Updated August 2026 : Armageddon IPA wasn't given its name because we thought it sounded cool.

At the time, it genuinely felt a little like the end of the world.

In 2008, the US hop shortage was causing chaos. Hop prices were climbing, availability was disappearing and, for a few weeks, there was very little useful information about whether we would even be able to contract the hops we needed for the future.

For Epic, a brewery increasingly built around American hops, that was a fairly serious problem.

If we couldn't get the hops, how were we going to keep making the beers we wanted to make?

So I decided that if this really was going to be the end of the world, we might as well go out with a bang.

I was going to make the biggest IPA I could.

That beer became Armageddon IPA.

Coming Back From America

Earlier in 2008 we had travelled through Northern California visiting breweries, before heading down to San Diego for the Craft Brewers Conference and World Beer Cup.

It was an incredibly exciting time for American craft beer, particularly on the West Coast. Brewers were pushing hops harder, chasing bigger aroma, bigger bitterness and more flavour.

We came back to New Zealand completely fired up.

The first Armageddon was brewed at Hallertau in 2008 and released as a keg-only beer.

It was built around some of the American hops we loved: Cascade, Centennial, Simcoe and Columbus.

At 6.66% alc/vol and 66 IBU, subtlety wasn't really part of the brief.

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Later, when Armageddon went into 500ml bottles, another number appeared on the label.

42.

We calculated there were around 42 hop flowers' worth of hops in every 500ml bottle, so we put 42 inside the hop shield.

There was another reason for choosing that number.

In Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, 42 is the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe and everything.

Which gave Armageddon its original tagline:

The Answer To Everything.

The packaging has changed since then. Today Armageddon is in 330ml cans, 440ml cans and kegs, and the tagline on the cans has changed too.

After everything that happened over the following years, it became:

NZ's Most Awarded IPA.

But before all those awards started arriving, Armageddon helped start something else.

Armageddon vs Maximus

Hallertau had also made a new West Coast IPA called Maximus.

So we had two new, heavily hopped West Coast IPAs being made at the same brewery.

That led to a beautifully simple idea.

Let's put them head-to-head.

Epic Armageddon versus Hallertau Maximus.

Those two beers became the foundation of the first West Coast IPA Challenge at The Malthouse in Wellington in 2008.

What began as a challenge between two beers went on to become one of New Zealand's best-known annual IPA events.

Over the years the West Coast IPA Challenge grew to bring together breweries from around the country, each making a beer specifically for the event and pushing their own interpretation of West Coast IPA.

So before Armageddon had even become an award-winning beer, it had already helped create a stage for the style itself.

Not bad for a beer we made because we thought we might be running out of hops.

Then It Started Winning

The first major trophy arrived in 2009.

Armageddon won Best IPA and Gold at the New Zealand Beer Awards.

It could easily have been one of those beers that had a great first couple of years and then disappeared as beer fashions moved on.

Instead, that trophy was only the beginning.

Putting Armageddon to Sea

Armageddon also gave us an opportunity to experiment.

We started with two 20-litre fresh oak barrels of Armageddon IPA and put them aboard the Interislander ferry.

The idea was to recreate, in our own slightly ridiculous New Zealand way, the effect of the old ocean voyages where beer and spirits spent weeks or months moving around in wooden barrels at sea.

The barrels travelled back and forth across Cook Strait.

And back again.

And again.

By the end of the experiment, they had completed 128 Interislander crossings.

Part way through the voyage, our contact on the ferry decided to take the experiment a step further and moved the barrels into the engine-room area for a couple of weeks, adding heat to emulate the effect of crossing the equator on a traditional sea voyage.

The barrels were fresh oak with a medium toast, so the beer picked up wood character very quickly.

And very intensely.

We poured the result at Beervana.

The experiment was interesting enough that we decided to scale it up into full-sized oak barrels.

Then in 2010, Barrel Aged Armageddon IPA won Best Barrel Aged Beer and Gold at the New Zealand Beer Awards.

So the experiment worked.

Possibly a little too well.

We only made Barrel Aged Armageddon twice.

The defining customer review summed it up better than any tasting note we could have written:

"It's like being hit in the face with a cricket bat."

There was that much fresh oak character.

Subtle, it was not.

But it was memorable, and somehow those two little 20-litre barrels bouncing backwards and forwards across Cook Strait eventually led to another trophy for Armageddon.

Back to Best IPA

In 2011, regular Armageddon was back on top, winning Best IPA and Gold at the New Zealand Beer Awards again.

By this point Armageddon wasn't just an experiment born during the hop shortage anymore.

It had become one of the beers that defined Epic.

And then it started winning overseas.

In 2013, Armageddon was named Best IPA by Systembolaget in Sweden.

It also continued picking up medals in both New Zealand and Australia.

Then came 2015.

Three Countries. One Year.

In 2015, things got slightly ridiculous.

Armageddon won:

Best IPA – New Zealand Beer Awards

Then:

Best IPA – Australian International Beer Awards

And then:

Best IPA – Stockholm Beer & Whisky Festival

Three major IPA trophies.

Three countries.

One year.

For a beer first made seven years earlier.

It was one of those moments when you realise a beer has become bigger than whatever you originally imagined for it.

Five Trophies and a Record

Armageddon won Best IPA at the New Zealand Beer Awards again in 2016.

That win was particularly significant.

