Croucher Brewing: Highlights 2010

Season's Greetings!

As 2011 approaches, it is a perfect time to reflect on the highs and lows of 2010. Overall, it has been a really good year for us. We have made some huge decisions on the direction of our business, our beers have had some great kudos, and we have been able to grow strongly against a backdrop of recession and increased competition.

2010 HIGHLIGHTS

1. We are still talking to each other!
• That might not sound like such a big deal, but crikey, we (Paul and Nigel) have been working together for like 6 years. The seven-year-itch is just around the corner! Watch this space - next year things could be a very different kettle of fish.
2. Recognition
• It has been a great year on the awards front. Firstly Croucher Pilsner won Gold and Trophy for Champion International Lager at BrewNZ 2010... unfortunately we weren't even there to accept the awards (you can read our absentia acceptance speech here).
• Secondly, Croucher Pale Ale was named Champion Beer in the Capital Times Beer necessities Survey 2010. Our Pilsner, as well as the Pale Ale, were named in the countries Top 12 Beers.
• This blog was named in the world's 50 Best Beer Blogs
3. Seasonal Beers
• One of the most satisfying achievements this year has been the addition of regular seasonal beers to our line-up. The year kicked off with the Vicar's Vice and Cherry Bock, followed by Vicar's II, Patriot (American Black Ale), October Ale, and the most recent Mrs Claus' Famous Christmas Cake Ale. Patriot is up again next, just in time for the summer festivals. We have a few ideas lined up for 2011, so will let you know as they unravel. Making these beers is pure fun and excitement, a chance for us to experiment and learn more.
4. Steaming pistons! [obscure Thomas reference]
• After a long period of struggling to keep up with production, we made the decision to investigate contract brewing some of our bottled beers in a facility geared up for larger volumes. Our search led us straight to Steam Brewing in Auckland, they are responsible for handling the brewing of some of this countries better craft beers. It has been a HUGE change for us and our business - but we are very pleased with the beers coming out of Steam, sales are going well, and we hope we are well placed for continued growth in 2011.
5. New Business
• A couple of months ago we were invited by Galbraith's Alehouse (the iconic Auckland BrewPub) to have a permanent tap of Croucher beer in their bar. Keith and Ian have long been friends and mentors, so this is a great honour for us.
• Early this year Hamiltonian's got their own craft beer pub - House On Hood. On the recommendation of Greig McGill (renowned Hamiltonian Raconteur), House contacted us about supplying beer to them. Well it has been a great relationship. We LOVE what they are doing there (please check it out next time you are in Hamilton), and they seem to love our beer too.
• Exporting - Croucher beer is now available in Australia. We started working with a distributor a few months back, and are now sending regular shipments into and then around Australia. What a cool addition to our business - streuth, we think its grouse that our cobbers over the ditch are keen to head down to the bottle-o to grab a Croucher coldie.
6. The Release Of Croucher Pilsner In Cans
• Rotorua hosted the 'Kiwibikes Single Speed World Championships' as few months ago. One of the local bike shops, Bike Vegas, put a team in dressed as cans of Croucher Pilsner. It was a scorching hot day and these guys suffered! The highlight was Dave checking whether the cans would float or sink - check out this AWESOME video (be patient - wait for the 3rd can to come through).

2010 LOWLIGHTS
Alas, you can't have it all you own way, and there have been a few road blocks, disappointments, and drama's. Some details, however, are best kept in-house.

1. The Underground Got Buried
• At the beginning of the year we were running our own tiny craft beer pub (The Underground Bar) in Rotorua, having opened the doors in May 2009. But by the end of January it had closed down - the restaurant whose liquor licence and kitchen we utilised had decided to go out of business. It was a shame in many ways, as it had been a great way of introducing Rotorua people to craft beer, but the flip side was that we were able to put more effort back in to the brewery.
2. D Rated Food Outlets
• For some reason Paul found and then dragged me along to a restaurant in Otahuhu with a D Grade food certificate. They have to display the rating, and alongside it was a sign saying no credit cards. When Paul went to pay by credit card, they allerted him to the signs on the wall - you would think a restaurant with a D food rating on display would be doing everything in its power to NOT alert your attention to signs on the wall!

The biggest thanks goes to all of you who have gone out and purchased our beer this year. We do appreciate your support and enthusiasm, and we consider you a vital part of the Croucher Brewing Team. Thanks, and our very best wishes to you for 2011.

Nigel & Paul
Croucher Brewing

Croucher Brewing: Auckland Road Trip Last Week

It was a big few days. Result; 10,000L of packaged beer all tasting sensational and our first substantial export order to Australia.
We’ve talked about the “why’s” of doing some of our brewing at Steam. Watching the bottling machine fire through pallets and pallets of our beer was a sight to behold – and cemented in our minds that we’re doing the right thing. Thanks to the Team at Steam. Also, we’ve come back down and we’re brewing more beer here today! More beer!

