Craft beer's power brokers

Beer advocacy group killed off. Vote for your favourite NZ beers. Bill Gates back buying beer. Frasier from Cheers has his own brewery. Is raw beer about sustainability or green-washing?

Welcome to Friday, beer friends

I’m making my own news this week! I was asked by the NZ Herald to do a piece on the powerbrokers in craft beer. It’s a part of a series they run where they look at influential people in various industries. It was a damn hard thing to write, I’ll tell you that. When you stick your neck out and start saying so-and-so is more important than some other so-and-so, you leave yourself open to a few critiques of your own. I tried to look at long-term influence and current performance in terms of supermarket volumes.

Of course, to see it on the Herald, you need to be a subscriber. If you have a sub, then click away here.

But for you loyal Friday Night Beer readers, I’ve got the condensed version of a 3500 word epic (and feel free to argue!).

And for fun, I’ve been playing around with AI to illustrate this

12. Lee-Ann Scotti, Michael O'Brien / Craftwork

As the craft geek’s tourism destination of choice, and adored by their peers in the business, Craftwork are one of Oamaru’s — and beer’s — key tourist attractions.

11. Grant Caunter / State of Play

State of Play is the first New Zealand brewery brand to be totally focused on non-alcoholic beer and Grant Caunter is one-man ambassador for the “lifestyle” of not drinking, talking about his health goals as much as he talks about his beer.

10. Brian Watson / Good George

The lead brewer and co-founder behind the ever-growing Hamilton chain Good George, Brian Watson is a key figure in the New Zealand industry: respected judge, president of the Brewers Guild of NZ, the industry body that represents all breweries in New Zealand, and with a successful side business called Smart Brew.

9. Richard Emerson / Emerson’s

Richard Emerson almost single-handedly changed the way craft beer was perceived in New Zealand, pushing true-to-style flavour-driven beers in the early 1990s at a time when “craft” didn’t exist. Richard remains the face of Emerson’s and one of craft beer’s most recognizable.

8. Tracy Banner / Sprig & Fern

Self-styled as @mamabeernz on Instagram, Tracy Banner is the mother of the brewing nation, being one of the country’s most experienced brewers with 40 years in the game this year. Her Sprig & Fern brand is known for the string of taverns in Nelson, Christchurch and Wellington as well as classic styles done perfectly.

7. Scott McCashin / McCashins

Scott McCashin is the son of Mac’s founders Terry and Beverley McCashin and is now the owner of the original McCashin’s brewery, and the Stoke brand brewed there, he is a partner in Wakachangi, also brewed at McCashin’s, where Moa is also brewed. McCashin’s pumps out an impressive 7 to 8 million litres a year.

6. Kirsty McKay, Mike Sutherland / Sawmill

The sustainability leaders who are doing good and making good beer. As New Zealand’s only B Corp-certified brewery, Sawmill have a lot to boast about. And they make top-quality beer, winning a trophy with their XPA at the New Zealand Beer Awards in August.

5. Bruce Turner, Simon Watson, Thomas Rowe / Urbanaut

Set up in Kingsland just six years ago, Urbanaut have become one of the fastest-growing little breweries in the country thanks to their uncanny ability to tap into a Millennial / Gen Z audience that many other breweries can’t talk to. The self-styled “party” brewery was founded by the three friends who grew up together in Marton.

4. Andrew Childs / Hannah Miller-Childs / Behemoth

Behemoth know how to get seen, heard — and most importantly, tasted. The kings of haze, fruit and cultural references have traded on their huge popularity by going to the crowdfunding well three times in the space of three years (2019, 2020 and 2022).

3. Mike Neilson / Panhead

Mike Neilson is the envy of just about every other brewer in the country after he sold Panhead Custom Ales to Lion in 2016 for a total of $25 million ($15 million upfront and another contingent on performance over the subsequent four years). Panhead continues to thrive in the Lion years and while Neilson is not as visible as he once was, he casts a giant shadow across the industry.

2. Matts, Kristofski, Stevens and Warner / Parrotdog

While craft beer is often associated with the words like “hip”, “cool” and “urban” — Wellington’s Parrotdog, founded by the three Matts, have cornered the market in “nice” and “suburban”. They’ve been able to stay at the cutting edge of independent brewing while creating a vibe of carefree Sundays on the lawn with friends and a few bevvies. Where other breweries are delivering a peacock’s tail of colours and intensity to the shopping aisles, Parrotdog are pared back and unassuming. And yet they’ve managed to turn themselves into a giant among the independent craft breweries, second-only to Garage Project in terms of the volume of beer put into shopping carts.

1.  Jos Ruffell & Pete Gillespie / Garage Project

Garage Project is the ultimate craft beer brand. In the 12 years since they started in an abandoned petrol station in Wellington’s Aro Valley, they have become a globally-recognised brand, adored equally in Aro St and America. While they are marketing geniuses, they are also brewing gods. At the recent New Zealand Beer Awards they were crowned Champion Large Brewery for the third time in a row, beating out Lion, DB and Asahi (formerly Independent) for that title. They got a medal for every one of the 26 beers entered, which given the often fickle nature of beer judging is beyond phenomenal. They are the only Kiwi brewery to have won two medals at the world’s toughest beer competition, the World Beer Cup. On the Untappd social beer reviewing app, they provide 9 of the top-10 highest-rated beers in New Zealand. They are the very definition of craft beer in this country.

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Vote for your favourite beer

You know how you can sit and rant about something, do nothing, and hope someone else does something?

Well, it’s happened. Someone has done the thing I wanted!

I’ve been a critic of the NZ version of the GABS Hottest 100 for some time. What irks me most is that some Aussies, as well-meaning and nice as they are, should run a competition about our beer!

Of course, I could have got off my backside and started a Hoppiness 100, which we kind of a did last year, but I bow down to the crew at Beer Hug for making something tangible happen.

They have created NZ's Choicest Craft Beers 2023 in partnership with NZ Hops (with other sponsors in the pipeline).

As they note, it’s an annual “Kiwi-run celebration” of New Zealand’s best beer as voted by you. If you vote you go in the draw to win one of Beer Hug’s “Brewery Tour” boxes for yourself and three mates valued at around $500.

The votes will be tallied at the end of September and the Choicest 50 Craft Beers will be announced the week commencing October 2. Shortly after that Beer Hug will release NZ’s Choicest Box of Craft Beers.

Here is a link to the voting page: https://beerhug.co.nz/pages/nzs-choicest-craft-beers

The only trick to this is you have pick the beers (no drop-down menu) so you need to remember all the best beers you’ve tried this year!

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Beer of the week No 1

Speaking of Beer Hug, I took delivery of their NZ Beer Awards box recently and one of the first I pulled from it was The Scarecrow by Shining Peak. Now I was all over this beer. Loved it. Could see why it won a gold medal. But there was some non-love on social media and that led to some debate about what constitutes a West Coast IPA. As a result, I’ve decided to re-link Jeff Alworth’s story on the many definitions of WCIPA because it is an evolving type (rather than style) of beer and there’s no set definition of what it should be. Anyway, The Scarecrow, apart from having the very best label, is pushing towards the extreme interpretations of the style. It’s dry and light, delicious and fruity, and right up my alley.

SOBA killed off

SOBA (Society of Beer Advocates) is dead — killed off by increasing costs and a waning membership base.

President of SOBA, Dallas Potz-Nielsen, announced the dissolution of SOBA in a letter to members.