I spy with my little eye

With a large num­ber of the Tuatara brew­ery staff being based in Welling­ton it does make sense for Tuatara to start some­thing more cen­tral­ly so that at least not every­one has to spend a cou­ple of hours every­day dri­ving to Kapi­ti. Think of the beer that could be brewed in that time! And there will be beer brew­ing!

The Third Eye, the new premis­es on Arthur Street, Te Aro, is named after a hatch­ling tuatara’s pari­etal eye and has recent­ly been set up by Tuatara — it’s been a good few months in the mak­ing and they qui­et­ly opened their doors on Fri­day 20th. There’s 14 taps (not all pour­ing Tuatara), some seat­ing indoors and out­doors, the Goose Shack food truck will be parked up out back (prac­ti­cal­ly dai­ly) AND… there’s a shiny 500 litre kit that will make beers on an almost week­ly basis.

Scot­ty Boswell who is going to be run­ning things at The Third Eye and who I was for­tu­nate enough to meet up and chat with told me because the brew­ery will only be mak­ing 10 kegs of beer at a time the brew­ers using The Third Eye have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to make more exper­i­men­tal brews. In addi­tion to that Tuatara “are want­i­ng to pro­vide brew­ing space, not only for already well estab­lished brew­eries look­ing for con­tract brew­ing space, which is increas­ing in demand, but also home­brew­ers who are look­ing at tak­ing that next leap.”

I was told there’d be beers that per­haps don’t fit with­in an par­tic­u­lar style but taste real­ly good. This is awe­some news! Tuatara have their stan­dard set of beers that you can get across the coun­try, beers that are fine exam­ples of their respec­tive styles and I know of a num­ber of brew­eries that make fan­tas­tic beers that peo­ple love the taste of but don’t win any medals because they don’t fit the par­tic­u­lar style require­ments.

This desire to push the bound­aries and change think­ing around beer can­not be a bad thing, right? This Tem­ple of Taste is in an old build­ing that used to be, amongst oth­er things, a gym, a boys school, and a broth­el. Prob­a­bly not at the same time. “As cheesy as it sounds we want this to be a place where you can open your mind to new think­ing about beer.”

In an effort to make it seem like I was wor­thy of being in an estab­lish­ment where deep­er thought and under­stand­ing is encour­aged, I men­tioned a bot­tle of Son of God I had sit­ting in my fridge that I was look­ing for­ward to sam­pling at home.

“Son of God? What’s that?”

Oh no, that’s not the name of the beer I have in my fridge! “Ahh­mm, sor­ry not Son of God but… ahhh” I flail, want­i­ng to down my drink and run. Or just run. Or just sink into the ground.

“Act of God?”

“Yeah! That’s the one!” glad that Scott could deci­pher my stum­ble. While Scott did­n’t know what Son of God was we both agreed it’s a pret­ty great name for a beer. You’re wel­come Tuatara! That one’s on me!

Scot­ty said that Tuatara should “Stick to our knit­ting. Our craft is beer.” He explained that with the legal oblig­a­tion to serve food the option of get­ting some­one in to pro­vide food appealed and the rela­tion­ship with Hadyn Turn­er of the Goose Shack was con­firmed. They’ll be roost­ing out the back, offer­ing a range of items with some even con­tain­ing Tuatara beers.

The Third Eye is a pret­ty excit­ing addi­tion to the Welling­ton beer com­mu­ni­ty, one that does­n’t want to just be anoth­er bar or restau­rant or brew­ery but all of the above. I think they’re a wel­come addi­tion to the Aro area and I look for­ward to pass­ing by for a pint, eat­ing a sand­wich and tak­ing a rig­ger home for my fridge. I may even be able to pick up a Son of God one day?!