5 minute read
Plenty 10 2018 Feb
MANY A BEER COMPANY has played the Kiwi-As card, from the frankly painful attempts of large, often foreign-owned corporations painting themselves as the real deal (usually while simultaneously dumbing-down the national character), to the equally annoying and all-too-clever attempts of hipsters the nation over, who throw on a Swandri, try to get down with the common man (never the, er, common woman), and then paint it ironic.
Into this swirl of story-boarded histories and implausibly perfect campaign faces, there comes the Lakeman, bringing a story of beer, DIY brewing ingenuity, pride, um, farming, ambition and much more in the form of a large hairy creature that haunts Lake Taupō. This is a story like no other, and you Auckland ad men can eat ya heart out, because this is Lakeman Brewery, the most Kiwi-As beermaking adventure ever.
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Rory Donovan (Head Brewer) Elissa Cooper, James Cooper and Jimmy Dale
Credit Jorge Perrito
Rory Donovan – Cleaning the Mash Tun after digging out the mash
Credit Jorge Perrito
And in the most Kiwi of scenarios Plenty chases the founders of Lakeman down the coast where they are holidaying, camping out of phone and internet range on a long weekend of sun, sand and family. When they finally do return to their Taupō base and rejoin the world, our call manages to interrupt brewery founder James Cooper at work. “I’ve just been out dagging sheep,” he says apologetically, “and I’ve got to clean up and run a couple of kegs to the brewery. Can I call you back in five?” How many other master brewers can count dagging in their skill set. Far too few we suspect.
James was – and still is truth be told – a farmer when someone handed him a Coopers beer because he shared the surname. He was struck by how cool it would be to have a beer bearing your name, but also a bit peeved that some Aussies had taken his. After a bit of brainstorming with partner Elissa they decided to launch a beer of their own, and as they were keen on their Big Lake location and on being a bit different from the myriad of other craft brewers about, they came up with Lakeman. Complete with large hairy creature.
To say that they took a pretty Kiwi approach to the idea is putting it mildly. “We had no training, no experience, nothing,” James says. “We did a lot of Googling, we did a lot of asking around and picking the brains of people. And when you start something like this it’s a Kiwi thing for people to just help out.”
Something that came through from all of those people who helped out was the importance of keeping it local: Kiwi water, Kiwi malt and Kiwi hops, and that is probably the main reason that Lakeman’s brews are proving so popular. These are robust, no nonsense beers – Taupō Thunder, Hairy Hop, Wild Man – pale ales short on flowery adjectives and big on taste.
“The guiding principle was that we wanted our beers to taste like Kiwi beers,” says James. “So we never considered anything except Kiw i ingredients, from the hops to the water.” And the latter, we should point out, comes from a bore on the Cooper farm. Next to the brewery. But don’t worry, it’s a deep bore.
After five years in serious production, Lakeman is now a serious contender. But James is quick to admit that the craft beer industry is changing in New Zealand. “There are 200 craft brewers out there,” he notes, “and that is a lot. Can the market support that many? I don’t know. There are going to be some interesting times ahead for the industry, and I think there will be a few sharp corners, but I think it will all come down to the quality of your brew – Kiwis know their beer, let’s face it, you can’t fool them – and I guess also how innovative you can be about capturing the market.”
Outside of tired and monotonous billboard campaigns, how do you capture the market? How about sticking one of your staff in an extremely hot Lakeman suit for events – James admits its whoever draws the short straw on the day that get’s that one – and running events like their recent inaugural pie eating competition.
In what must be another finalist for the “Best Idea Ever”, Lakeman organised a ten-minute challenge for who could literally eat all the pies. A hardy crew of carnivores and wannabes, seasoned professionals and, um, a Welshman wandering past, fronted up on the day and the grand prize in the event went to the Welshman with a very credible and not-recommended-by-the-NZ-HeartFoundation 12.5 mince and cheese pastry wonders in ten minutes. All conducted at a craft bar; it may have been won by a Welshman, but it still makes you proud to be a Kiwi.
Lakeman are currently working on solidifying their Kiwi distribution network – and you can help them with that by asking for it by name at your local supplier – but they also have big things on the horizon like a tasting room. Oh, and the pie eating competition is going to be an annual event, so get in training people –we need to wrestle this back from Wales.
At least we can rest assured that no one is ever going to wrestle the Lakeman out of its roots.
