Rebecca Blithe meets brewmaster turned inventer Ian Williams, maker of the world's first home brewery.
Following Ian Williams' cue, I lift the small cold glass from my tasting tray on the oversized wooden table. Failing to mimic his next move of a series of small, considered sips, I take a gluttonous, uneducated gulp. "That's the Bohemian Pilsner," he says, unfurling the Galbraith's Alehouse "Tasting Notes".
In our dimly lit corner, photos of happy brewers of days gone by line the tall walls above us. We continue on to the next three beers. Ian asks me not to name the third as he believes it's a bit cloudy, not filtered right.
The Meadowbank resident should know. He's a former apprentice brewer with DB and now a brewmaster of international standing, the man behind the success of Tiger Beer and inventor of The WilliamsWarn Personal Brewery. I'm not about to argue with him. Later, I decide the No 3 beer has the faint aroma of cat's pee.
But, back to the man in the old, wooden walled bar. "I was on the Carlsberg taste panel," says Ian. "Every day, if I wasn't travelling, I'd be tasting. You'd go to lunch really happy."
For a guy who knows pretty much everything there is to know about beer, and who's responsible for improving the practices and quality of beer brewing the world over, it's his latest venture that stands to make him something more than a local legend.
In true Kiwi entrepreneurial style, Ian's spent the past six years in his garage - aided by an old schoolmate, Anders Warn, an engineer with a first-class honours degree in food technology - all in the name of perfecting homebrew. That phrase may seem oxymoronic to the thousands of Kiwi blokes who've tried the over-involved, underwhelming to downright putrid process of homebrewing.
It started with an off-the-cuff comment by an uncle at a Christmas party: "The guy who could solve the problems with homebrewing would be a millionaire."
Ian has now invented what could be the solution to the cloudy, bitter concoctions cooked up in backyard sheds with such high hopes.
"When I saw there was a gap, I cashed up, came home [from Denmark] and started getting into it," he says, taking another sip of the flat, dark Porter, as two men in suits enter the quiet alehouse.
He offers impressive figures on our fascination with beer and attempts at brewing our own.
"Three per cent of all liquid drunk on the planet is beer. One in three men have tried homebrew. I made it at uni," he admits. "I can remember being at this party and we're all telling each other it's really good. We were trying to convince ourselves," he says grimacing at the memory.
Back in Denmark, Ian's first step in conquering homebrew was to convert his one-year-old son's bedroom into a brewery.
When I ask what the toll has been on his family - wife Linda, two sons and an eight-month-old daughter - he laughs. "Oh they're alright," he pauses, "I've suffered greatly. I've been reading books on self-help, self-belief. All that 'keep going, don't give up' stuff."
With the Williams family providing most of the initial capital for the project, Ian and Anders eventually built their first prototype, which isn't around anymore.
"We initially used a water filter and it looked like a stainless steel rocket ship. Anders blew up the first one. I warned him," he says, painting a colourful picture of Anders exiting the bombsite in his bathroom, smattered in yeast. "He's that inventor kind of guy. He comes out of the bathroom, his wife looks at him and he goes, 'I know, I know'. But it forces you to solve things."
The second prototype, for which a patent was acquired, was taken to the 2007 Big Boys Toys expo in Auckland. "I was really sweating, I got it eight days before Big Boys Toys. I had these posters saying I could make beer in seven days. I'd never made it in this machine before," he says, glancing at the pile up of kegs in a room on the other side of the entrance.
The response on the day left Ian sufficiently stoked. Perhaps that's an understatement. "It was the best weekend of my life," he says, arms flailing in jubilation. "We were using it as market research. I had 134 guys taking out their credit cards wanting to buy one."
Four years on, four investors later and all Ian's own money spent, the WilliamsWarn, which he calls an appliance and likens to a home espresso machine, is finally on the market.
At an admittedly pricey $6500 per unit, he's already sold 23. One to an English guy in Whangarei to whom Ian personally delivered the machine. "The response has been phenomenal. We've had over 100 orders from overseas."
The guys from independent brewery, Epic, have also had a go with the WilliamsWarn and the result, according to Ian, was outstanding. "It was clear as hell and tasted great."
Asked if he would do it all again, he hesitates, sighs, as a spot near our table is taken up by a man hurriedly sipping beer while easing into a seat. "It's been harrowing, but, you know, the 42 Below guys didn't have it easy. Charlies, they were really struggling. So I'm not the only one. If we can be synonymous with personal brewing, like Xerox is for paper copying, like Kleenex is for tissues ... but we'll see, we'll see how everything plays out."
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