One Day In March

Fresh hopped, hazy, harvest IPA. A juicy blend of Nelson Sauvin & Rakau, all picked on the same day at Freestyle hop farm, half of the harvest was rushed still wet from the field to the Garage and plunged straight into this beer, the other half was quickly dried and added to the fermenter. The result is a beer overflowing with lush citrus, resinous pine and tropical fruit. Just New Zealand grown hops at their harvest fresh best.

There's a real romance around this season; racing to get whole cone, wet hops straight from the field to the tank. And beyond that - hop harvest is when we select hops that will shape our beers for the whole year, getting up close and intimate with premium ingredients at the source, meeting new trial varietals that are coming to fruition and getting excited about all the delicious potential that hops from Aotearoa offer.

So much of getting the best quality hops is picking them at the right moment - which, at the end of the day, is totally qualitative, rather than scientific. You go into the field, pick a cone, rub it between your palms, smell it, and decide: is now the moment we go? It gets a bit scary when the window for picking at all is getting smaller, and you're waiting, waiting to see whether you can actually capture that peak moment. It's part of what makes hops so exciting, and gives us such huge respect for the sensory skills and steel balls of hop growers - shout out to our good friends at Freestyle Hops and Nelson Lakes!

In 2026, Pete spent the whole month down in Nelson alongside growers, with Jos, Peter Bircham (our head of research) and several of the brewers joining him for a spell, including for our annual Hāpi Symposium (we'll share more info on this year's discussion in coming weeks).

And that's what One Day In March is all about. Hops are so particular to the place and the moment they are picked - so, while this is technically a rebrew, each year's iteration is unique. You're picking the day, getting those hops and locking that character into a beer. The terroir of hops.