still the rule for German, Swiss and Czech beer, thats why you can drink any beer there and it'll be good for you and tastes great!

Some links

If you want to find other beers, try this page here
Or the alt.beer newsgroup
BeerScene
Read this fantastic story about Budweiser (puke!) vs Budvar (drown in it)
Home-brew guys
Hemp Beer ... yes, swiss are making that!
EMERSON WEIZENBIER from New Zealand!

If you have free beer which is as good as this one, email the webmaster: click here 1