Beer history and the future of beer

From the Wellingtonian, the debate over the country's oldest pub rages on and a retracing of a historic pub crawl reveals how much Wellington has changed. The full column is titled"Historic Thistle Inn claimes challenged":

It was never likely that a single column would determine once and for all whether the Thistle Inn or the Upper Moutere Inn was the country’s oldest pub. In fact, last month’s column seems to have stirred up even more debate with a number of other contenders also claiming that honour.

Over at the Malthouse blog, the latest post discusses the relative merits of Oktoberfest and the new Octoberbest festivals. The post is called "Move over Oktoberfest, here comes Octoberbest":

If proof was ever needed that Oktoberfest is actually a pretty classy event, look no further than the organiser’s decision in 2007 to ban serial oxygen-thief Paris Hilton. The official reason was that Paris “cheapened” the festival in 2006 with her attendance but the real reason was perhaps that she had used her time at the festival to run an advertising campaign for canned wine.

Glass Tips - The Wellingtonian and Malthouse Blog