The Queenstown brewery’s Fest Bier recently won the "Lager than Life" competition, an event in its fourth year and organised by Wellington bar The Hudson.
Altitude Brewing Co head brewer Eliott Menzies said every year The Hudson invited what it considered to be the top dozen or so breweries in New Zealand to compete in the lager-fermented beer competition.
"It encompasses a few different styles, but it has to be fermented with a lager yeast," he said.
It was the first year Altitude was invited — it was in with 15 of the biggest names in the country, including 8 Wired, Epic, Panhead and Parrotdog — making its win "even cooler".
Mr Menzies said the Fest Bier was a staple of its annual Oktoberfest celebrations, and was a special style of beer created for Munich’s Oktoberfest event.
"It’s more high strength, yet still quite clean.
"It’s an easy lager — it’s quite funny, you read the description and it’s designed to be drunk "in large quantities"; so made for steins, in other words."
For him, though, he was particularly pleased to have picked up a win in a lager competition, his favourite style.
"I’m not a hop-head ... [Lagers] are the hardest beers to brew, in a quality sense. There is nowhere to hide with a lager — you have to get everything right in terms of its technical aspect, otherwise you get picked apart quite readily.
"So if I was to choose any competition to win, it would be a lager-brewing competition — it means you’re technically on point," Mr Menzies said.
Earlier this year Altitude also came tantalisingly close to being named Brewers Guild of NZ champion small brewery for the second consecutive year.
Mr Menzies said Altitude entered about 25 beers and came away with 19 medals and trophies for its stout, Starlight Highway and Snow Dance, an amber ale, but lost the overall title on a countback.
"It would have been nice to back up ... but it just means we’ve got to do it again next year."
