When it comes to Dunedin brewery tours, look no further. Speights and Emerson’s are two of the most well-known breweries in New Zealand for completely different reasons.
In this article, we compare the Speights vs Emerson’s brewery tours offered by Emersons and Speights in the city of Dunedin.
We give an overview of each tour, and the discuss a few comparison points.
Ideally, you’ll have time to visit both as they are iconic here in New Zealand. However, we appreciate that not everyone has time to visit both and that there are also so many other things to do in Dunedin.
For those who do have the time, we highly recommend doing both! Both the Emerson’s brewery tour and the Speights offer completely different aspects and cater for everyone differently.
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The Emerson’s brand has emerged as one of the best craft breweries in New Zealand. This brewery is home to a restaurant as well. The restaurant and building is sleek and modern, and is simply just a place that you want to be.
We found the Emerson’s Brewery tour to be such an all-encompassing experience. You get given a hi-vis jacket as you are taken through actual working space, which is awesome.
After the tour guide gives you an overview of the relatively short history of the company and shows you a heartfelt letter on the wall written by Richard Emerson himself stating his dream for when he returns to New Zealand from the UK, you are taken into the first room where a lot of the magic happens.
We loved this room; we asked so many questions and tried many different malt and hops. Being shown around this area and being able to look into the fully functional tanks was awesome.
When you leave this section, you are taken to where the fermentation process happens. These massive stainless steel tanks are a sight to behold, and seeing some familiar names of some of our favourite beers was great. What’s more, you get to try a beer at different stages of the fermentation process. We tried the Super quench at 1 day in, halfway through, just before the end and then eventually the final product. It was incredible tasting the beer from what was essentially lightly hoppy water to one of the most refreshing pacific pilsners on the market.
The bottling and kegging process is the last section of this tour which is always interesting. There is a huge machine that does all the canning and they take you through some of the more behind the scenes bits that we can’t tell you about here. 😉
And then into the delightful restaurant space for a tasting paddle of beers and some food if you fancy! We cannot emphasise enough how incredible the range of craft beers are here.
Some favourite of ours is the Mexicoco (a chocolate chilli porter) and Sticky Digits (a fresh hop hazy IPA).
Emerson’s do lots of smaller run fun brews alongside there brand staples and these are called ‘Brewers Reserve’. One of Jess’s Favourites of all times is called Oatski (an oat milk hazy IPA) but there are genuinely too many to choose from.
If you keen for a few more beers after the tasting paddle included in your tour then grab another but fill it with the brewers reserves.
The Speights Brewery Tour
The Speights Brewery Tour is a walk through over 150 years of beer brewing history, which is rich in interesting facts, old machinery and a glimpse at the Speights award collection.
Once we arrived and were welcomed into the building, but our bags in a locker and taken in a lift 8 storeys high to the top of the building where to tour starts.
We did our Speights Brewery Tour in May, so it was getting a bit cold out- I would recommend taking a jumper or something warm as it was pretty chilly at the top (and Ben had stupidly left his jacket in the locker downstairs).
We were treated to a short video with some facts about Speights, and then our tour guide took us to meet mannequins of the three men who founded and built the Speights empire- James Speights, William Dawson, and Charles Greenslade.
If you are interested in history, this is a great tour for you. Having started in 1876, the sales tactics used were completely different to today.
James Speight’s used to go around Dunedin visiting various different pubs in his horse and cart with a few barrels of beer to convince landlords to purchase his product.
Your tour guide talks through the beer brewing process- which we love learning about!- and how the three raw materials are turned into what we now know and love.
Due to the history of Speights, and the fact that this is the original factory that was used in the late 1800s to brew beer, all of the old machinery is still in place. We thought this was really cool. The machinery and old vats are, in theory, still functional. They are not decommissioned yet and would just need a good clean to be up and running again!
When you finish the tour, you end up back where you started and are invited into the tasting room where you have a Speight’s Gold Medal Ale waiting for you to enjoy. You are free to choose other beers to try alongside this one, and some of the ones on offer here can only be found here.
We enjoyed the Empire IPA, (a historical brew which replicates what the English drank in India during the colonisation years) and a few other exclusives.
Speights vs Emerson's Brewery Tour
These two breweries represent completely different markets within New Zealand, with vastly different ranges of delicious products. The way they approach their brewery tours are reflected in this, as the Speights Brewery Tour is a tour of the past with its rich history, whereas the Emerson’s Brewery Tour is a walk through the contemporary art of brewing craft beers.
| Speights | Emerson's | |
|---|---|---|
|
Length |
1 Hour + 30 mins tasting |
1 Hour + limitless tasting time |
|
What to Expect |
Tour of the factory, Tasting paddle, History of the brand, Facts about Speights & New Zealands most sold beers |
Tour of the factory, Tasting paddle, History of the brand,
Beer facts, Immersive experience & Huge range of beers |
|
Type of Info |
Historical |
Scientific |
Speights vs Emerson's: Which Brewery Tour is Best Value?
First things first, lets start by looking at how much each tour costs:
Speight’s Brewery Tour Price: $35
Emerson’s Brewery Tour Price: $40
Speight’s brewery tour is more of an overview of the history and the brewery. It feels like you see more at Speight’s because the brewery is physically larger than the Emerson’s brewery.
However, we felt we learnt more about the beers and more about the process at Emerson’s. You get to see more of the actual canning/kegging process of the beers and experience it from start to finish in a much more immersive way.
You also get more beer in your paddle at the end of the Emerson’s tour too…
Speights vs Emerson’s: Which Tour Has Better Information About Beer?
When it comes to learning about beer, we think that Emerson’s takes the biscuit on this one. Because they brew such an array of beer, from pilsners and hazy to dark beers and stouts (which is what you want from a craft beer brewery).
Speights vs Emerson’s: Which Has a Better Gift Shop?
The Speights tour has a much better gift shop, with a huge array of merchandise from glasses to tops to purchase. The Emerson’s gift shop is good, but it is just small. You can grab something from the fridge and a jumper, but if you’re looking for a gift or something to remember the day by, you’ll have more options with Speights.
Jess & Ben Final Say
We think that the Emerson’s Brewery Tour is better, marginally. The Speights tour is exactly what you’d expect from a brewery tour, whereas the Emerson’s Tour has a few more quirks and surprises along the way. Being a craft beer company, they brew a much wider range of beers in comparison to Speights, so we felt like we learnt more about beer at Emersons.
They are both amazing experiences and we recommend doing both if you have the opportunity!
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