Raglan boutique brewers Workshop Brewing Company are making a big impact with their small batch craft beers.
Taking out Champion Micro Brewery and picking up two golds, two silvers and one bronze at the recent NZ Beer Awards is an unexpected accolade for co-founders Bruno David, Matt Williams and Jake Gibbs.
They only entered the awards hoping to gain some feedback and, after only four years into their brewing journey, they gained confirmation from world class judges that they are hitting the mark.
“To submit five of our core range beers, one, the chocolate stout, which we only brewed once. And to get medals for all of those five beers was actually a bit mind blowing, because I was really just trying to look for feedback,” Bruno says.
Winning medals for every beer – golds for their Expeh! and Wakey Jakey, silvers for Pete’s Pilsner and Chocalot, and a bronze for the pale ale Raglan Pale Ale – put them in the running for micro brewery.
“Because we medalled across all of them, and we had two golds, we won the micro category, which is all breweries in New Zealand up to 50,000 litres. So yeah, I’m absolutely stoked to win that award, and it’s really unexpected. We actually had a few beers after that one,” he laughs.
The wins are testament to the time, effort and finesse that goes into a Workshop brew.
Brewmaster Bruno is passionate about enhancing the flavour profiles of their core range of beers, as well as developing new one-off brews using seasonal produce from around Whāingaroa.
“We did a grapefruit IPA, with grapefruit of Pete’s tree. We’ve done an orange and guava sour with guavas from Pete’s place and oranges from mine. Just little cool things like that.”
They’re even producing non-alcoholic beverages, like kombuchas and sodas, all with local fruits growing mostly in Bruno’s garden.
A freshwater scientist turned brewmaster, Bruno applies a lot of core sustainability principles to brewing.
Water used to cool the beer is reused for washing and cleaning.
They’ve designed their own carbon dioxide recovery systems to capture CO2 released during fermentation and reuse it to carbonate the brews.
Spent grain and post-mashing becomes cattle feed for Dreamview Farm & Creamery and used to make sourdough at Raglan Artisan Bread.
“It’s really nice to involve the community. I take a sack of grain to Corinna and she gives me a loaf of bread.”
The off-licence brewery also minimises waste by letting people bring their own bottles to get beer fresh off the taps.
Although Workshop has only been open since 2019, the dream of opening a brewery in Raglan goes back close to 10 years when Matt and Jake dreamed up the idea while sipping beers at a Tofino brew bar in Canada.
Matt set about making the dream come true when he did an apprenticeship at Skinners, a large commercial brewer in the UK.
Back home in New Zealand and a chance conversation at a party introduced Bruno into the Workshop mix.
They started out using a small customised brewery pilot kit, which was capable of producing up to 100 litres of beer, and that’s where Bruno began experimenting with different styles of beer, along with different hops, yeast, barley and water.
Bruno says the quality of Raglan’s town water is ideal for making beer, “once we filter out the chlorine that the council puts in it, we get it back to its natural state. Essentially our beers are made with pure volcanic spring water which has a unique and favourable mineral profile for brewing”.
Other than the purchase of three specialised 2000 litre fermenters, the rest of the brewery equipment has been repurposed – a mill from a Cambridge farm to crush barley, dairy vats as brew kettles, the hot liquor tank was recovered from a farm gully and an old sink from Xtreme Zero Waste is now keg washer/bottling bench.
Much of this ingenuity is down to Matt’s dad Pete who runs Raglan Engineering and is known around town as a fixit man.
“We’ve built everything next door (at Raglan Engineering). It took us five years to piece all of the kit together.”
Bruno says it would have been cheaper to buy a turnkey brewery from China.
“The ethos that we’ve always had is around utilising existing materials that cost you labour and cost you time, but it has a story.”
There’s a sense of serendipity that the brewery is housed in the building on Park Drive. Back in the day, it was used to store the grain destined for Waikato Breweries back when goods came by ship over the Raglan bar.
“It’s kind of funny – the grain still comes here now by a different route, but it doesn’t leave it gets converted to beer here,” Bruno laughs.
While they may be riding high after their win at the beer awards, there are no plans for expansion.
But staying true to their small batch roots and sustainability ethos is not without its costs.
The excise tax all alcohol producers pay is the same regardless of the volumes produced, added to this is a scale based on the alcohol content.
“The issue is excise tax is generally a targeted tax to deal with alcohol-related harm and that’s not what craft beer is really all about. That’s probably the RTD lower value type of drink. Money should be directed towards managing people that have alcohol problems, but people aren’t buying craft beer at 14 bucks a litre to go on benders,” he says.
Australia, the UK and America have excise taxes scaled by volume, Bruno says, and the boutique distilling industries there are flourishing.
And, he adds, the craft beer movement has made a positive impact on the hops industry in New Zealand, with new farms emerging around the country, generating jobs and increasing diversity of hops to keep up with the brewers’ demands for unique flavours.
“If the craft beer industry goes down, the big guys will end up buying small craft brewers as they’ve done before. Because the only way for a small businesses to stay viable is to create more volume to try and get those small margins. It doesn’t make a lot of logical sense to me and it takes away from that creative spirit that small producers want to have.”
NZ Beer Awards Waikato winners
CHAMPION MICRO NEW ZEALAND BREWERY
Workshop Brewing
WHEAT & OTHER GRAIN
Good George Hefe Mulligan -Trophy Winner
INTERNATIONAL LAGER
Good George Pilsner – Silver
NEW ZEALAND STYLES
Good George Lager – Silver
Workshop Brewing Pete’s Pilsner – Silver
INTERNATIONAL PALE ALE
Good George Haymaker IPA – Gold
Workshop Brewing Xpeh! – Gold
Good George APA – Bronze
Workshop Brewing Raglan Pale Ale – Bronze
INDIA PALE ALE
Workshop Brewing Wakey Jakey – Gold
JUICY / HAZY
Good George Fog City – Gold
Good George Deckchair – Silver
Good George Haze of Glory – Silver
SPECIALITY & EXPERIMENTAL
Good George Cherry Cola Sour – Bronze
STOUT & PORTER
Workshop Brewing Chocalot – Silver
NO & REDUCED ALCOHOL
Good George Virtual Reality – Silver
