Parrotdog is a New Zealand brewery started by 3 guys named Matt. They celebrated their 10th birthday in 2021 and that means it’s also the birthday of an IPA that has become something of a cult beer in NZ, the oddly-named Bitterbitch. It was never meant to be Bitterbitch. It was meant to be Parrotdog IPA.

The journey started when Matt Kristofski took at stab at home-brewing and won over his flatmate Matt Warner. The pair continued to brew, honing their recipes until they came up with a beer they thought they could sell. With the help of another Matt (Stevens), they arranged to get the recipe contract brewed but in upscaling the recipe they made a mistake, not accounting for the superior utilisation of the hops on a commercial scale and ending up with far more IBU's than intended. The contract brewer rang and said, "It's too bitter, you’re going to have to dump it".

Some serious Nelson Sauvin dry hopping later and they thought they had something they could sell at Beervana. Hence the name, the brew had been a bitch and it was bitter. The beer won the People’s Choice Award at Beervana 2011 and after some dabbling and reformulating became a flagship beer for Parrotdog.

Along with a strong core range of Birdseye Hazy IPA, Falcon APA, Lager, Sundog Pilsner and of course Bitter Bitch IPA, they release seasonals including Hazy IPAs, West Coast IPAs, Sours, Stouts and Experimental Lagers