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From Beer Writing To The Brewhouse: Building A Local Brewpub In NZ
469 Plays19 days ago
In Episode 015 of The Crafty Pint Podcast we head overseas for the first time. Our destination is a tiny brewery most people won't have heard of, where we're joined by a guest with whom many will be very familiar.
The tiny brewery is Shortjaw Brewing, located in Westport: a town on the sparsely populated west coast of New Zealand's South Island. The guest is the man who, along with his partner Emma, decided to take over the site of a 30-year-old, twice-liquidated brewery during the early period of the COVID pandemic and bring it back to life.
Luke Robertson is far better known in beer circles – at least outside Westport and surrounds – from his time in Australia. This is mainly due to Ale of a Time, the blog that spawned a podcast of the same name, both of them home to sharp, witty and occasionally caustic observations of, and commentary on, the wide world of beer.
That was just one of many roles in the Australian beer world for Luke, who helped deliver major events such as Good Beer Week and BrewCon for the Independent Brewers Association, while writing – mostly on beer – for high profile publications not just in his adopted home but overseas, notably for Good Beer Hunting.
Thirty months on from pouring the first Shortjaw beer for guests, he joined us to reflect on his change of direction – or putting his money where his mouth is, as he puts it: how he's approached building a customer base for a regional brewery in one of the most remote parts of the planet, his fondness for creating beers that represent the place in which they're brewed, and some of the highs and lows that come with launching a brewery in the toughest climate for beer in decades.
The chat with Luke starts at 11:05.
Prior to that, we interrupt Will's holiday in Bali to go behind the scenes of his deep dive article into the experiences of working at beer's sinking ships. Over a period of months, he spoke to former employees at a number of businesses across Australia that have been through administration, ceased operating, or changed hands over the past couple of years, and the picture they paint is far from pretty.
We also discuss the reaction to the article since its publication on Monday, with comments received from outside Australia and beyond the beer world too.
You'll find links relevant to the episode below:
Shortjaw Brewing: https://shortjaw.co.nz/
Ale of a Time: https://aleofatime.com/
From Beer Blogger To Brewery Owner: https://craftypint.com/news/2799/from-beer-blogger-to-brewery-owner
Working Inside Beer's Sinking Ships: https://craftypint.com/news/3605/working-inside-beers-sinking-ships
Brew & A ft Charlie Claridge: https://craftypint.com/news/3609/brew-and-a-charlie-claridge-esker-beer-co
Sun Tap Decals: https://www.suntapdecals.com.au/
To find out more about supporting the show or otherwise partnering with The Crafty Pint, contact [email protected].
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Transcript
Introduction and Podcast Setup
00:00:05
Speaker
Hello and welcome back to the Crafty Pine podcast. I'm James. And I'm well and ah Will. Will, you're not in Kansas anymore, are you? Can you tell us so why you have a four poster bed behind you this week? Yes, I'm coming in from Bali.
00:00:21
Speaker
and Yes. Zooming in on my time off. Yes. um yeah know and This wasn't the intention, obviously. um I had planned to have alternate hosts for the intro this week. However, um I guess there's a big ask we put out earlier in the week that you've been working on for some months that you were
Brewery Industry Challenges and 'Horrible Bosses' Article
00:00:37
Speaker
keen to chat about. And much as we tried our best to get it out before you've gone to Bali, it landed on what sort of day three of your holiday. So here you are.
00:00:46
Speaker
Yeah, just um obviously the the sort of working title for this story for a while was Horrible Bosses. So just um to be completely clear, there's no I'm not under here under any duress. There's no gun to my head or anything like that. and There were just some delays on the article. And when I got it done, I really wanted it to go out and when I got it done was late last week and then we had to wait for graphics so I was kind of like nah I'm just um it it kind of felt wrong to run an article like that and not talk about it in the podcast particularly since I wrote it so I thought hey why not
00:01:21
Speaker
I'll oh lie come in from the poolside. And the article itself is our working inside beer-sinking ships. Do you want to tell us a little bit about what the article's about and why you, I guess, ah got started upon it and how you pulled something like that together? Because it has been several weeks, if not months, in the in the making. Yeah. So, ah well, I mean, fundamentally, it's about, I guess, looking at some of the breweries that have either closed or gone through VA a and looking from a staff perspective that probably the businesses weren't actually being very well run, which is why they close. And a lot of the, I guess, points, including ones we've made in articles and we've interviewed a lot of owners is about ah how tough the economic conditions are right now. And and while that's fundamentally true,
00:02:09
Speaker
there's just a lot that there are some exasperated staff out there who who feel like that their business owners weren't sort of making very good calls um a lot of sort of A lot of money was flowing in from outside sources and sort of promises being made that led to people being in really tough positions and collapse.
Impact and Feedback from the Industry
00:02:33
Speaker
And yeah, I just thought it was important to get that across. um It started fundamentally
00:02:41
Speaker
I've been talking to people, obviously, wentreze um when things don't work out, I've been talking to staff, and I noticed after talking to enough people that there were just some really common elements. um you know none of the The people interviewed in the article that they work in breweries in different states, they don't know each other, but they they were saying such similar things that at that point you kind of go, okay, there there is an industry trend story here rather than just a story about one or two breweries.
00:03:12
Speaker
um it's much wider than that. No, I think when we reported on some of the, you know, the VA's or sales or whatever, there was a bit of feedback or blowback from some quarters saying, you know, oh, you know, why you're not sort of going deeper on this. And I think, you know, we sort of felt that this was the way to approach it, really, sort of rather than phone, you know, sort of I guess, drill down on maybe one or two of the the stories was to actually build it a bit broader. And I mean, you were saying to me before that, you know, you probably could have spoken to a dozen people from other businesses and you'd have end up with a very, very similar piece, unfortunately. And and a lot of people who I didn't interview for the article have gotten to contact to say thank you and um
00:03:52
Speaker
Yeah, that that I didn't talk to at all who said this was exactly my experience um So that sort of shows that there's probably something there. Yeah, and I guess in terms of the purpose I guess is it's there's a similar idea to for example your passion task piece passion tax piece or chronically crafty in terms of I guess reporting on something that is happening, making it part of a sort of more public discussion, and I guess, also for those people making them realise that, you know, that their experiences are, you know, known about and, you know, people are aware about it and hopefully, you know, whether whether the situation has been caused by, you know, external pressures or by sort of poor decision making, that, you know, it is something that needs to be discussed and, you know, and I guess potentially improved.
