Tuatara was the big winner in the recent New
World Beer & Cider Awards. This was commercially sponsored by ‘New World’
the supermarket rather than any ‘Old World’ opposite from the UK or Europe. Anyway,
the brewery based in Paraparaumu won four top awards including Best in Class
for its Bohemian Pilsner. It is one of breweries leading the charge in the
‘craft beer revolution’ in New Zealand, a phenomenon which is globally becoming
even more competitive and witnessing exciting times. Tuatara Brewery was started
in the hills behind Waikanae on the Kapiti Coast north of Wellington. They were
a craft beer producer when ‘craft beer’ meant a micro-brewery producing high
quality beer on a smaller scale without using adjuncts (like refined sugar
rather than 100% malt) and shortcuts employed by big commercial operations who
historically made resoundingly poor tasting bad beer. These big industrial
brewers are still going strong and dominate over 90% of the beer market here
and abroad. A full discussion of the term ‘craft beer’ will have to wait for
another blog entry but for my purposes let me just say that anything owned
and/or operated by the three dominant corporations in NZ (in simple terms Lion
Nathan/Kirin, Dominion Breweries/Heineken or the laughably named Independent
Liquor which it is clearly not because it belongs to the Japanese beverage
giant Asahi) I do not consider to be ‘craft’ and their place in this essay is
simply as bad beer dragons which the necessitated good beer knights to fight
them. Yes, they may now own some brands with beer made historically by craft
breweries and the production process may not have changed dramatically.
However, if the industrial brewers had been committed to good producing beer
from the beginning then there would be no need for a revolution. So, no DB,
Lion or Asahi for me.
Tuatara makes a good case study for this
topic. The founder Karl Vasta started the brewery because he was sick of bad
beer and wanted to make and promote something good. Sure, there are issues of
taste and prejudice (you could say discernment) involved but he was doing this
before it became fashionable, profitable or started “trending” in social media.
He did it for the love of good beer and I’m very grateful. Thanks Karl. Nowadays
Tuatara is a big brewery found on a light industrial estate less than a mile
from my parents’ home and yet it still retains an ethic of quality brewing
despite its commercialisation and success. Size and volume is not the issue as
long as the approach and quality are correct. I think that what people are
referring to when they talk about craft beer it is really the same thing that
motivated Vasta, which usually involves smaller scale brewing of high quality
beer using artisanal or traditional techniques in contrast to massive,
corporate producers who have often sacrificed craftsmanship for profit and who
care most about the financial bottom line and the best return on investment
even if it means selling low quality, mass-produced crap. They evidently have
little interest in good beer but have been driven to attempt to make
craft-style beer to retain dominance in the market.
I’m not saying all non-craft beer is poor.
Monteith’s 'Original' is perfectly acceptable, affordable and tasty. But, it is
not craft beer and it is an exception rather than the rule. It is what we might
call a Kraft beer – a decent beer made by an industrial brewing corporation, in
this case Lion who bought the brewery in 1969 and kept brewing in Greymouth but
only under duress. Mac’s is the same kind of beer - a previously small independent
beer brand made by the McCashin family until a few years ago. However, they
have been corporatized by DB since being bought out and although some of their
beer is fine, production is no longer in Nelson but at big industrialized
factories and the whole approach is far from its artisanal roots and it shows
in the final product. Tuatara may have received added investment and grown
dramatically in size but their commitment to “free the world from the tyranny
of bad beer” remains unchanged (Dominion Post, 11 April 2016). Even by its own
admission it had a place in the established market before the craft phenomenon
started but you could equally say it is the natural grandparent of craft beer
in New Zealand.
Key words in this debate are ‘craftsmanship’,
‘quality’ and ‘love’. This strikes at the heart of the issue around what
qualifies as craft beer. Craft brewers seem to care about beer more than profit
but the corporate breweries put it the other way round. And it shows. They say
the proof is in the pudding and this is true of beer. Craft beer by the
definition I outlined above is consistently better than non-craft beer. It is
as simple as pouring a beer and tasting it. I have been amazed by the tell-tale
signs that belie whether the brewery is ‘craft’ or not. Not knowing where Black
Dog was from or who the owners were I tried their ‘Kiwi Unleashed’ APA (6%) and
although it had decent hopping for the style and was drinkable, something was
not right about it. I even wrote in my tasting journal: ‘Find out who owns
Black Dog – doesn’t taste like craft beer’. Like Boundary Road (Asahi) and
Mac’s (Lion) craft-style beers, the result tasted like a big commercial
producer had tried to make a beer with the attributes of a craft beer and
failed. Sure enough, Black Dog is owned by DB.
