From the Golden Bear Brewing Company website: 

Golden Bear Brewing is the creation of Jim and Anne Matranga. Born in Los Angeles CA., Jim worked as a cabinet maker and ran his own millwork company for over twenty years. Anne worked as controller for a large architectural firm for more than 5 years. After meeting in 1992 the couple traveled to NZ for the first time in 1994. Jim says "We fell in love with the land but found the available beer to be uninspiring. I half jokingly suggested I would learn to brew beer when we got back home and after mastering the art we could move to NZ and raise a family". They moved to NZ in 2005 and stumbled upon the Golden Bear building - a rotting steel shed full of stored junk. After a two and a half year renovation Golden Bear Brewing opened in October 2008. 

Custom made for us by CLE Brew Systems, the Golden Bear system has a brew length of 1200 litres. It has a water-jacketed mash/lauter tun, 2 stage heat exchanger, PLC controlled glycol cooled fermenters and 10,000 liters conditioning capacity. The all stainless steel plant is one of the most efficient and beautifully constructed systems in the country.

Golden Bears Range of Beers:

Our selection of beers varies as we develop our recipes. Styles under development include IPA, several pale ales, Belgian ales, porters and stouts, bitters, German style lagers, Czech pils, light alcohol ale, winter ale, and seasonal beers.

Our American wheat beer was a standout from the moment it first went on tap. It continues to outsell all other styles we produce.

New beers will continue to appear as new recipes are put together and brewed.

Some of the recent editions are:

Our Bear Trappe Belgian, a hand bottled, limited release of golden Belgian ale, brewed with black-boy peaches was released in late June.

The latest edition of Seismic IPA went on tap in early November. 

Tic Toc pils; a low alcohol lager came out in early July.

Other brews in the works are India black ale, and a new pale ale brewed with a focus on highlighting a single hop variety.

Jim from Golden Bear Brewing

We were heading towards Golden Bear Brewing in picturesque Mapua, just out of Nelson. This stunning brewpub was set up by Jim and Anne Matranga, originally from California and also offers Mexican food which Jim told us he really missed from his homeland.

Being from California, Jim is a massive fan of big flavoured IPAs and his beers certainly reflect his love of these. His standout brew was Anniversary Ale at 6.26%, a lovely hoppy pale ale, formerly known as Patriot’s Pale. The Graf Vienna was also a great example of this type of lager and Jim’s use of hops was perfectly executed.

Jim’s brewhouse blew our minds! This has to be one of the coolest looking breweries in the country! Engineered by Chris Little, this is stainless steel porn. At 1200 litres, the brewhouse is compact and has great little features such as a window in the mash/lauter tun, an underback and a great rake. Hehe.

Jim is also doing something pretty cool with wort that he brews on his kit. He hot-fills plastic bladders with the wort and boxes them up to be made available to homebrewers. This saves homebrewers from having to boil up extract or do full-grain mashes. All they have to do is add their own strain of yeast, ferment out, condition then keg or bottle. An awesome, innovative idea that will hopefully help with the popularity of homebrew. Even cooler is people can buy these wort kits online through companies like Liberty Brewing.