00:04:38
Speaker
Yeah, I think like there's a number of things there. It's important, I think, to make people feel seen, that to to get across what people are ah going through, work in the industry, who often aren't able to have much of a voice. like there's you know Which goes to the issue, they were anonymous sources because they just can't talk. You're talking about NDAs. You're talking about people who, if they were to talk, that they maybe wouldn't get a job in a brewery ever again.
Craft Beer Scene in Bali
00:05:04
Speaker
They'd have to leave the industry we love.
00:05:06
Speaker
There's also the fact that we're at a point now where the industry's mature enough that there's staff who have had sort of significant periods at a number of breweries and and and bring a real wealth of knowledge for business owners that are still coming in much newer, who maybe haven't run a business ah before or are new to the beer industry and sort of think that what they've learned in other industries can apply automatically. So I think there's lessons in there. and And yeah, on top of that, it's also whether he wrote the story or not that these are the conversations I'm hearing when I talk to people like like like these conversations are happening all the time in the industry. um You know, I'm in Bali at the moment, I've i've got my
00:05:50
Speaker
John Le Carre novels in front of me. it's it's It's not like this story came about because someone dropped a sort of secret briefcase in front of me and then walked off. I'm i'm not um i'm not Woodward or Bernstein. These are common conversations that are actually happening all the time as well. So I think it's really important if they're going to happen and I think it's our job to allow for them to happen in in a sort of more public way, um I think that really matters too.
Introducing Luke Robertson and Shortjaw Brewery Journey
00:06:20
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. Now, well, if if you want to, haven't seen the article yet, um and we'll link to it in the show notes. um And I guess coming back to being in Bali, have you tried any um craft beer, any local craft beer since you got over there? Or has it been Waterwall Bintang?
00:06:35
Speaker
No, no, the biggest surprise, like I knew there was craft beer over here, but the biggest surprise is probably how readily available it is. So you go to your sort of um alpha marts so or the small supermarkets that are everywhere like 7-Elevens are.
00:06:52
Speaker
They have, sure they've got a fridge full of Bintang, but they also, everyone I've stepped into has some measure of craft beer. Largely it's Island Brewing, which is also has brand Black Sands. They've been around for a while. Their Pilsner is sensational. I've been drinking a lot of that. Kura Kura is another one that's pretty readily available. I found out yesterday when I was snorkeling with turtles that it's actually the Bahasa term for turtle. So that's um where the where the name comes from. But yeah, so I knew there'd be craft beer. I kind of wasn't planning on ever seeking it out. But it's actually it's actually probably easier to find it than in some pubs in Australia, to be honest. yeah i was only Drinking plenty of it.
00:07:40
Speaker
Well, I remember Mick, Mick Woost did an art piece for us at Two Part Raw on beer in Bali a few years ago, and I recognise some of the names from there, but clearly it's come on a fair bit since then, which is interesting to hear. um well Well, I'm sure you're going to want to get back to the rest of your holiday. I believe and your partner's off having a massage, and that may return at any moment, so don't want to keep you too long. um In terms of, I guess, other stuff on the website this week, um we ran a Bruin A with ah Charlie the head brewer Escobarco. If you don't know the name it used to be the Australian Brewery. um They won another trophy at Sydney Royal Bureau Awards recently and the Australian Brewery which is based in a big pub um in the north west of Sydney. They've consistently won trophies throughout the years and I think you know it's one of those that I guess distribution doesn't go really outside Sydney and it is you know the venue itself is in a
00:08:31
Speaker
less than crafty craft sort of hotspot area. um So we thought it'd be interesting to put it a bit of a ah human human face on there. um So we'll put pop that in the show notes as well. um And as for this week's guest, as as we sort of say in the show, we sort of bit of imposter syndrome for us given given he was he was running a be beer podcast in Australia for for many years.
00:08:56
Speaker
Yes, ah Luke Robinson. And and one guess we know would have no issue with um being the guest after quite a sort of controversial article goes out as so well. I'm sure Luke would be stoked to follow that.
00:09:11
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. i don't know It's a great chat. So for those who don't know, Luke Robertson, which I'd imagine is very few people. um He's from the west coast west coast of the South Island of New Zealand from a place called Westport. ah move Lived in Melbourne for more than and more than a decade. um He ran the Ale of a Time blog and podcast. Also was involved in many other things in the beer industry, worked for the IBA, worked on a number of major events, and then decided um to go and buy a failing brew pub in his hometown of what, four or five thousand?
00:09:41
Speaker
and it had already failed twice by the time. It failed twice, at least twice. A lot of people failed Brewpub in his home town of like four or five thousand people. um And yes, sir he's sort of gone from being at the centre of this sort of, you know, really at the heart of the Australian beer industry to trying to rebuild a small brewery um in in his hometown. So really interesting chat, a lot of stuff about you know focusing on local, um you know understanding your market, and building an audience, that kind of thing. um So yeah, so he's up he's up after the break. um And aside from that, yeah I think we might give you next week off the intro to to enjoy the rest of you rest of your trip, Will. I think I'll actually be flying home by that point. So so probably for the best. And then watching the US election.
00:10:29
Speaker
Yes, yes. and but what's What's on for the rest of the the time in Bali? um yes Just more time by the pool, to be honest. there's john le i've got two more I've got two more books from the Carla trilogy of Liqueres to get through. so So I really need to put the hours in. Excellent. All right. Well, I shan't keep you any longer. um I guess the one thing we must remember, if for you are enjoying the show, please um like and subscribe wherever you are listening to it or watching it. um Feel free to comment as well and tell your friends. And aside from that, we'll see you again after the break. Cheers. Cheers.
00:11:10
Speaker
Luke, thank you for joining us on the podcast. Thank you for having me. It's exciting to be here. You're our first international guest, if we can count you as an international guest, ah only two and a half years after leaving us. Yeah, yeah they they call me Mr. Worldwide, I think, is my my nickname. um Yeah, do you want to tell us where where we're chatting to you from?
00:11:31
Speaker
So I'm in my house in Westport, New Zealand, which is on the west coast of the South Island, or Tiwai Punamu. I'm looking out my window at some native bush. I've got some lovely trees. I can not quite see the ocean, but if I if i took took my headphones off, I could probably hear it. so i'm kind of right on the edge of the earth right now. And this is home and this this is is home and was home for you, is that right? Yeah, this is where I grew up. I lived here most of my life pre-Melbourne, other than a year of of study down south and in Chicago, which is ah another ah part of New Zealand that's pretty isolated and has an interesting reputation.
