So Beer­vana is done for anoth­er year. Many beers were tasted, and some people through­out the city spent some of their week­end nurs­ing their heads. But every­one who atten­ded will surely have a beer that sticks with them, it may be because it changed the way they think about a style, it opened up their eyes to what is pos­sible with beer, or it pos­sibly revol­ted them.

The Pan­head Brew­ery Media Brew, made with the Beer­hive Blog guys, comes to mind. Just Desserts is a Kiwifruit beer, with whipped cream and chocol­ate sprinkles, it was green and thick like pur­ee – chal­len­ging everyone’s idea of what a beer should be.  It ended up win­ning second equal in the Media Brew awards, along side the Jaffa Stout from Deep Creek Brew­ing and Don Kavanagh (NZ Her­ald). Top prize went to 66 Jet Planes, an India ‘Plane Ale’, from Epic and Sarah Har­vey (Sunday Star Times). This end of the sta­di­um is where I headed straight away – the Fest­ive and Media Brews always push the envel­ope on what can, some would say shouldn’t, be done with beer.

I sat in on one of the sem­inars, ‘Where to from Beer?’ where I got to hear 5 people, who live and breathe beer, talk about what they thought was pos­sible for the future of New Zea­l­and brew­ing. Every­one agreed that the beer mar­ket today doesn’t closely resemble the beer mar­ket of 10 or even 5 years ago.  As Stu McKin­ley of Yeast­ie Boys poin­ted out, up until a few years ago the beer audi­ence had two ‘options’ – you had Lion or DB, with vary little sep­ar­at­ing each the brews, and because of this many older people chose to drink wine, because of the vari­ety that was offered. Now Wel­ling­ton alone has over 10 craft brew­er­ies and the range of beer avail­able to New Zeal­anders has nev­er been big­ger.

Geoff Griggs, a Beer com­ment­at­or and the cur­rent pres­id­ent of the NZ Soci­ety of Beer Advoc­ates (SOBA), con­ten­ded that there were people 5 years ago that wouldn’t drink an IPA and now it is one of the more pop­u­lar styles of beer. He thought it’s likely there’ll be an increase in the num­ber of malt and sour beers avail­able, per­haps a great option for those that aren’t attrac­ted to the extremely hoppy vari­et­ies cur­rently on taps around town.

Domin­ic Kelly of Hashigo Zake fairly poin­ted out that some beer drink­ers have been put off smal­ler beers/breweries but brew­er­ies like Tuatara and Emerson’s are offer­ing a lar­ger range of beers, a middle ground, for those that are either not inter­ested in chilli cof­fee stouts (or oth­er fant­ast­ic inven­tions) or wish to avoid the beer geek/snob envir­on­ment that some per­ceive.

Reese Drake, who deals with beer going into New World super­mar­kets, said that there has been a 40% increase in craft or craft inspired beer over the last year and that this is fant­ast­ic for brew­ers and drink­ers alike. He argued the word ‘Craft’ should be left alone and that a good beer is a good beer, cus­tom­ers should let brew­ers do what they do well and if people like it they’ll drink it. I agree with the sen­ti­ment but I feel there are large brew­er­ies, with deep pock­ets, that have the abil­ity to cre­ate ‘inde­pend­ent brew­er­ies’ and pre­tend to be some­thing that, in real­ity, they are not. Per­haps such brew­er­ies can be con­sidered to be pro­du­cing the gate­way beers for those who will go on to be edu­cated beer drink­ers. Danny Philips (Lion Brew­er­ies) cer­tainly wanted more young people drink­ing craft beer and he argued that this is some­thing a brand like Crafty Beg­gars can encour­age. I couldn’t find a web­site for Crafty Beg­gars so have provided links to art­icles for and against such brands.

One issue that often arises in beer talk is that of gender. Again times are chan­ging and the days of manly, meaty, mas­cu­line men being the only ones drink­ing beer are hope­fully mov­ing behind us. Drake said that the female mar­ket is huge for New World and it’s great that the large vari­ety avail­able means people are now able to get the beers they want. Griggs acknow­ledged that most beer is mar­keted at men. He argued that the gender divide is rub­bish and shouldn’t exist and so really, what men vs women want is irrel­ev­ant. A beer is a beer and a con­sumer is a con­sumer. He poin­ted out that in his per­son­al exper­i­ence there are plenty of women who prefer a strong, malty beer to a light, flor­al brew.

Part of this change in per­cep­tion of beer, brew­er­ies and brand­ing has lead to what McKin­ley called Rock Star Beer – beer with per­son­al­ity. The Gar­age Pro­ject Work­shop was a great example of this where they had a rep­lica of their premises set up like a stage – the stars (brew­ers Jos and Pete) work­ing the stage with brews includ­ing The Hot Buttered Bas­tard Rye (a mulled beer) and the Fire Poker Blen­ded Cockswain’s Cour­age Port­er (heated with a hot poker) both spec­tacles to see. I’d argue that a huge part of the rock star beer cul­ture comes down to the age we live in where a strong com­munity has developed that sup­ports brew­ers and their craft. Con­sumers are able to talk with the brew­ers and learn more about what they are doing, they’re not miles away in huge factor­ies where a head brew­er only appears occa­sion­ally.

I had a quick chat with Soren Eriksen of 8 wired and he said that at the moment the beer mar­ket is an easy one to be in. There are so many people want­ing more, want­ing new, want­ing some­thing dif­fer­ent and all the brew­ers have to do is keep doing what they love to do.

As I told him, and tell every brew­ery at Beer­vana, it’s a great thing we have going here, if you guys keep mak­ing the stuff we’ll keep buy­ing it!

 

My picks of the fest­iv­al (not that I got even close to try­ing them all)

(In no par­tic­u­lar order)

Red Ryder Red Rye IPA – Bay­lands Brew­ery

Bumaye – 8 Wired

Hot Buttered Bas­tard Rye – Gar­age Pro­ject

Drop Hop Cider  – Good George (Win­ner of BGNZ Cider Award )

Mike’s 3rd nut – Moun­tain Goat Brew­ery

Acid Freaks Bal­sam­ic Balt­ic Port­er – Brew­cult

Oh Kam­iyo – Funk Estate