Record win for Brave Brewing Co with five awards at 2025 New Zealand Beer Awards
Gemma Smith told Hawke's Bay Today the team was rapt. 'We are incredibly humbled by the awards and just so proud of our hard-working and dedicated team,' she said.
Judges at the New Zealand Beer Awards in Christchurch. Photo / RNZ
'We showed up hoping to achieve some consistency, and perhaps nab a gold medal for our best-loved beer, Tigermilk IPA. So this has totally blown us away.
'We are a very regionally-focused brewery and Hawke's Bay consumes most of our beer. We are so incredibly grateful to the people of Hawke's Bay that have always supported us and cheered us on. They have helped us grow in so many ways.'
It is the first time in 18 years that one brewery has collected three beer category trophies.
Matt Smith said the team had been 'hyper-focused' on the 'little details' this year and had made 'incremental steps towards brewing the best possible beer'.
'So having this feedback from some of the best judging palates in the country and winning these awards has been so validating.'
New Zealand's brewers are embracing new ingredients and styles, head judge Tina Panoutsos said.
'We've seen different ingredients used creatively and represented across a range of styles from fruit and flavoured, European ales and experimental classes.
'There's a trend toward using a range of fruits like the native Horopito and stone fruits to influence texture and complexity.'
Wellington brewery Garage Project added to its trophy cabinet, collecting four prizes and the highest number of medals of any entrant – 10 gold, 11 silver and six bronze.
Garage Project was also named Champion New Zealand Large Brewery and won two beer category trophies: British & European Ale and Wood & Barrel Aged.
Matakana independent brewery Sawmill won the Brewing Sustainability Award for the sixth consecutive year.
The New Zealand Medium Brewery winner is Altitude Brewing, from Queenstown. Altitude also took home two beer category trophies – New Zealand Lager & New Zealand Pilsner and the Juicy/Hazy IPA Trophy.
New Zealand Beer Awards 2025
Karamu Barrelworks, Champion New Zealand Micro Brewery
Brave Brewing Co, Champion New Zealand Small Brewery
Altitude Brewing, Champion New Zealand Medium Brewery
Garage Project, Champion New Zealand Large Brewery
Brave Brewing Co, Champion New Zealand Brewing Company
bStudio, Champion New Zealand Manufacturer
Garage Project, Chance, Luck and Magic 2021, Champion New Zealand Beer
– RNZ, additional reporting Hawke's Bay Today
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Techday NZ
6 hours ago
- Techday NZ
Cloudera acquires Taikun to boost data & AI across all clouds
Cloudera has acquired Taikun, a platform provider for managing Kubernetes and cloud infrastructure, to strengthen its data and AI platform across hybrid and multi-cloud environments. Cloudera's move allows the company to accelerate deployment of its platform, including Data Services and artificial intelligence workloads, across a range of settings from public clouds and on-premises data centres to sovereign and air-gapped environments, all managed through a unified control structure. The need for more reliable and scalable data infrastructure has grown as enterprise IT environments become increasingly complex and distributed. The acquisition of Taikun provides Cloudera with native Kubernetes capabilities aimed at enabling simpler and more flexible operations, even within highly regulated or distributed contexts. Cloud-like operation anywhere Taikun's technology will give Cloudera an integrated compute layer, uniting deployment and operations throughout the information technology stack. This aims to deliver a cloud-like experience consistently across different environments. Customers will gain the flexibility to run data and AI workloads in data centres, clouds, or hybrid settings without compromising on performance or control. Among the benefits highlighted are support for highly regulated environments such as GovCloud, Sovereign Cloud, and air-gapped data centres. Taikun's integration is expected to increase operational efficiency through zero-downtime upgrades and improved resource optimisation. Customers will also have the option to integrate a variety of tools and databases from Cloudera's ecosystem and third-party providers using a "bring your own engine" approach. Cloudera described the acquisition as part of its approach to ensuring long-term flexibility for customers, enabling adaptation to future business mandates and maintaining alignment with changing requirements for data and AI workloads. Executive perspectives "This acquisition marks a pivotal step in our mission to bring the cloud experience wherever enterprise data resides," said Charles Sansbury, CEO, Cloudera. "By integrating Taikun's container-native platform in our stack, we are removing operational barriers and enabling our customers to unlock faster insights, make smarter decisions, and drive real-time action in every corner of their business." Following the deal, Taikun's engineering team will join Cloudera's broader engineering, product, and support organisation, with