00:12:13
Speaker
That really is the edge of the planet, isn't it, in Vukaba? You don't get much further without falling off the edge. Pretty much, yeah. There's Blaaf, which is just south of there. But, ah yeah, the the beaches down there are pretty windswept. And same with here. we're We're kind of hanging off right on the edge of the Tasman Seas right there and the Antarctic currents. And the little settlement that I live in was called or named by Captain Cook, Cape Fowlwind.
00:12:39
Speaker
for ah when That paints you a picture. Yeah, yeah. Which is, a you know, sometimes of the year it's it's pretty intense, but the summertime here are gorgeous. We get just really consistent good summers, so ah being so close to the ocean is pretty nice. Yeah, i've I spotted a few of your posts, you know, where when you've had the the highest temperature forecast in New Zealand going, hey everyone, it's the, you know, the paradise of the South or whatever.
00:13:05
Speaker
Well, yeah, were we're sports pretty maligned and this part of it was pretty maligned for our our weather. And look, admittedly, we've had like more than two months of pretty consistent rain, but we also get a lot of sunshine. So when it rains, it it rains. Like you just, you're stuck in a lot of rain, but then summer times are generally pretty nice. So I don't know. It's a bit of a tongue in cheek joke that highlighting when we're when and we're having good days. We've got the two days.
00:13:30
Speaker
yeah And Luke, do you want to tell us a little bit about Shortjaw? Yeah, yeah. So Shortjaw is the brewery that I started with my partner, Emma. We launched March 2022. I won't go into the full story because I could list all the the hurdles that we've had to clear. um It could take about two days, but it's a 30 year old brewery in my hometown. It had been a liquidation a couple of times when we bought it. Hadn't had a lot of love. Previous owners have let the equipment just kind of
00:14:02
Speaker
exist for 30 years rather than upgrade. It didn't really have a lot of local support. The previous owners had ripped off a lot of people in town. We bought it during COVID so we didn't know when we could get back into the country and we uh yeah so we just kind of did the hardest possible thing during lockdown that by an old brewery that was probably should have been torn down and and I had seen plans from the council that yeah were showing what they were gonna do with it once it was torn down. um But we we jumped in and grabbed the lease and yeah, we've been trying to get it up and running ever since.
00:14:38
Speaker
And was it always part of your sort of long-term plan to move from what else you were doing in beer into becoming a brewery owner? I and i have to get um do feel a bit of sort of imposter syndrome here here that we're
Shortjaw Brewery's Local Focus and Product Strategy
00:14:51
Speaker
interviewing of Australia's leading beer podcasters of all time on our podcast. But I mean, was was that always the plan that you know but you'd move into owning a brewery?
00:15:00
Speaker
No, not at all. Thank you, by the way. That's a really nice thing to hear. Leading podcast beer podcasters of all time. um No, not at all. i I really don't want to own a business. like I'm not a business person, I don't think. um But we kind of bought the story, I think. you know Moving back to your hometown, trying to resurrect a rateke to brewery that was pretty much on its last legs. you know Once we kind of talked that through, it was like, well, we have to we have to try. We have to do it. And people that know me know that I've got a lot of opinions on how people should run their breweries. ah So I kind of kind of had to put my money where my mouth is. And yeah, we're we're doing it. So when did you um first open the doors, first pour a beer for people?
00:15:47
Speaker
ah March, March 2022, so the start of March. It was a bit of a fight because we we got through the quarantine system into New Zealand in December. So we landed in Westport after two weeks quarantine. I think it was like the 21st of December.
00:16:04
Speaker
and then we were trying to hit the ground running of light like let's get up and running you know ah time is money and no one's at their desks for another month in Australia and New Zealand so all the suppliers are off everyone's you know trying to get um documents set up or accounts set up was just a real challenge so We really had to to to just really work hard to even get open in March. But yeah, we we opened, I had to cajole the council was licensing a little bit ah to kind of push things through and yeah, port port out I think our first sale was a
00:16:39
Speaker
a tasting paddle, a vegan toasty, and a tote bag. yeah That's the big three. That's all you need to tell to run a successful brewery. Well, it know was crazy. I was like, man, Westport, that's so much more progressive than I thought it. A vegan toasty and a tote bag. But then I didn't tell another vegan toasty for about six months. And the actual name short jaw, what does what does that refer to? So it's the name of a white bait species here. So white baiting is kind of a big part of this world. um So people that I guess don't know white bait is a like a little school fish, essentially, that swims up the rivers to spawn before they can. we People will catch them in their nets and put them into patties, whitebait patties. And it's kind of where this part of it was pretty pretty well known for it. um we
00:17:26
Speaker
Previous to us it was called West Coast Brewing and then before that it was Minersbury but we really wanted to move away from the whole coal mining west coast. There's this is kind of, I guess, cliche that there's this rugged part of the world where people are, you know, getting out of the coal mines and living in a shack and all that kind of stuff and it's not really that true even though there are coal mines here and it it is a big big part of the history but we wanted to move away because Monteith's is just down the road in Greymouth and they have that whole kind of coal mining they've got ah a pickaxe and a shovel um there's a Spapes Ale House in Reifton as well i sorry Greymouth as well which has Emerson's beer in there
00:18:10
Speaker
yeah have the same owners and they've got a beer called the Coaster and it's got this guy who's like covered in coal dust and a big beard and a miner's lamp on and it's just like that just doesn't exist anymore. um You know the big brewers are really playing into that stereotype so we were really keen to move away and do something different, but still keep a connection to the West Coast. And you know we don't need to play dress up. ah we not need to We don't need to prove our credentials by being this kind of West Coast cliche. ah we We own the brewery. We we live here. I'm from here. And a lot of my regulars are coal miners or or work in the coal mine. So you know I don't need to dress up for them.
00:18:49
Speaker
and you know prove how prove how rugged we are because they they drink here anyway and that's kind of our whole approach you know we don't a lot of people say to us oh you need to play up to the west coast credentials and that'll work really well in the city and I just kinda wanna sell beer to the locals and you know I don't need to dress up for them. um So yeah, that's that's how why we chose Shortjaw. And no one had ever used the name Shortjaw for anything before, essentially. So trademarking and website were really easy to get and and Instagram and all that stuff. So that that made things a lot easier. And did you have a vision for what was gonna work for this brew pub when you opened it? And if you did, has that proven to work or have you had to adapt over time?