So, we started off with a late trip on Monday, punctuated with a dose of dumplings on Dominion Rd. We could love Auckland for Dominion Rd Dumplings in their own right. Nigel’s a bit of a conservative orderer but still can handle the “hot and spicy pork miscellaneous”-type dishes that I order. Is there a more scary expression in Asian cuisine than “miscellaneous”? At least it was prefaced with “pork”! [Editors (Nigel's) comment: To be fair that conservative orderer did discover the SENSATIONAL Pork and Cashew dumplings that have become the standard by which all others are measured!] The evening wound down with a growler of Galbraith's Bitter & Twisted. Nice!

Tuesday was a leisurely 8.30am start at Steam. What a sight! The newly branded Croucher Brewing boxes as far as the eye could see and the reassuring clink of bottles being taken off the pallet. Got to love the concept of 'staff'! Shane, the brewer, appreciated the significance of the moment and took the first bottle off the bottling line for us to take as a memento. Tell you what, its going straight to the pool room, Darl! He also grabbed a still cold bottle and so we Christened the brew and the day with a Pilsner at 9am. We had a minor drama when realising there had been a communication breakdown – and were helped out of a jam by Jono at a labeling company called Adhesif – a company we had never dealt with before – who turned some printing around in half an hour. We were very impressed. The Pilsner was kegged and bottled by mid afternoon. Home for some serious email time, dinner and then a late night jaunt to the Wine Cellar on K-Rd for a quiet beer and cider.

Wednesday was an even more leisurely start with bottling of the ale held up due to a soft-drink packaging run holding up proceedings. Priorities boys! But before we knew it there was another 5,000L of our product , this time our Pale Ale, all carefully packaged and ready for dispatch.

We picked up Hugh, our lame Auckland distributor. He’s lame in the literal sense after not heeding warnings to wear safety gear while snow-boarding. Libellous Luke also arrived and we sat down for a beer or five while Nigel started preparing pallet orders for dispatch. Now that’s what I call division of labour!

So for the beer geeks out there, we started with Epic Portamarillo – a sensational Smoked Tamarillo Porter which had magic balance. The tamarillo took a while before I recognised it but once my palate adjusted, I got this lovely clean fresh fruit in the front palate with the smoke lingering and holding on. YUM! We moved on to Epic Armageddon and what can I say; this is consistently one of my favourite beers. Another Yum for good measure but I did have to refill my glass JUST to be sure.

Before any of you are tempted to call CYPFS or the SPCA for my treatment of Nigel through this, I should add that he did do a surgical strike on the tastings and wasn’t even close to falling for my practical joke that the beer had run out.

This was good palate priming for tasting our beers. Palate cleansing isn’t quite the right word as our mouths had just been assaulted with hops. To exaggerate this effect, Hugh primed us with his latest brew – Bass Player, an American IPA screaming with Amarillo. Very nice!

So on to the tasting of Steam Brewed Croucher beers. We started with the Croucher Pale Ale. It was delicious! In Luke words – “Dude, thats so hoppy. Its hoppier than Epic Pale Ale” (Luke, can I quote you on that?). By now, the Pilsner was cold and ready for its Christening (Ok – it was Christened the day before, the night before and earlier that morning but you can never be too sure). Despite an element of bottle shock (which settles out after a few days), the Pilsner was sensational! As a great man once said, Pilsner =Yum2. Exactly as the doctor ordered! Croucher Brewing purists will be very happy with the job done by Steam on our beers.

Somehow it was now 3pm and Nigel was only half way through getting the pallets together (what was he doing all that time?) when the Steam guys were ready to go home. We couldn’t really leave the pallets in that state so there was nothing for it but for me to help. Hugh was no good, he was lame and Luke, well he suddenly realised he was busy and scarpered. Well, I haven’t had a sweat on me like that for some time. In any case, pallets were quickly put together and labelled, including a substantial order to Australia.

Job done, we loaded the car with kegs and cartons to deliver around and about and managed to wedge lame Hugh in between 5 kegs and 20 cases beers. He couldn’t have been happier if he was wedged between two supermodels. It was like a Lynx ad for beer geeks. Then off to one of last bastions of the true pint, the Wine Cellar on K’Rd to deliver their favorite Pale Ale.