Taikun's base in the Czech Republic becoming a European development hub for Cloudera. "Our acquisition by Cloudera marks a pivotal moment for us," said Adam Skotnicky, former CEO of Taikun, "Our advanced cloud-native computing platform will enable customers from across the globe to deliver and deploy services and applications seamlessly, whether that's in the data centre or in multi-cloud environments. Only Cloudera is the right organisation for us to join during this critical moment for data and AI." Industry analysts noted the challenges organisations face due to dispersed data and application management, and suggested that the merger could provide improvements for AI and analytics across diverse environments. "Organisations are suffering more than ever from fragmented data and application management across diverse infrastructures, increasing complexity, costs, and limiting data/AI initiatives," said Sanjeev Mohan, Principal, SanjMo. "The result: compromise on workload placement and data analysis. With Cloudera's acquisition of Taikun and integration in Cloudera's platform, organisations can now run AI and analytics anywhere their data lives - from cloud to edge - accelerating insights, empowering smarter choices, and driving real-time responses throughout their organisation." Acquisition strategy This is Cloudera's third acquisition in 14 months, following the purchase of Verta's operational AI platform in May 2024 and Octopai's data lineage and catalogue solution in November 2024. These acquisitions have been aimed at reinforcing Cloudera's platform and ensuring customers have flexibility in how and where they manage data and AI workloads. Follow us on: Share on:
NZ Herald
8 hours ago
- NZ Herald
NZ corporate bond issuance shifts overseas, local market slows
That's partly down to banks being better positioned, so corporate treasurers are skewing their funding mix more towards bank lending, he says. The New Zealand Local Government Funding Agency (LGFA), which raises funds for councils, has recently begun issuing offshore debt, which has added another 'swing factor' away from the local market, he says. 'But it's not just LGFA. There is a kind of dynamic where treasurers are getting better pricing landed back into Kiwi dollars if they issue offshore,' he said. 'That's something we would see as being likely to persist, so it's a bit of a change.' Kāinga Ora (formerly the Housing Corporation) is absent from the corporate debt market after the Government in 2022 announced that future funding would be through New Zealand Debt Management – part of the Treasury. He said corporates are hedging funds raised overseas back into New Zealand dollars on quite favourable terms. 'In previous years, typically there is more issuance done domestically than offshore, but this year, a multiple of what's been done onshore has been done offshore. 'Borrowers probably see it as being reasonably positive, but from a fund manager's perspective, we would like to see more issuance in New Zealand,' Pannett said. 'Typically they will get a bit more tenor [longer duration] offshore, and price is a pretty significant motivator also.' But Pannett said it's too early to say if the local market risked becoming a backwater for corporate bond issuance. 'I would need to see a bit more evidence of that first, because it may just be that pricing has moved so much that that is where we are at this point. 'But to call it a real trend, you might need some more evidence.' Overseas bond issuance has been split between Australian, US, Swiss and European markets, with smaller deals done in Japan. Pannett said the trend of raising funds in overseas markets was 'strikingly different' from previous years, when domestic issuance came out on top. The trend means more fund managers, including those managing KiwiSaver funds, are looking overseas for opportunities. 'It's fair to say that they [fund managers] have been looking offshore to fill the void left by limited domestic corporate bond issuance,' Pannett said. Simon Eckhoff, director for syndicate and debt capital markets at ANZ Markets, Institutional, said hedging costs have been favourable throughout this year, which has resulted in New Zealand issuers tapping overseas markets. For corporate issuers in the year to date, ANZ estimates that for every $1 raised in New Zealand dollars, there has been the equivalent of $2 raised in overseas markets – in sharp contrast with history. 'There have been several factors touted as key drivers for the current dynamics, such as the comparative value of the likes of New Zealand government bonds to that of corporate bonds as well as prevailing hedging levels. 'These factors could be perceived as effectively shrinking the investible universe in New Zealand dollar debt,' Eckhoff said. 'While the New Zealand debt market has faced some challenges recently, markets typically normalise,' he said. 'In the interim, offshore debt offers New Zealand issuers an opportunity to enhance their funding diversification,' Eckhoff said. Jamie Gray is an Auckland-based journalist, covering the financial markets and the primary sector. He joined the Herald in 2011.