00:19:33
Speaker
We kind of knew, our whole sort of idea was to keep it simple starting out. So the previous brewery, I think at the time we took overhead eight beers and four ciders or something. We we kind of concentrated that down to three beers just starting out.
00:19:49
Speaker
We've got a little pilot kit, which is just single kick. So we just do that for the taproom. But the the whole focus was always going to be on on let's just have three beers. We use the same hop across all three. ah We you know try and keep things really simple. And part of that was it's a 2,500 litre brewery, which is more than twice the size of what we would put in if we were starting from scratch. so We can't really get caught up trying to you know do too many different things. We need to be really simple and really clear with what we're doing. and We've put out limited releases that that some have kind of worked, some haven't. We've decided to kind of pull right back on that now, just that the costs of getting them to market for us, when you know we make so much more money selling kegs to to pubs across the road, essentially, that we're gonna really focus on that.
00:20:40
Speaker
There are some limiteds that we would really like to try. There's things that are successful in the taproom. I don't think will be successful in the supermarket here. And with limited releases, you're really relying on supermarkets in New Zealand. Something like things that sell for our locals have been doppelbocks and donkles. But I'm not brave enough to put 2500 litres of a doppelbock into the supermarkets of New Zealand just yet. You need a bigger bigger pilot system.
00:21:08
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. um And that's something we're we're looking at. ah You know, part of the whole kind of plan was to see how far we could get with what what was already there. You know, I guess almost hermit crabbing in and and and seeing if we could make it work. And are you? We're getting there. We're getting there. um So in the last six months, yeah, yeah, the last six months we we've kind of have a a real shift in focus to just really focusing on local. We found a ah guy that does sales for us, casually, essentially. He's got a few other jobs. He's a kind of jack of all trades. And he has done kind of high level sales in different industries before. And he's ah um he was a customer and a really lovely guy. And it has a bit of a personality to him ah that that people really liked. And and I just said to him one day, are you
00:21:59
Speaker
you're looking for any work. um And he said, yep. And so he started doing some bar work and then we've put him out on the road. And the challenge with sales for us is our immediate region, we've got about 30,000 people, I think, on the West Coast. And that's the same distance as Auckland to Wellington. so And not a lot of people over a long distance. um If you go over the mountains, um and it's literally over the mountains to Christchurch, you know that's 400,000 people in Christchurch. So again, it's not a ah huge market even in the biggest city near us.
00:22:35
Speaker
um And we get cut off from Christchurch a couple of times a year with snow and road closures. So it's for just for us, okay, let's really hone in on making the most of what we can around us before we think about that too much.
00:22:50
Speaker
um We've have had kegs in Christchurch and we've had a little bit of success in Wellington, but we've just decided to to not chase that at all. And so since Carlos came on board, we had Carlos the salesperson. I think we were down to three taps, six taps in total in our town and a nearby tourist spot. I think that's now up to 16 in total in the space of a couple of months. He came on in April. We really started going hard on this in May.
00:23:19
Speaker
And we've we've taken that jump to to some really key local taps. So that that's been really good. And um so it's kind of a whole a whole shift for us. And we want to be the the beer of the West Coast. We want to be the beer that when you come here, that's that's what you drink. um And so for us, we're really targeting key touch points of that. you know There's a couple of tourist spots we've really focused it on and and we've picked up quite a few or a few taps there and um that's I think the way forward for us is really just hammering that. you know Let's not compete in the supermarket trade. New Zealand's supermarket trade is really challenging and
00:23:59
Speaker
there is just no money in it for a brand like
Challenges and Identity in New Zealand Beer Market
00:24:01
Speaker
us. um You've got to have so much more marketing pull through and so much more limited releases and all the things that come you know working with a big box store and we just don't have the resources. So let's just focus locally as as much as we can. And is there a limit of um yeah independent bottle shops and things like that? Are there many of them near you or even in the South Island of New Zealand?
00:24:26
Speaker
pretty much zero. um There's one in is There's a couple that owe us a lot of money. So I'm not really dealing with them anymore. yeah And outside of that, there's a handful. and and But yeah, it's not really something that um you can find. Yeah, there's no cow and cellars equivalent or black arts and sparrows or or those kind of... Yeah, there's a couple. So maybe maybe one or two in Christchurch and then Wellington. It might have a couple and then Auckland a couple as well. but
00:24:57
Speaker
Yeah, not not heaps and you know Christchurch as I said, it's 400,000 people And we're up against in Christchurch. There's castles. There's three boys There's beer Baroness that works out of pomeroy's There's beers by bacon bros. I think is their full name When you say is the post big city, how far is it like by road?
00:25:20
Speaker
four hours yeah yeah so you know so talking or but yeah yeah out to the far west of Victoria from Melbourne kind of thing. so Yeah, yeah. and and And then when we get there, we're competing with all these other brands. um There's a distributor in Christchurch called Punky Brewster, and they distribute McLeod's and 8-Wired and Behemoth. and so And they've got a ah ah really big presence there. Their sales rep's an awesome dude who does a lot of really great work for them as well. so Yeah, to go over as as short jaw, you know, there's a lot of work we'd need to do to kind of establish a presence there. And so for us, we're just not going to we're just not going to focus on it for the moment. Well, we're seeing more, I guess, drilling down on local, local, local over here. Is that something you're seeing with other similar breweries to your size in New Zealand as well?
00:26:07
Speaker
I think so. we it It is hard to know that. um As I said, you know we're so far from everyone that I don't really know what everyone else is up to. We don't we don't have a lot of – it's kind of a jarring thing. and we We'll probably talk about this a bit later, but I don't have a lot of close relationships with many breweries in New Zealand um other than some of the older ones that you know when this whole thing was kicking off.
00:26:29
Speaker
They were spending a lot of time in Melbourne, and and that's when I got to know them. But yeah, I don't really know what everyone else is up to. I think everyone else just seems to be doing what they can to to sell beer and you know whatever it takes, I think at this point.