After decades of pumping out decidedly
ordinary if not piss poor beer, the big NZ breweries are trying to compete with
craft beer. The reason is clear – their market share is at risk as people
gravitate towards better beer and so they are afraid. And rightly so because
they cannot compete with the craft competition, try as they might. This is
about money for the big producers, not good beer. As big businesses they are
being compelled to respond to this challenge but don’t for a moment think there
has been a change of heart in terms of approach. They stand to lose a lot so
have set up satellite breweries like Black Dog, bought formerly craft breweries
and created new craft-style products.
Should beer lovers be concerned? I guess not.
The difference in taste is marked and the quality of non-craft beer offerings
is noticeably lower than beer crafted with love. It’s a bit like McDonalds. A
Big Mac is a burger but so processed and the contents so cheap and nasty that
it is a burger in name only. Certainly there is no care or craftsmanship. It’s
akin to the difference between instant coffee and fresh coffee – not really the
same drink. It is a derivative and not the same thing at all. Will the big boys
continue to succeed in the beer market? Yes, absolutely, and for the same
reasons as McDonalds – because the average punter is interested in price before
quality and a non-critical consumer highly susceptible to today’s dominant media
barrage. They are simply not discerning and the majority will go along with
what is deemed popular regardless of taste, quality, ethics or the environment.
They are happy to screw the planet, their fellow man and even themselves in
striving to profit and appear successful. This is their right. Good luck to
them and the big brewers. However, I will keep passionately promoting good beer
and craft breweries everywhere.
There is also the Starbucks effect. It’s the
real thing if you like (in the sense that it’s actually coffee not instant
coffee) but manipulated to appeal to the tastes of people who are accustomed to
and allegedly enjoy commercial kiwi beers like Speight’s. Everything is dialled
down and flattened out so as provide a transition to a craft beer which doesn’t
offend the taste they have developed, usually over many years, for bad beer.
Nor does it offend the tastes of craft beer drinkers except that it’s a bit
boring. Sprig & Fern is a great example of this. There beer is actually
consistently tasty and well made and their branded pubs are sprouting up
everywhere. In my opinion Sprig & Fern beer is in a different league to the
industrial producers and I include it in my definition of craft beer. However,
it seems to be compromised by the desire to franchise the brand and make money
from the craft market more than focussing on brewing really good beer. The head
brewer was a long time employee of Lion and clearly has the industry savvy to
create the Starbucks of craft beer in New Zealand.
In his book ‘Brewed’ Jules van Cruysen provides
a comprehensive guide to all of New Zealand’s breweries and brewers. He
introduces the question ‘What is craft beer?’ but sadly doesn’t resolve it
satisfactorily. While he distinguishes craft from the big three ‘industrial’
breweries he then goes on to conflate them and by the end you would think craft
beer was a meaningless term. Yes, it is a tricky thing but cataloguing all the
breweries alphabetically and so DB, Lion and their other brands are sitting
right alongside actual craft breweries serves to confuse the issue further. No
craft beer lover is going to be happy to see DB listed a few pages from Garage
Project. ‘Tui’ is categorically not a craft beer. ‘Aro Noir’ is. It is as
simple as that and so to call the book ‘A Guide to the Craft Beer of New
Zealand’ is not strictly true. It does provide excellent coverage of all the
craft breweries as of March 2105 but also all the breweries owned by the big
commercial brewing conglomerates. This makes it simply a guide to Kiwi beer.
Its focus on the wonderful craft beer to be found in this country although very
welcome doesn’t make it a book about craft beer. Van Cruysen should have
dropped ‘craft’ from the title or dropped DB, Lion and Independent from the
contents. There is a meaningful and important division between craft and non-craft beer and
it is worth grappling with the way we define it and use it in beer
conversations.
