When asked "Are you the brewer?" the easy answer is "We both are." Easy because it's true — we create and make beer together — and easy because it shuts down the casual sexism. But we stumble to answer because we don't consider ourselves brewers. We make beer and we see ourselves as beer makers. For like wine makers, we aim to bring out the best of our ingredients, from selecting the malt, hops, and yeast to carbonating and conditioning the fermented beer. And yes, doing it well requires brewing knowhow but for us the process is merely a means to our end: good beer. We think this is best foun ..read more

They say ripples are made by those reckless enough to jump into the ocean, and having never brewed before we came to Dunedin, we can relate to that. But more and more, we've come to think ripples are made by those reckless enough to swim outside the flags. We see it when people venture up the laneway and we hear it when they strike up conversation for the first time. It's what we hoped for, a place you can chat without shouting and meet new people at just the friendly wag of a dog tail. WB Yeats may've romanticised these moments of connection when he said "There are no strangers here, only fri ..read more

When we looked forward to 2023 we didn't anticipate the spiralling cost of living, let alone brewing. But if we ended 2022 much happier with our beer we enter 2024 happy — no, HAPPY! — with our brewing process. It means we can now focus on our recipes and the fine tuning that, with your feedback, goes into making good beer. And with the latest batch of our year-round recipes, Honey Pils and Blond IPA, we feel we've nailed it. We can still, with money, make improvements to our equipment but after 2 hard years — covid rollercoaster + cost-of-living yo-yo — its cheering we're getting good. Enjoy ..read more

It's hard to believe we're coming up to 2 years of 'bigger and better.' Hard because it's gone incredibly quickly and incredibly slowly. And hard because after 2 years we're still scraping by. But it's been personally rewarding, too. When every step is a scramble, it drives you to draw on all of your capacity. And when you have no money, it forces you to be creative. With just the 2 of us it's easier to figure a path and make decisions on the run, but also, to lean on each other when things don't go to plan. We simply wouldn't have got this far without each other. We've still got lots of idea ..read more

We use local ingredients to make seasonal beer. Sometimes they are 'true' seasonals (eg. late summer Plum Brown) but somethimes we simply decide a season that suits (eg. Oatmeal Stout in winter). That's because we want our beer to evoke a time and place. We're not aiming for sameness. If you enjoyed our Petite Saison last year we want you enjoy the next one, even if the malted barley and hops from this year's harvest are slightly different. This variation is what makes our beer so fun to make (and hopefully to drink). And the risk it can go wrong — when making a beer for Wild Dunedin, for exam ..read more

Of all the 'bigger and better' things we looked forward to manufacturing topped our list. But if there's a hard way to do things we'll find it, and even at bigger scale we can't stop making. That's because we want our beer to celebrate our place. When we brew our Cherry Sour, for example, you'll enjoy a beer with lapin cherries from Sarita Orchard, Cromwell (thanks Matthew!). And while it takes time and effort to, say, pit 25 kg of cherries or pick 4.5 kg of elder flowers, we find it hugely satisfying when it adds a subtle distinction to our beer. It's a subtlety you don't get from off-the-sh ..read more

When we signed up for 'bigger and better' we imagined becoming a third place for people to meet, gather, and linger. We didn't foresee an empty neighbourhood, hollowed out by isolation and WFH. So we're glad to have 2022 behind us. It's been a hard year — harder than our lockdown disrupted launch in 2021 — but we're hopeful that 2023 will be better. We're now much happier with our beer and if we look back, can see just how much we've improved these past 12 months. We still face financial stress — material price rises, interest rate hikes, compliance cost increases — but it's hugely motivating ..read more

We started Steamer Basin with a 50L brewkit, figuring we could learn fast brewing 2-3 times a week. We soon learnt that we barely knew anything, but with weekly feedback from the farmers market, built up a range of 40 beers. Coming here, we figured we'd spend all our time 'scaling up' these beers before attempting anything new. Instead, we've so far brewed 4 new for every 6 old … and we're about to brew another 2 new. Why so many? In a word, fun! For starters, we can now make cold fermenting lagers. We've made 3 so far, using 3 different yeasts, and we've got another planned, with aim of selec ..read more

Like Belgian brewers, we don't make beer to 'fit' any particular style. But like cooking, we look to the classics for inspiration. Sometimes that starts with an ingredient, grown or gathered within 100 miles of here, but is often inspired by a description. Like our Extra Stout, based on an 1883 Guinness recipe with just 3 malts, or our Old Medlar, using a fruit once popular in medieval banquets (and as wordplay for writers like Chaucer and Shakespeare, since medlars can only be jellied after ‘bletting,’ or rotting). Brewing these beers is as fun as drinking them because they allow — or even e ..read more

Like other South Island brewers, we're lucky to have great malt and hops, grown by great people, right on our doorstep. We use NZ Hops from Nelson and Gladfield Malt from Canterbury in all our beer because we want to celebrate our place. But also, we want to support our local economy and environment. That support is really important right now, as local producers are bearing the brunt of global price hikes. Doug Michael, Gladfield, explains: As you are aware, there's a massive increase in grain prices right across the world. At the moment local wheat prices for delivery next year are trading ..read more