00:26:43
Speaker
Luke and what about the beers that you're making? You mentioned I know you make New Zealand or South Island and ingredients are a big part of what you do and did you mention before you're using one hop across your core range? Yeah so we we started with one hop um as our base hop so we the the main three beers that were we started with were Pilsner um which is a bit strange in New Zealand because New Zealand Pilsner is quite different to European Pilsner. Ours is very much European in approach and even though we use all New Zealand ingredients, it's made in New Zealand by a New Zealand brewery, we can't say that it's a New Zealand Pilsner. I can't say that it's a Czech Pilsner because it's certainly not. That's probably what the the approach is though. So yeah, we just call it Clear Sky Pils.
00:27:32
Speaker
um I ah kind of want to take styles off our beers. That's probably a whole, I could spend an hour talking about that, so I won't quite go into that just yet. um But yeah, the Pilsner, 4.8%, really familiar to anyone that that has had a an international lager or a classic Pilsner. We picked up a bronze for that in the last beer awards in New Zealand, which I'm really happy with in the and the German category, because we've been working super hard on that beer. um you know I'm not settling for bronze. I want to get that up to a ah trophy. as
00:28:04
Speaker
is my goal, but um yeah to to be sort of you know showing that you're taking the right boxes is what we're pretty chuffed with. I'm especially entering it into a German category with all New Zealand ingredients as well.
00:28:16
Speaker
um So Pilsner Kiwi Dark Lager, that one is our our flagship and we we sell more of that than anything else and they've always made a beer like that in that brewery so we knew that locals would would adopt that one pretty quickly. um The previous owner kept the trademark to miners dark was what it was known as. He tried to sell it to us and we were just like no we'll We'll create our own thing. And I called it Kiwi Dark because I think Dark Lager is a New Zealand style that we do really well and do slightly differently to everyone else. um You know, Monteith Black, Max Black, um there's a few others. You know, they're a little bit lower ABV, there's a little bit lower roast than than I think the German ones.
00:28:57
Speaker
Oh, maybe not. Don't don't look up the BJCP. um But yeah, ours is only 4%. We don't use any roasted barley. As such, we'll use roasted wheat and chocolate malt, and I think a little bit of crystal malt, and the same hop as the Pilsner. And then we've got a hazy pail, which is 4.5%. So all of our core range is under 5%. That one, again, was using the same hop. We're shifting some hops around just due to availability and Yeah, the the the hazy is probably the one that we're we're really working hard to get to where we want it to be. It's not presenting well in pack sometimes. um Some of the hop changes we've had, we've lost some aroma, which we had a really, really awesome pineapple aroma from it. And we've had to to sort of reassess what we're doing with that one. But yeah, those those three beers, pretty simple.
00:29:49
Speaker
On paper, I kind of lifted what stone and wood started with. um You know, Pac-A is a hazy pale at four point whatever percent it is. ah They had a darkish beer and then they had a pretty classic lager in their lineup. And I kind of looked at that and went, well, it worked for them.
00:30:08
Speaker
i Were you expecting the dark to be a big seller? Absolutely. We thought the dark would be getting on tap locally, and and that's that's what's happened. um Most of our taps in town are the dark. That makes up, I think it's 40, over the last six months, it's roughly 45% of our total volume is as dark.
00:30:32
Speaker
um and And that's now, I think 85% of that is in keg. So we're really pushing that as the the local product to have. And wait it's good, most people really like it. um Even if people don't like dark beer, it's it's kind of found it's a little niche there. We have a really diverse mixture of people drinking it which is cool. You'll see there's a group of nurses that come in and and they drink the dark and there's a guy that work does explosives up in the coal mine and he drinks the dark and you know that's a really cool little juxtaposition there that I really love.
00:31:11
Speaker
Yeah, it's been interesting to see if it survives long term, but over the course of this year, a growing interest and I guess greater prevalence from brewers of more traditional beer styles and some darker beers. Boat Rock had released a Northern Red, which isn't even a style earlier in the year, and that's been going gangbusters for them. So they've done a you know Yorkshire Pearl and Yorkshire Dark. and Brown, other people who've been pulling out English style beers as well. and And I mean, maybe there's the the affordability side of things, whatever, but it does seem to be maybe whether it's a you know reaction to all these overly fruity juicy beers for a while um into more sort of simple, I guess, you know, heart hearty pleasures, perhaps. I think what what's happening, it's always bugged me that people breweries would release a lager and I'd call it something really like disparaging. And this was probably
00:32:02
Speaker
up until very recently, you'd see breweries, you know, shitty lager for the dickheads in the taproom kind of thing. And I'd always kind of be confused by that because like be proud of the beer that you made and the people drinking lager in the taproom are paying a lot of bills, you know? And and if you're if you're kind of disparaging the product, you're giving them your, you're not really encouraging them to to engage with you. So, you know, for me,
00:32:32
Speaker
It's some simplicity in marketing. if youre If you're doing simple beers, you're keeping them really simple, and then you're just hammering them that these are the beers that you should drink and you'll find one that you like. ah you know People will, I think, like them. um we yeah And most people, I think a lot of people want to support craft beer or independent beer, and they want to support their local brewery, but we kind of made it tough for them. So my kind of thinking is let's just make it easy for them.
00:33:00
Speaker
Let's, um you know, in the dark beer, beer geeks around New Zealand, um you know, have a fondness for it. It's it's got a reputation as being ah a really great beer. But as I said, the the people off the street are drinking it pretty happily. And, you know, it's it's not trying to be anything else other than a beer that people like. And and I think the classic styles, people like them for a reason. Yeah, yeah. um wellll We'll come and have a chat about, the um I guess, the future of shortjawn and ah the transition from Australia to New new Zealand. um but We'll take a short break now and join you in a little bit.
00:33:41
Speaker
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00:34:54
Speaker
Luke, welcome back. We were just thinking that we missed that single hop you were talking about. And I don't know, is it a top secret hop or? No, no. we We put all of our ingredients on our cans. um It was wokatoo, which I really love. I think but four, four to five alpha acid, New Zealand hop, lots of kind of cool lime, citrusy flavors.
00:35:20
Speaker
We've since switched that due to just a few other issues with supply to Pacifica, ah which is then I think what we lost some of the aroma in our in our pail. So the pail is now going to be rewalker with Waimea and New Zealand Cascade.
00:35:37
Speaker
And how did you pronounce this? that walk walker to How um was that pronounced? woatoo walker hours though it workarto so yeah I think all of the Kiwi hops should come with some sort of button you you can push on the box. You can learn how to say them properly. and that It's phenomenal um how much.
