Boneface Brewing Company is a craft brewery and brewbar in Upper Hutt, pouring its own beer at Brewtown on Blenheim Street. The brand wears its personality on its sleeve — the website is a running run of skeleton puns ('no bones about it', 'stick your neck out', 'bend an elbow') — but the mission underneath is earnest: brewing the finest beer in the motu, and doing it their own way.
The heart of the operation is the brewbar, where the house-brewed range is poured fresh at the source. It's a proper local spot rather than a polished corporate taproom; the team describes it as 'a pretty hip joint' and invites visitors to shake a leg and come down for a knees-up whenever they're in town. The kitchen backs the beer up with real food, headlined by hearty BBQ plates.
Beyond the bar, Boneface runs a full online store. Its beers are sold in cans for drinking at home, alongside branded merch and a changing selection of gift ideas for the beer lover in your life. Taproom bookings can be made through the Taproom page of the website or by emailing [email protected]; general and order enquiries go through the contact form or the brewery phone line.
As you'd expect of a working brewery taproom, it's an adults-first venue — the website itself opens with an 18+ check — so plan your visit accordingly and come thirsty.
Perched at Brewtown on 27 Blenheim Street, Boneface Brewing Company is Upper Hutt's homegrown craft beer outfit — part working brewery, part brewbar, and entirely its own thing. The team sums up the ethos with a skeleton's worth of puns: to brew the finest beer in the motu, you've got to show some backbone, stick your neck out and put your shoulder to the wheel. It's wordplay, sure, but it's also a fair description of an independent brewery doing things its own way in the Hutt.
The name sets the tone before you even walk in. Boneface leans happily into the gag — you can bend an elbow with a fresh glass, the brewbar is 'a pretty hip joint', and visitors are invited to shake a leg and come down for a knees-up whenever they're in town. Behind the jokes sits a straightforward proposition: beer brewed in-house, poured fresh, in a bar built for a good time.
The main event is the beer itself. Boneface brews its own range, and the brewbar is where it tastes best — straight from the source rather than weeks down the line. That's the whole point of a brewery bar: what's in your glass came out of the brewery behind it, and that's exactly the setup here. Whether you're a committed hop hunter or just beer-curious, pouring at the source is about as fresh as a pint gets.
The kitchen holds its own too. The taproom's food offering is headlined by its BBQ plates — the kind of generous, smoke-scented plate a fresh craft beer was arguably invented to sit beside. It's a simple formula done well: good beer, hearty food, and a bar room with enough character to make you linger.
There's more to Boneface than the taproom. The brewery runs a full online store, where its beers are sold in cans for drinking at home, alongside a merch line and a selection of gift ideas for the beer lover in your life. The same wit that runs through the website runs through the cans and the merch — it's a brand that treats everything it sells as part of the experience.
Booking the taproom is straightforward: the website's Taproom page handles reservations, or you can email [email protected] directly. For general or order enquiries, there's a contact form on the site, or you can ring the brewery on 04-529 7042 and talk to a human.
You'll find Boneface at Brewtown, 27 Blenheim Street, Upper Hutt — an easy mark for anyone who knows the area. As a working brewery taproom, it's an adults-oriented venue: Boneface's own website greets visitors with an 18+ check, so plan your outing accordingly.
The rhythm of a visit writes itself. Come in for a fresh pour from the house range, order a BBQ plate from the kitchen, and if the evening's going well, browse the online store afterwards so a few cans of Boneface end up in the fridge at home. It's local beer with local character — brewed with backbone in Upper Hutt.