Brothers Beer joins Epic in financial strife

8 Wired's double delight at NZ Beer Awards. Bottle shop shut down by neighbours over single-can sales. Cannabis company swoops on beer brands. Duncan's go bananas. A rocking new hop.

Happy Friday beer fans

Tonight’s edition of Friday Night Beers brings more bad news, in the form of Brothers Beer going into voluntary administration just 12 days after Epic went into liquidation.

And this has sparked conversations of “who’s next?” and “is this the end of craft?”

I spent 10 to 15 minutes chatting to Newshub for a story they did on the subject on Thursday night, which focused primarily on recent excise tax jumps as a killer for many small breweries. Naturally after chatting for ages, I appeared for about 15 seconds … and all that wisdom was lost (just joking!).

They did a pretty good story and got around a few players, although the clip of Epic’s Luke Nicholas was from at least 10 years ago.

My view is that excise, as a massive up-front tax that has to be paid before you sell anything, needs to be looked at when inflationary pressures are high. Excise should be set, or at least capped, so there are no surprises. The weird thing is that excise is there to make up for the social cost of consumption, and to deter harmful drinking. When inflation is rampant, people have less discretionary income, so they are buying less alcohol — the data shows that quite clearly. So, to put up excise in line with inflation is delivering a double-hit to brewers: they are selling less (so less social harm) but paying more for the social harm they’re not causing!

Anyway, if you missed the story, here’s the link:

Brewers call on Government to 'give us a break' on alcohol excise | Newshub

That said, I don’t think excise alone is responsible for the financial strife that Brothers and Epic got into. Epic we’ve documented … and on that note I see the taproom is now closed until further notice.

Brothers effectively over-extended in the hospitality scene and when Covid hit a big sinkhole appeared underneath them. They tried to sell off their bars in order to prop up the brewing side of the business but couldn’t sell them fast enough. Or perhaps they were over-priced?

Also, the anecdotal feedback I’ve had from people is that they thought Brothers’ beer wasn’t all that good and that’s why they got into trouble. I beg to differ. The beer, a while back, was pretty average, true. But lately, it’s been very good. Like, really great. But perception can be a hard obstacle to overturn and perhaps they didn’t do enough to convince would-be fans of the quality they were now producing.

Let’s hope the administrator, PwC, is able to sell off the bars and potentially save the brew business.

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8 Wired’s Double Dip at NZ Beer Awards

What a brilliant show from 8 Wired in being named New Zealand’s Champion Brewery and delivering the Champion Beer, Wild Feijoa Ale 2022 at last weekend’s NZ Beer Awards.

8 Wired entered a strategic array of just five beers for five medals (two gold, two silver, one bronze) to pip a range of “perfect” breweries for the overall title.

Garage Project had an unbelievable 26/26 medals and by back-of-envelope calculations missed taking the champion brewery title by one molecule of carbon dioxide. Also perfect were Heyday, Choice Bros, and Three Boys. Honestly, the more I think about GP’s success rate the more blown away I am.

8 Wired’s Wild Feijoa 2022 is the 10th-anniversary release of this iconic beer and after sharing a bottle with a few beer people at 16Tun on Sunday night, I can confirm it is tasting at its absolute best. Even my wife, who hates (hates!) sour beer, took a sip and noted with surprise that “it’s actually really nice” which translates to “f%#^ing awesome!”

8 Wired's Double Delight at NZ Beer Awards | Pursuit of Hoppiness

Now I don’t like to talk myself up as an oracle, but I felt these awards had tapped into my psychic space.

First of all, as loose as it may seem, I had a dream that Sprig & Fern won a major prize, and they did, with a trophy for their outstanding Lock, Bock & Barrel.

On Friday arvo I had a Parrotdog Red IPA, and it won a trophy the next day. Last week I mentioned Sawmill XPA as one of the Beers of the Week (although as one eagle-eyed reader pointed out I forgot to specifically name it) and it won a trophy. I ordered beer from the newly-opened Wilderness online store and one of them was Russet, their Pinot barrel-aged Flemish Red Ale, and it won a trophy. I wrote about Wild Feijoa in my Air New Zealand Kia Ora magazine column and it won champion beer.  So, look, stick with me for all the good stuff!

Anyway, on the note of predictions …

Beer of the week No 1

I listened recently to a webinar from Yakima Chief Hops in which their key sensory people were talking about New Zealand Hops, on the back of the deal YCH have done with NZ Hops Ltd to distribute them in North America. One of the panel members, Tiffany Pitra, sensory manager for TCH, talked about travelling to New Zealand this year for hop harvest and discovering a yet-to-be-released hop that blew her mind. With Riwaka as one of its parents, that hop is NZH-106 — and wow, this is set to shake up the hop world. My initial notes were “cigar, jet fuel, glacé cherries, citrus, wet dog, vanilla, incense”. I think hop aromas would be great for a type of Rorschach test. Anyway, I loved this beer, and loved the hop. And think it will rock the world in a couple of years when it’s (sure to be) released.

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Bottle shop shut down by neighbours over single-can sales

Now here’s something I’m really pissed off about.