00:35:54
Speaker
multi-language has has kind of been adopted in New Zealand since I last left and people's pronunciation and and lots of day-to-day words are being used. It's really cool. ah So yeah, i yeah our I think far better than it would have been 10, 15 years ago of these. Yeah, that's really good to see and obviously um You are very isolated, but you're not that far from Nelson and some of these famous hot growing regions we sort of look at from a distance in Australia. So yeah um is that part of what drives our ability beers? Yeah. when we and when we
00:36:30
Speaker
start of the brewery was during COVID and supply chain was a big issue or concern. I think Okum and the UK, thetra they were having issues getting Citra during COVID. There was some thing happening there and I thought, let's try and just use stuff that's close to us to avoid that. But also um the way I look at it is if you travel so far to get to us and I give you a mosaic Citra hazy, like what's the point?
00:36:59
Speaker
Uh, you know, you can get that anywhere. Uh, you can, so I want to make beers that kind of represent where we're from and we're not doing full terroir. We're not, you know, doing wild, wild yeast. We're actually, um, using froth tech yeast from Wellington. So it is as the crow flies, uh, you know, a couple of hundred kilometers away that, that, um, our yeast is being cultured up for us. And they've been really awesome to deal with. Uh, yeah, we use two different farms or two different suppliers and Nelson. So we're freestyle hops who have been really awesome to us starting out.
00:37:30
Speaker
And we've started using some hops from Egas Hops, who's kind of a one-man operation. ah Kim's ah a really lovely dude, and he grows incredible re-walkers. So um that's the re-walker we're now using. And Gladfield Malt, just from over in Canterbury there.
00:37:45
Speaker
I think the original Brewery Miners Brewery was one of Gladfield's first customers in 1990. So ah for us, it's really cool to keep that connection going. But also, you know, support local small business, support what's around us. I think for us, they just all make sense. And we kind of extend that even into the taproom. So all of our snacks.
00:38:08
Speaker
and soft drinks and everything are all South Island independent companies, except for one, which is Vegan Pork Crackling, which is a North Island company, but no one's making Vegan Pork Crackling in the South Island yet. so and Well, you mentioned Eggers. the and Hop Nation recently released Eggers, double IPA. It was rather delicious. I think you would try that. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, Eggers is a pretty famous name in the Hop world. People will know one of their founding families of Anz and Hop's.
00:38:38
Speaker
Absolutely. Yeah, and and his um he' he's been out on his own for a while now. um And he's I think Deeds were using some of his hops and some of their kind of big release stuff.
Reflections and Future of Shortjaw Brewery
00:38:51
Speaker
um And I know that One Drop has ah a bit of a personal connection. um And they've used some of his trial hops recently, Lily, in one of their beers. And I dropped Nick at One Drop a note saying asking him how it was. And he said it was was really good. but We went looking for just a little bit just to try on our pilot and we couldn't get any. so we Talking of local local connections with One Drop, what's what's your connection with One Drop and Nick's family? Isn't there something with your brewery as well? Well, we were going to use blueberries from Nick's dad's farm. um But they were in a freezer that was unplugged and not plugged back in. but Your freezer or theirs? It had a Christmas turkey and ah
00:39:35
Speaker
some um farm fresh meat that was you know fed on our grain uh in there as well and yeah it was unplugged and not plugged back in so we never got to use those blueberries and now that farm's too busy and they they can't supply us diabolical week for the people of westport or at least for for us especially yeah it was um christmas week and we discovered it and i had to ah quickly find another check. And I mean, you touched on a bit, Luke, but and you know, you've got these connections in Australia. How's it sort of feel to now be back home in another country where you aren't probably as ingrained in the beer industry as you were over here, where you did know so many people, you'd interviewed so many people and worked with them through the IBA and so many festivals and and all of that.
00:40:24
Speaker
Yeah, it's it's different. It's kind of challenging. I think chair geographically being isolated exacerbates it. I only really know the people that come into the taproom and say hi. um We're probably our own worst enemy. When we leave Westport, the last thing I want to do is go visit breweries. So we never really stop in and see anyone.
00:40:46
Speaker
We're not doing, we've done one festival. all um So we we, you know, we're not really doing that many festivals. So we're we kind of cutting ourselves off as well. But yeah, it is difficult. um You know, you kind of, you know, want to call someone up and borrow a cup of sugar or something sometimes. And just not having that, that you know, immediate interaction. There's another brewery south of us called Woodstock Brewing. um He's kind of a ah ah brew parlor I'd love to work with them. We just haven't really found a chance to do anything together. We're slowly building relationships. Friends of friends have bought a brewery in Timaru called Shiphop Brewing. And they're pouring our beer at the moment. And that's just a small set up. And Two Thumb in Christchurch, we've kind of been part of the events. They've invited us to send over single kegs. So little bits and pieces. I mean, saying that,
00:41:44
Speaker
The connections that I do have, there's Karen at North End, who I've leaned on for a couple of questions ah when we're starting out. um But other than that, yeah it's a lot of the old old heads, I guess, that I know in the industry. And I don't really know a lot of the young younger breweries or newer breweries. So yeah, it's it's challenging. And I've certainly used my Australian connections more than anyone in New Zealand. Brewing's brewing.
00:42:10
Speaker
If you've got a question, you'd be able to find someone in Australia that can answer it. So I kind of lean on that a bit. I mean, I think all the things I learned chatting to brewers over the years have helped. Someone came into the taproom. I can't remember who it was. And they said, although I was reading an article that I wrote about how to start a brewery and beer and brewer mag from 2015 or something. And so that was a whole four-part series I did on how to start a brewery.
00:42:36
Speaker
you know all All the stuff with the IBA, um you know the last two BRUCONs, every ah presentation was something that I looked over, checked, went back and forth with some people on to get them right. um So the amount of knowledge that I've kind of absorbed is probably allweinforming all informing all this stuff. And it's made it a lot easier.
00:42:57
Speaker
It's just kind of putting it all into practice is the challenge. And have have you kept your your toes in a tool with you know writing or and anything in that sort of side of things or has the the you know setting up and building the brewery become all-consuming?
