Tuatara: The Beginning

Many of you will now know Tuatara, and many will have tried all of our range of beers. But you may not know how we began.

The brewery started in December 2000 after the three instigators got together. Carl Vasta our brewer previously had brewed for Parrot and Jigger, and then tried his hand at Polar lager. It was ahead of its time in terms of it’s flavour and ultimately he sold the brew plant. Carl however was soon itching to get involved in another brewing venture. Fraser McInnes owned Bar Bodega, a well known music venue and a strong supporter of good beer. He couldn’t understand why anyone drank anything but good beer and told everybody who would listen. Sean Murrie owned The Malthouse which had more natural beers on tap than any other bar in Australasia, but didn’t have one of their own. So the three heads got together. Carl knew a fair bit about brewing, and Fraser and Sean knew their customers loved good boutique beer made as it should be. The result hatched as the best of schemes do, over a few beers, was the birth of Tuatara brand, and Wellington had its very own boutique brewery. Tuatara didn’t want to just produce any beer though. We decided to stay true to the age old brewing laws of Rheinheisgebot (German purity law), which states a beer can only use water, malt, hops and yeast in the brewing process. No chemicals for head retention, no flavour enhancers, or replacing malt with molasses (much cheaper and quicker process, but ultimately much less flavour)Anything else to mention???

Bodega and Malthouse sold the beer to their customers, and used their feedback to tell Carl precisely what they thought of his brews. These comments were used to further hone the beer, and it kept getting better and better. The brewery carried on like this for a few years just making enough beer to keep Carl Sean and Fraser’s friends happy, and we were stoked to be doing that. Then we started getting requests from other bars. And the bars that seemed to be asking were all the more onto it places. Cuba St bars like Havana, Fidels, Good Luck were onto it quickly and Tuatara became their customers beer of choice. Regional Wines and Spirits did a great job telling the better bars in Wellington about this new beer available, and our sales got bigger and bigger. Some celebs decided they liked it and the ball started rolling ever faster. We had been getting along fine with a 1000 Litre brewery, but suddenly we were getting asked for more beer than we could make. So a year ago we started on a plant upgrade, which culminated with having a 3800 Litre brewery (same size as Macs) completed just in time for Brew NZ held in August last year. The same month we completed the brewery we happened to win three golds, two best in class, and overall best brewery in New Zealand. And then all Hell broke loose. Not sure if was the awards, or just that people were constantly introducing our beer to their mates, but the end was result was that even with our brewery being four times the size, we still couldn’t keep up. This time it wasn’t the size of the mash tun, but the fermentation tanks and conditioning tanks were way too small. And now we were selling more in bottles than in kegs, a reverse of all the years to that point, which meant our bottling plant, which is a grand old lady, needed a lot of tweaking and gentle coersion to once again supply a high output of bottled beer. Luckily Carl our brewer is also a very capable engineer, and he has sorted it all so we can make even more beer. Now we are exporting and selling Tuatara all around the country.

That’s how it started, we don’t know how it will end up, but it’s a journey that we are happy to be a part of. Right now we’ll just keep making the best beer we can, and hope that in the process we will reach those beer drinkers who have yet to discover boutique beer, to make the leap of faith away from the brands that gain sales by spending huge advertising budgets . We are not into selling beer that way and just hope our mates and their mates will keep introducing Tuatara to everyone who is yet to try it.

And remember, somewhere in the world it’s 5 O’clock!