It gave Armageddon its fifth trophy at the New Zealand Beer Awards, making it, at the time, the most awarded beer in the history of the competition.

That was a fairly extraordinary place to end up for a beer that started because I was worried we might not be able to get enough hops to stay in business.

And 2016 kept getting better.

Armageddon also won Best IPA at the New World Beer & Cider Awards and Gold at the Australian International Beer Awards.

Beer writers got involved too.

Michael Donaldson named Armageddon his #1 Greatest Beer in New Zealand, while Neil Miller named it his #1 Beer of 2016.

Then in 2017, Armageddon won Best IPA and Gold at the Australian International Beer Awards, along with Best IPA at the New World Beer & Cider Awards.

At this point the trophy cabinet was becoming structurally questionable.

The Hard Part Isn't Winning Once

Winning a beer competition once is fantastic.

Winning the same category again several years later is harder.

Still winning after nearly two decades is something else.

IPA has changed enormously since 2008.

We've seen Double IPA, Session IPA, Hazy IPA, Milkshake IPA, Brut IPA, Cold IPA and an ever-growing collection of new hop varieties, hop products and brewing techniques.

Ideas about bitterness have changed.

Ideas about haze have changed.

What drinkers expect from an IPA has changed.

Armageddon has lived through all of it.

And through all of that, the core idea behind the beer has remained remarkably simple.

Cascade. Centennial. Simcoe. Columbus.

Big hop aroma.

Firm bitterness.

Dry finish.

6.66%.

There have naturally been refinements over nearly two decades of making the beer, but we have never felt the need to chase every new IPA trend.

Make a great American-style IPA.

Use a lot of hops.

Don't apologise for the bitterness.

Still Winning

The awards kept coming.

Armageddon picked up further medals and Highly Commended results through 2018, 2019, 2020, 2022 and 2024.

Then came 2026.

At the New Zealand Beer Awards, Armageddon IPA won Gold.

Eighteen years after we first made it.

For us, that might be one of the most satisfying medals Armageddon has ever won.

Not because Gold medals are unusual for this beer.

There are quite a few of them.

It's what this particular medal represents.

Armageddon was created in a completely different beer world.

It was conceived during a global hop shortage, after a trip through Northern California and to the Craft Brewers Conference in San Diego had convinced us to push American hops even harder.

The first version was keg-only.

It went head-to-head with Hallertau Maximus and helped start the West Coast IPA Challenge.

We put some of it in two tiny oak barrels and sent them backwards and forwards across Cook Strait 128 times, including a couple of weeks beside the engines to give it a taste of the equator.

We scaled that experiment up, made one of the woodiest beers we have ever released, and somehow won Best Barrel Aged Beer with it.

Armageddon went on to win trophies in New Zealand, Australia and Sweden.

It became, at the time, the most awarded beer in the history of the New Zealand Beer Awards.

And eighteen years after it all started, judges still thought Armageddon deserved a Gold medal.

That's pretty satisfying.

Armageddon IPA Awards & Accolades

2026 – Gold, New Zealand Beer Awards
2024 – Highly Commended, New World Beer & Cider Awards
2022 – Silver, New Zealand Beer Awards
2022 – Highly Commended, New World Beer & Cider Awards
2020 – Highly Commended, New World Beer & Cider Awards
2019 – Highly Commended, New World Beer & Cider Awards
2018 – Silver, Australian International Beer Awards
2017 – Best IPA & Gold, Australian International Beer Awards
2017 – Best IPA, New World Beer & Cider Awards
2016 – Best IPA & Gold, New Zealand Beer Awards
2016 – Gold, Australian International Beer Awards
2016 – Best IPA, New World Beer & Cider Awards
2015 – Best IPA & Gold, New Zealand Beer Awards
2015 – Best IPA, Australian International Beer Awards
2015 – Best IPA, Stockholm Beer & Whisky Festival
2014 – Silver, New Zealand Beer Awards
2014 – Silver, Australian International Beer Awards
2013 – Best IPA, Systembolaget, Sweden
2013 – Silver, Australian International Beer Awards
2013 – Bronze, New Zealand Beer Awards
2012 – Best Beer in New Zealand, Beer & Brewer Magazine
2012 – Bronze, New Zealand Beer Awards
2011 – Best IPA & Gold, New Zealand Beer Awards
2010 – Best Barrel Aged Beer & Gold, New Zealand Beer Awards – Barrel Aged Armageddon IPA
2010 – Gold Medal, RateBeer – Best Beers, Australia & New Zealand
2010 – Bronze, New Zealand Beer Awards
2010 – Bronze, Australian International Beer Awards
2009 – Best IPA & Gold, New Zealand Beer Awards

Other Accolades

2016 – #1 Greatest Beer in New Zealand – Michael Donaldson, Beer Writer of the Year
2016 – #1 Best Beer of 2016 – Neil Miller, Beer Writer of the Year 2015

Armageddon started because, for a few weeks in 2008, we genuinely didn't know whether we would be able to get the hops we needed to keep making the beers we wanted to make.

So we decided to use a ridiculous amount of them.

Eighteen years later, we're still making Armageddon.

Still bitter.
Still loaded with hops.
Still winning.

Epic Armageddon IPA
6.66% alc/vol
66 IBU

NZ's Most Awarded IPA.

[Shop Epic Armageddon IPA →]