00:43:13
Speaker
I do a regular column in our local paper. we We've got a a weekly ah daily paper here, sorry, Independent Daily, which is really cool. So I do a ah Tuesday column in that, which is just all about beer. And ah that's that's pretty fun, keeps me keeps me active. A little bit with Pursuit of Hoppiness, Michael Donaldson here does a really great job of putting out a bi-monthly publication there. and I don't think I've ever actually met Michael, but we know each other through just, you know, social media. And he's sort of happy for me to submit any time I want to write something. So kind of, yeah, doing a little bit. ah Doing a little bit. Yeah. And what about, are you do you feel like you're across Australia still or do you kind of see posts and kind of go, wait, what's going on here? what What's going on with this brewery? Or why is this place closing? like like Or are you sort of trying to remove yourself from it a bit?
00:44:09
Speaker
i I think I'm as across as anyone possibly could be, I think, at the moment. it's you know There are so many breweries that pop up from time to time. You go, man, I've never heard of them. um and But that was happening before I left Australia anyway. And these days, social media, I use a little bit of social media, but you know group chats and conversation with friends, they're all Australian for the most part. So I'm a little bit up to date. I know what's going on over there. um um I've got my eyes on on all of yours. And is it surprising you or I mean I know breweries are closing in New Zealand as well like um does it feel similar over there to what with some of the conversations we're having over here? Yeah I think so. I think they're quite different markets. On paper you could probably look at them as as similar and you you think they should be just culturally and and culturally and our approach to to things is is pretty similar but
00:45:07
Speaker
yeah they're They're quite different markets. and it's hard to know you know I think it's hard to know what is influencing all the closures at the moment. we can you know Everyone can say it's tax and we can say that it's COVID hangovers. but There's a lot more factors to that when you you pull apart the financials. and um it's I think probably the the challenges are similar. um you know Finding a market, finding a market in a mature market where craft beer isn't as cool as as it once was, and then competing with cocktails and non-elk products and all those things. it's It's probably pretty similar in that sense. Was that the question?
00:45:45
Speaker
ah It's close enough Yeah, I just just yes whether you've seen commonality, you know with what's happening here in the terms. Yeah. Yeah. and Yeah Yeah, I think I mean everyone struggling with with costs of things um Finding a consistent market and and yeah our tax is going up. ah Your tax is going up. Yeah, nothing seems to be going down price-wise Yeah, but there's there's no no one looking to muscle in on the Westport craft beer market that you're aware of. Yeah, there's no no other there are breweries in planning. No, no. And we've got Monteith just down the road, which they don't brew there anymore and they haven't for a while. um I don't even think they own the the brew pub. I think someone else owns that.
00:46:29
Speaker
or manages it at least. So um we kind of play into that, but they've got a lot lot more money. they They're doing a big campaign with their with our local pie shop called West Coast Pies around you know this kind of rugged, ah the stuff I was talking about before, this rugged part of the world and we're a West Coast brand and all those cliches. And so they're spending a lot of money in our market um and and holding up a lot of taps. but It'd be crazy to open up a brewery when someone has that much ah foothold on the market in such a small market. Who would do that? i mean In terms of short-jaw, you're established now. You've been pouring beers for two and a half years. um Where do you see the next stage as being for short-jaw? Would it be to like open ah another venue somewhere else? or Or is it just trying to find a few more taps in places that make sense?
00:47:24
Speaker
I think the finding taps is the big one. There's still, we don't have any taps in Greymouth or Hokotika, which are the other two kind of major centers. Nunn and Karamea, which is just north of us, which is a little community up there. So there is still ground we can make up. um We have looked at a a venue somewhere, a second venue. Our ah venue is really small. It it holds 20 people ah and then maybe another 20 outside if we let them spill out onto the street. That's those three days a year when you've got the warmest temperatures in New Zealand. yeah Summertime, man. It's every day in summertime. um so So we'd love to expand the taproom to accommodate more than that on a Friday
00:48:07
Speaker
from from about 4.30, we're completely full and people just stop coming in. So if we could double that, we' we'd probably make you know a lot ah lot more more on a Friday. We could probably add a bit more food. So we'd we'd love to do that. We're right in the center of town and there's a digital game slash cryptocurrency co-working space next to us. a We're working with them on creating a bit of a shared space as well. There's a coffee cart that's part of that and maybe a food truck. and
00:48:45
Speaker
an Italian lady who makes amazing pasta. So we're trying to work together ah to find this kind of how do we build out and and make it work for all of us. um So we're we're kind of, that those two things are our focus. Then ah a second taproom I think would would work really well, you know.
00:49:02
Speaker
We do, for our taproom, as I said, we or all local products as much as possible, but we also have wine on tap, um which is pretty foreign in this part of the world, ah but some nights I'll sell more rose a than almost anything else. I think last Friday,
00:49:19
Speaker
Rosé was our second highest selling product behind Pilsner. And that's an organic Rosé on tap. So, um you know, we'd love to replicate that somewhere else on the coast as well, maybe down in Hokotika or something. And, you know, a really simple one person bar set up or operated by one person and grab that Friday night trade.
00:49:39
Speaker
I'd love to open something in Melbourne one day. I think I've got a bigger audience in Melbourne than I do here. And you know we've we've talked about this, if we would ever do something in Melbourne, it would be doing the same beers, but with Australian australian ingredients,
00:49:55
Speaker
um you know using all Victorian ingredients to to really focus on on doing that um would be really interesting to me, but the same beers and just tweaking them to the Australian market um would be a really cool project as well. so Yeah, those those are my plans. Make some money first as well. yeah Yeah, but essentially wanting to deal with customers as direct as you can, like no sort of plans to, you know, enter the wholesale market in any great, you know. Yeah, we we and mean we have someone that does supermarket sales for us on commission um on the South Island and that that went really well for a while, but um
00:50:33
Speaker
supermarket trade softened for breweries like us now. So we're open to that. of If people want to sell our beer and can commit to volume, then you'd be crazy to say no. Yeah, especially when it's like that brew house ticking over. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. you need to We need to get that capacity out somewhere. And we're also looking at some similar products or non-beer products, I guess, that will happen over summer as well. So utilizing our tank space and and kind of getting outside the beer market a bit as well.
00:51:04
Speaker
Luca, we'd like to finish with the final three questions where we try to capture the past, present and future of a brewery. So in terms of the past, what do you wish you knew when you started Shortjaw? Or what mistakes did you make? We we needed a ah ah more fully formed sales plan.
