Tuatara on Show – Brewery Tours and the Online Store

At Tuatara, we are very proud of the award-winning beers we brew. We are also happy to show people where they are all made.

Groups are welcome for brewery tours and tastings but be sure to call or email well in advance to organise them. There may also be a small charge to cover costs.

Notice is required because we have to ensure our busy brewers are available to show you around and talk through the processes and the products. Also, we need to put the sign out at the front gate or chances are you will drive right by us. The Tuatara Brewery, like its reptilian namesake, is well-camouflaged to the untrained eye.

On Saturday 20 March we were delighted to host a big, enthusiastic group from the Society of Beer Advocates SOBA. SOBA supports "beer for all right reasons" and many SOBA members are long-time friends of the brewery. Tell you what, those guys know their beer and asked some pretty tough technical questions.

We also had a television camera crew and celebrity chef in the other day but details of that particular project will have to wait for now. Suffice to say that Tuatara will hopefully be starring on the small screen both here and in Australia later in the year. All the details will be posted here just as soon as they are confirmed.

Even if you can’t make it to the brewery in picturesque Waikanae, you can still show the world that you have excellent taste in beer. The Tuatara on-line store is now open and selling stylish t-shirts, classy glasses and fully-functional bottle openers. Tuatara is the new black.

Cheers from the team at Tuatara.

Dion our Brewer is Stepping Down

As announced in last week’s post, Dion Page has finished up at Tuatara Breweries in order to spend some more time with his young family. Before we let him go, we asked a few questions about his time at Tuatara and his plans for the future.

Dion, how long did you work at Tuatara?

Just over two years. I never really had a job title, brewer I think!

What was your brewing experience before Tuatara?

I trained at a 1,150 litre brewpub called The Franciscan Well in Cork, Ireland. It was quite similar in size to the old Tuatara brewery. The pub only served the five beers we made, two wines (nasty red and nasty wine in single serve bottles), a few bottles of imported beer and maybe six optics behind the bar. People only really ordered pints. It was hardcore - no singing, no dancing, no straws, no shots, no cocktails.

What was your job before you started brewing?

I was the editor in a legal publishing company. It was five years ago but it seems like a lifetime. I feel so disassociated with it now.

What was the best thing you learned during your time at Tuatara?

Basically, I learned how to be really hands on and use what is available. It is all about working with what you have got. The Franciscan Well was bought as a package so everything was standard sizes and fitted properly. Tuatara has a bit of a mish-mash of tanks and pipes of varying sizes. It pushed me to make good beer under limited circumstances. To make good beer you need a good brewer, good ingredients and good plant. I remember there was one piece of equipment that it took me fifty brews before I finally realised the best way to use it. Carl’s very hands on – if it doesn’t work, he will fix it or find a replacement from the ‘side shed’.

In your opinion, what is the worst job in the brewery?

Well, everyone hates kegs cleaning because it is really monotonous. I always took the approach that you had to do it properly. I don’t want to do all the work brewing in the preceding six weeks only to throw it all away by scrimping it on keg cleaning time. The worst part for me was driving to the brewery – it took me two hours and twenty minutes a day.

Which was you favourite Tuatara beer to make?

Tuatara Hefe because I didn’t have to filter it! The irony is that I don’t drink wheat beers at all. I’m not a fan of cloves, I would never eat them and that’s all I get off a hefe. Most people don’t realise there is a lot to filtration. It’s quite an involved process. I’m confident that I haven’t let a cloudy one out - apart from the Hefe of course!

Which is your favourite Tuatara beer to drink?

Tuatara IPA – definitely.

What are you up to now?

Well, the plan was to sit on my arse and watch Days of Our Lives! That plan has been scuppered. I’m looking after the family, dropping people off, cooking the dinner, training for a marathon and doing the odd bit of work. I’m a very busy unemployed guy!

Will you back in brewing?

Oh yeah - I’m just taking a break!

We wish Dion all the best.

Cheers from the team at Tuatara

A New Beginning for the ‘It’s All About the Beer’ Blog

It is a new era at the Official Tuatara Blog. Between August 2009 and February 2010, we managed just two blog posts. Granted, they were both excellent pieces introducing Tuatara Helles, the first new beer to join our range in three years, and a behind-the-scenes look at the founding of Tuatara way back in 2000/2001.

The intention now is to provide shorter updates every week about a Tuatara-related topic. It could be new faces in the team, shiny equipment at the brewery, some fresh ingredients, new beers (because there are some on the way), events, tours, special offers, tastings, new outlets, what others are saying about us or just general Tuatara gossip.

Wellington has enjoyed a hectic and surprisingly sunny start to the year with The Sevens, Fringe Festival, Round the Bays, Phoenix, AC/DC, International Arts Festival and the occasional tsunami alert.

That fun certainly continued last weekend at the New Zealand Beer Festival held in Westpac Stadium on Saturday. The Auckland festival was a great event earlier in the year but Wellingtonians turned out in force on a beautiful sunny day.

There were some long queues at our stall but we would expect nothing less from our home town crowd. The festival looks set to become an annual tradition and it was a huge night back at the Malthouse afterwards too.

This past week there was some big news at the brewery. We had to bid a fond farewell to brewer Dion Page after several years of sterling service at Tuatara. He is taking a well-earned break to spend more time with his young family. We wish him the very best and will be getting his thoughts about his time at Tuatara for a future post.

To replace Dion, Tuatara is pleased to announce that multi award-winning home brewer Michael Neilson will be joining the team. We are tremendously excited about having Michael on board and he will also be profiled on the blog shortly.

We would love to hear what you think about the ‘new’ blog so leave a comment below or drop us an email at the office.

Cheers from the team at Tuatara.

What the Helles this?

Welcome to the family, Helles. Finally, a sixth food group has been added to the staple diet of the team at Tuatara. After five big, bold beers, we thought it time to take a look at the lighter side of life.

While many of us love our hops, there are moments when we all need to sit back and reflect on the pleasures proffered by a full-malt-bodied beer; a contemplation that would be incomplete without a considered, yet not overpowering, measure of noble hops.

Described as the "liquid bread" of the Bavarians, this fine beer style was consumed as early as 9.00am in Germany. A likely contributor to their loss of the war, this practice would have easily lent weight to the six o’clock closing laws in force in New Zealand at the time.

Pronounced "hell-es" or "hell-uhz", the style was born in Munich during the 1890s. The most delicate of lagers, it balances the sweet maltiness of the barley with an elegant hop aftertaste. Take the brewer’s word for it as "a beer for when you’re up for a session… or when you’ve had enough hops for the day".

Dangerously smooth, the difficult labour of this brew included what can only be described as "the mother of all boil-overs". A strong Reikorangi westerly propelled a geyser of steam and foam from the kettle manway, forcing the brewer to jump from his ladder and relegating the late hop addition to the brewery floor.

A 60-second mad dash to reweigh the hops saved the day, turning the 4-minute addition into a 3-minute one. We can live with that…

We hope you enjoy our new beer as much as we do. Here’s a list of places you can get it. Like all great beer recipes, it is not a revolution but an evolution. Minute tweaks have been made to the original formulation, resulting in even smoother brews each time.

Prost!

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!