The Spinoff
10 hours ago
- The Spinoff
I can't stop thinking about the Christchurch kimono frenzy
10,000 kimonos… 10,000 unanswered questions. On Saturday morning at 9.57am, I joined a humming, 20-strong throng of Cantabrians champing at the bit for the City Mission op shop on Barbadoes Street to throw open their doors. 'It's like a Black Friday sale,' one woman mused, adjusting her empty tote bags in anticipation. 'Let us in, let us in,' another guy quietly chanted, raising an invisible pitchfork in jest. We were all united by one sweeping affliction that suddenly had Ōtautahi in a chokehold: kimono madness. It began with a Facebook post made by the Christchurch City Mission in the middle of an idle Tuesday afternoon. 'Life is full of surprises and topping our list this week is … thousands of kimonos,' the post reads. 'A generous donation of three packed truckloads of kimonos are coming to our Barbadoes Street op shop. Thousands! They are going out the door fast at $2 a pop, so this is your big chance if you have ever fancied owning/wearing one. Arigato!' Soon enough, the post had hundreds of comments and shares, with IRL queues forming out the door of both the Barbadoes Street and Sydenham City Mission stores. 'It's a kimono frenzy,' City Mission retail team leader Josie Cox told RNZ. 'We're selling them for $2 each and they've just gone mad. This morning there were probably 40 people waiting to come in.' The stock arrived by way of three trucks and two vans, and staff couldn't restock the bins fast enough. Any seasoned op shopper is always chasing the dream of stumbling across a rare or weird find, be it a war relic, a treasured timepiece, or even a purse containing a family mystery. But this opshop drop was on another scale of novelty and luxury entirely – 10,000 unique pieces, all in perfect condition, from a mysterious private donor. Where did they all come from? Why so, so, so many? Why central Christchurch? Why now? And, once again, why so, so, so many? I contacted a local kimono historian – who wished to stay anonymous but described themself as 'a detective analysing each and every kimono' – to see what they reckoned. 'A very unusual story,' they wrote, positing the collection may have recently come into the ownership of someone seeking 'a quick resolution.' As for the value, they estimated the total collection would have cost between $10,000-$30,000 to buy in Japan, and at least $5000 to import. Beyond the monetary value, they also explained the historical and cultural significance. 'Kimono were refined over the past 1000 years to the garment we see today,' they said, explaining how the garment is now mostly used as formal wear for the wealthy on special cultural occasions in Japan. 'No fashion designer has ever been able to improve it. The design is perfect,' they wrote, adding that each one is also completely unique: 'your kimono has no copies.' Karen Healey was one of the Cantabrians lucky enough to nab a couple of the peerless $2 pieces for herself from the Barbadoes Street op shop, after hearing about the donation from a fellow customer at The Fabric Store. 'The second you walked in, there were all these people clustered around these two big bins right at the front – anyone opening the door was hit with kimono,' she described. 'It was a brief little miracle… a dusty, noisy, magical experience.' While Healey says everyone was being 'very kind and considerate' when she visited, Anissa Trinder, aka vintage seller Spice Kotiro, told a different story. Trinder was there 'on a whim' as the multiple trucks arrived, and says that people 'immediately just started going crazy' for the kimonos. She picked up a kimono that she liked the look of, and another woman snatched it right out of her hands. 'I just thought, 'man, fuck this. I do not need a kimono that bad'.' Being a reseller herself, I asked Trinder about the $2 price point and the fact that several are already being resold on Facebook Marketplace for much more. 'The City Mission obviously just wanted to move them through, and they sold them all within the week, which is really beneficial for them,' she said. 'I think it's crazy that lots of them are on Marketplace, especially because it was such a public Christchurch phenomenon and everyone was talking about them.' Healey purchased three kimonos, one yukata and a haori. 'The fabric and the patterning is really what I'm after, so they will be reborn as garments that will be loved and treasured in a slightly different form,' she said. 'And it will make a good story – this shirt came from one of the kimono.' After snatch-gate, Trinder didn't buy anything. 'I am very specific with my style and the things that I sell,' she said. 'I'm also wary of cultural appropriation and all that stuff.' That's another interesting consideration to mull over – is it a risk to have this many kimonos unleashed in a place which still boasts an alarming number of white dreadlocks? While my mystery kimono historian maintained that anyone from 'DJs to traditional Japanese housewives' can now wear a kimono, opinions differ on the mainstream popularisation of the garment. (I also reached out to the Japanese Society of Canterbury for comment, but am yet to hear back). For those who were lucky enough to nab one (or, as Healey observed in one customer, one hundred) of these pieces, there's also delicate care concerns. The kimono expert recommended they are stored flat, ideally in kimono-friendly paper, in a drawer with silica gel and mothballs. As for washing? Go for a hand wash in cold water. 'Must be immersed in a bath to avoid bubbles,' they added. 'Wet area will transfer dye to any dry area, so bubbles are the enemy.' All of the above info would have been useful if, when the doors of the op shop swung open like a saloon on Saturday morning, there had been any of the elusive kimonos left. Alas, we were all about 48 hours too late. I poked about the rest of the store, nabbing a pristine $1 rubber chicken, as multiple bereft women with sharp grey bobs and statement glasses processed the news. 'The kimonos have all sold out, I'm so sorry,' the shopkeeper said gently. 'Now they are just a distant memory.'