Our final beer delivery was to Galbraith’s Shrine of Great Beer to make sure they got their Rotorua-brewed Croucher Patriot, American Black Ale. We settled in with Dave and Ian (bar manager and brewer) for a few of the house beers. Bellringers Best Bitter was our pick of the night. A lovely malty, hoppy best bitter. Galbraith’s are the masters of understated balance. Too many beers boast about subtlety but let’s face it, most of them are just bland. They’re like “Oooh, we’re so subtle we left out the malt AND the hops”. Galbraith’s beers have rich layers of complexity with rare malts and hops that they’ve sourced themselves. The best of the best brewed brilliantly. It is an essential place to visit in Auckland, and if you get the chance to meet Dave and Ian, you won't find two nicer blokes [Keith's alright too].

I have to say I got a bit cheeky that night. Ex All-Black Alan Whetton was there drinking Peroni. Peroni at Galbraith’s! Sacrilege! Thankfully, his friend was drinking Sierra Nevada and was busy trying to convince him of the virtues of better beer. I couldn’t help myself so I introduced myself and told him (in a very polite way) that he had to learn off his mate about drinking beer. To his credit he leapt up and bought one. I didn’t hang around to see if he liked it. I’m not a groupie! Three thumbs up to Mr Whetton for being such a good sport.

Suitably lubricated, we ended the evening, and the Auckland Odyssey, with Dumplings on Dominion Rd. Ahhh, the symmetry.

Croucher Brewing Sells Its Soul...

We are in Auckland today bottling the first Croucher beers coming off the line at Steam Brewing. While we continue to brew furiously in Rotorua, we have taken advantage of Steam's expertise to help us produce some serious volume.

Don't worry, we haven't sold out! Rather, we are taking advantage of an opportunity to help us grow our sales and distribution. Over the past year we have been really up against it trying to produce enough beer to meet demand and also provide enough stock to actively grow our distribution around NZ, and God forbid having enough stock to even consider exporting.

A few months back things changed at the brewery, providing us the perfect opportunity to have a thorough look at what we are trying to do and specifically the best way of doing it. Our main issue was that we never had enough beer! We decided to investigate contract brewing/bottling some of our bottled beer. After some analysis, we decided to work with Steam Brewing (winners of multiple trophies at BrewNZ this year, and also the team that work with Epic Brewing). We went up a month or so back and brewed some big batches of Pilsner and Pale Ale.

In the meantime, our Rotorua-brewed Pilsner won CHAMPION INTERNATIONAL LAGER at BrewNZ, thus setting a very high bar for Shane and the team at Steam to emulate. Well, today we bottled the Pilsner brewed at Steam, and it would be fair to say that we are EXTREMELY happy with it! So if you haven't tried it in a while, make sure you get out there and track it down - it would easily be one of the hoppiest lagers in NZ, and is a fantastic showcase of New Zealand hops - to the point where we are re-badging it as a New Zealand Pilsner. Tomorrow we bottle the Pale Ale. Then we are back home to brew, bottle and keg beer there too - and somehow finding time to sell the beers we have just packaged! Anyone looking for a job??

Another exciting change is that, as of this week, we are introducing 500ml bottles to our range. So we will have 330ml bottles primarily targetted at on-premise, 500ml bottles primarily targetted at off-licence and keg beer for these outlets who enjoy fresh draught craft beer. The 500ml bottles have a lovely new label design, which will roll out to the 330's soon too.

The other thing you'll already be aware of is our regular seasonal brews. The latest release is Croucher PATRIOT, our American Black Ale. It has been sent out around the country. The first keg went on at Hashigo Zake in Wellington, with a fantastic review of PATRIOT having already been blogged by a visiting American. On Thursday evening PATRIOT is the guest beer at House On Hood's beer club in Hamilton.

Our next seasonal is called October Ale, and funnily enough will be released in October. It is a recipe based on the early India Pale Ale's from the mid-18th Century. It has been brewed with English malts and English hops, and is shaping up nicely as the perfect foil for all those hoppy American IPA's that are de rigueur. Keep an eye out in mid-October for Croucher OCTOBER ALE.

We hope you are enjoying our blog/facebook/twitter posts, letting you peek behind the curtain at the goings-on at our craft brewery.

Nigel & Paul

Breaking News:

Croucher Brewing has won Champion International Lager at the Brew NZ Awards tonight in Wellington!!!! That is Gold Medal and Category Trophy.

WAHOOOOOOOOOO!!

Croucher Pale Ale & Pilsner on fill-your-own at Regional Wines in Welly

Croucher Pale Ale & Pilsner are on fill-your-own at Regional Wines & Spirits in Wellington for the first time. Get in and grab a rigger or two.

The Auckland version of the Liquorland New Zealand Beer Festival took place at Ellerslie racecourse on Saturday. It was a great day, with a big crowd and a high level of interest in the craft breweries. There were a few teething problems with the festivals new payment system, but nothing a few delicious beers didn't remedy for most punters. We had a big day, with our Pilsner being the most popular of our beers. Also, our seasonal Vicar's Vice and Cherry Bock beers went down a treat with craft beer lovers!

