Craft beers to have new home at House

Hamilton beer enthusiasts will shortly have good reason to raise their glasses and drink a hearty toast to a new city bar.

The Old Hog in Hood St is undergoing a major renovation, and is due to reopen on March 12 as House, a bar which is focused primarily on offering a wide range of New Zealand's finest craft brews on tap.

It is a development which will finally rectify the incongruity of Hamilton being the only major centre which – if you discount the members-only Ruakura Campus Club – has failed to offer significant tap outlets for New Zealand's leading microbreweries.

The project is being undertaken by Phoenix Group, which already owns a stable of Hamilton bars.

But this is a significant departure from previous group developments, which have always had their taps tied to either Lion or DB breweries.

"Independent" was the key word behind the concept, part-owner and manager Nathan Sweetman said.

"We are very interested in what independent breweries are doing and they will be just as interested in what we are doing here," he said.

"We travelled through Australia and New Zealand before settling on the concept."

He credited Hamilton beer activist Greig McGill with alerting the group to the fact that a beer renaissance being enjoyed in other centres was largely passing Hamilton by.

"We went to the BrewNZ Beervana (beer festival) and were blown away by the very good stuff being made by very small breweries that did not see the light of day in Hamilton."

House will sell tap beers from leading craft breweries such as Emerson's, Tuatara, Epic, Invercargill Brewery, and Croucher Brewing Co, as well have having a guest tap for seasonal beer – and a couple of token mainstream taps.

House will also be promoting its own "house" beer in conjunction with Rotorua brewer Paul Croucher, though it is not yet ready to publicise the name or style of the brew.

Mr Sweetman said the House name just felt right.

"This place looks very much like a house. It has a lot of different areas that look or feel like a Kiwi home."

Under the refit the establishment – which was originally the Grand Central Hotel – will have a separate small Grand Central bar accessible from a side entrance.

There will also be an upstairs bar or function room, a renovated deck area and a big emphasis on food.

Co-owner Jason Macklow said a lot of time and effort was going into the refit and breathing new life into the building without making it appear too flashy or sterile.

"It's really important to make the place feel approachable, warm and relaxed so that we capture that feeling of home," Mr Macklow said.

He said House was also destined to become the home bar for The Chiefs.

- © Fairfax NZ News