Chocolate & Beer

Today is the day the kids have really been looking forward to.
Getting to Dunedin and visiting Cadbury World.
They were so excited and our tour time couldn't come soon enough.

The tour saw us go through the chocolate manufacturing plant and see Easter eggs, chocolate buttons,  Roses and more.
Unfortunately no cameras are allowed on the tour, so my photos are minimal from outside and the end of the tour.
The highlight of the tour for the kids though was the chocolate waterfall.
Cadbury have converted one of their old disused silos (the purple one below) for the waterfall. One ton of chocolate falls 28 meters in 28 seconds and is quite impressive.

The kids left with full bags of chocolate from the tour and chocolate driven smiles.

What could possibly beat a tour of the chocolate factory ??

Yep a tour of a heritage brewery.

My Dad and I took the 6pm tour of Speight's Brewery.

I last did the tour 9 years ago. 

The majority of the tour is the same, but more detail is now provided and also more access to the production brewery is available. Specifically the historic kauri gyle fermenters, three of which are still in production. One of the kauri gyles still in production was being updated and I got to briefly chat with the engineer who knew all about how they were maintained. The copper cooling coils have been replaced with stainless and a thermocouple in the gyle controls the coolant in the coils. He was installing an outlet to allow them more easily draw of yeast after fermentation. 

With the recent earthquakes in Christchurch the CHCH brewery has closed and some of the production moved to Dunedin. They are now brewing 24 hours a day, 5 days a week. They are also preparing for the installation of a new brewing plant to maintain capacity. 

The existing plant dates back to the late 1940's and is very well maintained.

Following the tour was the customary tasting. The key difference was the ability to pour your own beers. There was a real mix of people on the tour and it was interesting to sit back and watch the different groups get stuck in with the novelty of pouring your own beer off draft.
The Porter is definitely my favourite, is only available on draft and is fermented in the kauri gyles which only have a 32,000 L capacity over their stainless 50,000 L fermenters.

Marlborough Sounds, French Pass & Vice's

We are currently based in the middle of the outer Marlborough Sounds (Okiwi Bay).
Okiwi Bay is located within "Croisilles Harbour" (Whangarae), and was named after French explorer Dumont D'Urville's uncle the Abbot of Croisilles in 1827.
D'Urville also passed through and named "French Pass" (Te Aumiti) which is approximately an hours drive from Okiwi Bay.

My father grew up at French Pass, and I've spend a lot of time down here over the years. The French Pass village sits opposite D'Urville Island and the turbulent piece of water known as the French Pass Passage. Here the water races through on each tide at up to eight knots creating whirlpools, eddies and currents, a truly awesome passage feared and respected by mariners.

Once navigated by Maori in canoes it proved more difficult for Dumont D'Urville. In 1827 he spent several days investigating the passage before venturing through it. He described the sea as a seething sheet where great precaution needed to be taken. On his journey through he clipped the reef twice before ‘floating majestically into Admiralty Bay.

Today the weather wasn't predictable enough to take the kids out fishing, so we ventured over to Blenheim to visit a couple of passions of Sam and myself. Champagne (obviously Sparkling Wine here) and Beer.
We visited the two premier Sparkling Wine vineyards of Brancott Estate and No1 Family Estate. Both provided tastings (Brancott though not of the sparklings) and resulted in the obligatory purchases. A bonus was the kids wine region themed playground at Brancott that kept the kids amused whilst we imbibed.

I visited Soren at 8 Wired Brewing for a catchup and quick speccy at the brewery while they were busy filtering a beer, bottling another and getting ready for brewday tomorrow. 8 Wired is utilising some excess space from the mother brewery (Renaissance Brewing). With a fresh batch of HopWired onboard it was time for the sweet tooth's onobard to be appeased.

Makana Chocolate to the rescue. A couple of great samples tasted, a viewing of Xmas chocolates in production and more obligatory purchases completed I wanted one more stop; Moa Brewing.

However unlike their website suggested they were closed. A phone call to officially confirm and it was off the list for today. Fortunately we will be back through here again before we leave, hopefully when they promise to be open.

On the route back into the Sounds we stopped at Havelock to visit Eyes on Nature. A really neat representation of fish and birds in their surroundings recreated by a taxidermist using fiberglass. The attention to detail in the models is amazing. Everything from penguins to sharks, eels, crayfish, bats and kiwis.

Tomorrow weather pending we fish.