00:51:25
Speaker
was that was that big one. The previous brewery had taps in every pub and town, and there's there's more than you'd expect in a town like this, and quite a couple of taps and a few pubs. And when they closed, they lost all those taps. We kind of assumed we would get them back and have a really nice starting point of 10 or 12 taps, and that didn't happen. um And without a really solid sales strategy behind or around that, we didn't really We couldn't really catch that up again until recently, so yeah. Are you talking five, six pubs? like in a We used to be famous for pubs. and We used to have like 16 or something when I left. finding and Yeah, now its it's dropped significantly and we've lost a couple since I've been back. ah
00:52:09
Speaker
I would have got one, two, six, maybe seven. Yeah. yeah out and and And is there availability within each of those pubs for a local brewery like yourself or or is there some that you're going to be...
00:52:23
Speaker
So we've caught we've got a tap back in most of them now, um two in one of them. We really want to so get two or three in each pub. you know Contracts are kind of holding us back on that. But yeah, we're working on it. and And there's lots of little pubs that are dotted it along the coast that we're you know really focusing on those as well.
00:52:43
Speaker
Yeah, and so I was just going back to your saying, you said 30,000 across the whole stretch of the West Coast. So how many of those are in Westport and you were talking about this this other town where you might like another tap room. What's the size we're talking there? Westport's I think somewhere between four and six thousand depending on where you yeah cut off. I think technically we don't live in Westport per the census. We're just 10 minutes, 15 minutes out of town. um So between four and six thousand then Greymouth has can't remember how many big enough for a kfc and a mcdonald's so
00:53:15
Speaker
Yeah, it's pretty fancy. You know, almost like Melbourne, you know, sort of Australian city suburb size. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so Greymouth is an hour, just over an hour south of us. And then Hokotika, which is south of us again, south of them again, has think about the same as Westport, maybe a bit smaller, but that's the gateway to the glaciers. can't remember how many. So they have a lot Big enough of tourism for a KFC and a McDonald's. going through there.
00:53:42
Speaker
So yeah, there's the tourism aspect is is probably the the big one for us as well, was picking up tourists as much as possible. And that's why we're where we'd love to put something in Hokotika where you know we we can get pick up them on the way through. Yeah. And Luke, if ah someone was starting a brewery today, what do you think they should know, whether it's in Australia or New Zealand? ah Keep it simple, I think.
00:54:08
Speaker
don't you know Most customers just want to come in and support your product. ah We sell more Pelsner over the bar than anything else and that keeps the lights on some weeks. so you know You don't have to keep pace with with the people doing the crazy beers. Do do what's right for you and and keep it simple. If doing crazy beers is right for you, then do that. but i wouldn't be I wouldn't be entering that market now.
00:54:33
Speaker
And I guess maybe we make this a bit of a a double header. We talked about you know your plans for the future of short jaw. But if you had sort of one wish for the future, maybe we'd almost say the future of beer in Australia, but maybe it's for craft beer generally. What's the one thing you would love to see um that would you know help or secure or brighten the future for craft beer? I i think more focus on what New Zealand and Australian beer or wherever you're from, what that means to your part of the world.
00:55:05
Speaker
you know i It's kind of always confusing to me where people were doing ah we're doing a Belgian something and we're doing ah an American IPA. And I want to kind of know what makes sense in your part of the world. And and you know yeah kind of we kind of need to do that to tap into this global scene, but I kind of want to see people working out.
00:55:25
Speaker
Their own styles and you know Pacific Isle is a good example in Australia It's such a unique style to to that part of the world and that's really exciting um You know Kiwi dark for us that 4% dark lager we we knew had a bit of a cache a or ah a history in this part of the world so um You know look at Cooper's They've carved out their own niche of doing something that's just there's and you know I'd love to see more breweries kind of trying to work out what their own thing is and and establish themselves that way because you know We all travel to Belgium and we all travel to towns in Germany and go, wow, they've got this such a cool culture. And then we pick it up and put it where we're from. And it's like.
00:56:04
Speaker
What's the point of that? Create your own thing. Work on creating your own thing. And it takes time. It takes centuries. ah But you know that's that's what I want to see happening. ah Yeah. and Just a little aside, anecdote for you. I think you'll enjoy. I did an event with them Steve Finney and willowwin Will Irving from Found over in WA recently. And as part part of that, I presented two beers blind that one chosen by each of them that represented someone from their past. And so Will chose Cooper Sparkling and all the attendees were either, you know, very engaged beer consumers, plus a bunch of people from the industry who'd come over from the the conference or from the judging that day. And we asked for a show of hands around in the room. Can you guess what beer it is? And everyone was convinced it was a Saison or a farmhouse sale. no Nobody, when we told him it was Cooper Sparkling, everyone was just like, wow, OK, yeah, it really is Cooper Sparkling. You know, that was pretty fascinating.
00:56:57
Speaker
Well, there's a yeast that FrothTech do now called Wilding, and that's a New Zealand cultured up, you know, estuary kind of Belgian yeast that's, you know, found in New Zealand and unique to them. and part of me has been tempted to just switch all of our beers over to that yeast, including our Pilsner. And, ah you know, Coopers is a good example of that. Deranker in Belgium, they do a really bitter IPA with this fragrant Belgian yeast, which defies style. And it's it's one of my favorite beers. And I'm like, well,
00:57:34
Speaker
Let's just go all in and just, you know, blow up our range and just do whatever, do something that makes sense for us. We'll keep thinking about that one. We've got some pilots. Maybe that's the medium term. Yeah, yeah. We might have a sub-range. Yeah, yeah. But yeah, to me, that's where culture is interesting. You know, I want to travel to Belgium for Belgian bears. I don't want to travel to somewhere in New Zealand for them.
00:57:56
Speaker
Although I would visit my friends at Kraftwerk because they make great beer. But you know, it's finding our own culture, I think, is where we need to be looking and thinking about for for the long term. Yeah. No, that's great. and Appreciate you making the time for a chat. Hopefully we'll see you over this way soon um and look forward to the opening of Shortjaw Melbourne. yeah If anyone's got a couple of million dollars they want to throw at me, just info at shortjaw.co.nz.
00:58:24
Speaker
Thanks so much, Luke. Cheers. Thanks, team.
00:58:34
Speaker
The Crafty Pint Podcast is produced and edited by Matt Hoffman. You can get all your beer related news and reviews on the Crafty Pint website craftypint.com and can stay up to date on future podcast episodes via our socials.
00:58:48
Speaker
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