It is Wellington's turn for the New Zealand Beer Festival on Saturday the 6th of March. Book your tickets here and NOW. It is at the Westpac Stadium, and should be a doosy.

December at the brewery

TAURANGA SEAFOOD FEST

Since the last update we attended the Tauranga Moana Seafood Festival - and it was huge!! The event sold out, 3500 tickets, and our beer went down a treat. There was some excellent entertainment, great seafood and a crowd of people who wanted to have a good time. Our Pale Ale and Pilsner were particularly popular with punters.

NEW BREWHOUSE

It is a particularly busy time at the brewery. Not only have we been brewing and bottling up a storm to keep up with demand, but we are in the process of installing a bigger shinier brew system. These things don't happen overnight, but we are are making progress.

Stage I is complete. That was moving our refridgerated container to provide wider access to the old brew area. Two forkies came in and couldn't even move it while it had beer inside it. After a week or so frantically bottling and kegging we were able to completely empty the container and a Mainfreight forkie came in and did the business.

Stage II underway right now - pouring a sloped concrete floor for an expanded foodgrade brew area. It is pretty exciting to see the place empty, ready for concrete to pour! Once this is finished we'll be able to move the larger brewing equipment into place and commence Stage III - Installation.

FEEDBACK ON OUR BEERS

TOP 10: Renowned beer writer Neil Miller has just announced his annual Top 10 beers for 2008. Croucher Pale Ale has debuted at number 7 on the list - this is a great result for us, and perhaps next year we might even have two beers on his list!! Thanks Neil. Full rankings here.

CAPITAL TIMES: Wellington's Capital Times run an annual beer competition. In the Pilsner category, Croucher Pilsner was rated second best in the country next to the iconic Emerson's Organic Pilsner. Croucher Pale Ale came in 3rd in the Pale Ale category, with an honourable mention for The HEF.

For smaller breweries like us these sorts of articles and competitions are a good way to get feedback on our beers - we are always looking to improve and learn, so feedback is always welcome.

October 2008
Bob Campbell Reviews Croucher Beers
As mentioned previously, New Zealand's only Master Of Wine Bob Campbell has reviewed each of our beers. Reviews follow...

Hef Wheat Beer HO17
Flavoursome beer with a beautiful aroma of sweet wild herbs and wild flowers. Better than most of the top Belgian wheat beers I’ve tasted. Deliciously fruity and silken smooth with little bitterness evident. 93 points

Czech Pilsener PO20
This is a great beer - plenty of lifted hoppy flavours with yeast and floral notes. Lenghty and with an appropriate hoppy bitterness on the finish. Very impressive! 93 points

Pale Ale Batch AO37
Flavoursome beer with a smooth texture and attractive bitter finish. Earthy, malty flavours. 84 points

New Outlets
> La Zeppa, Freeman's Bay, Auckland
> Village Winery, Mt Eden
> Liquorland Northcross, Browns Bay, Auckland
> Te Puia, Rotorua
> Lovely India, Rotorua
> Merchant Of Tirau, Tirau
> Scenic Cellars, Taupo

September 2008

Croucher Brewing takes wine challenge award
Rotorua brewing company Croucher Brewing came out on top in the sixth annual Great Down Under Wine Challenge in Tauranga on August 28.

The formal dinner wine challenge is a competitive event showcasing the best of food and wine tourism on the premier touring routes of Australia and New Zealand. It is based on a five-course degustation-style dinner. Each course is served with two “blind” wines to match the food.

This was the first time beer had been introduced, and Croucher Brewing won for its Pale Ale, matched with the fifth course, which comprised chocolate fondant with rum and raisin gelato. It was up against Flying Horse Brewery in Melbourne, which put forward its Mahogany Porter.

“Some might think that Croucher Brewing was at a disadvantage, because porter is traditionally a good match for chocolate, but our Pale Ale has intense fruity flavours and aromas which complimented the dessert” Croucher Brewing co-owner Paul Croucher says.

The company and Rotorua tourism staff who attended the event were delighted with the win.

“It’s fantastic because it adds yet another dimension to what Rotorua can offer visitors,” Destination Rotorua Tourism Marketing assistant general manager Ruth Crampton says.

The Great Down Under Tour is a marketing alliance between Victoria’s Great Southern Touring Route and the North Island’s Great New Zealand Touring Route (GNZTR), and seeks to focus attention on these regions and the wealth of product each has on offer. The Great Down Under Wine Challenge has been running for five years and has been based around publicity generated from the formal dinner challenge.

Check out the story link on stuff.co.nz:

http://www.stuff.co.nz/marlboroughexpress/4680981a26793.html