Crafty brewer on brink of a big deal

High praise from an American critic has opened up an export window for a small brewery, finds DITA DE BONI.

If Michael Jackson says your beer is among the world's 10 most interesting brews, people are bound to sit up and take notice.

Michael Jackson, the Wall Street Journal-proclaimed ``world's leading beer critic'' that is. Hot and heavy praise from Mr Jackson has opened an export opportunity in the United States for one of Auckland's leading craft brewers, and may spark interest in ``table beer'' in New Zealand, according to its makers.

Keith Galbraith, owner of Galbraith's Alehouse in Mt Eden, says he is on the brink of a lucrative distribution deal for his highly specialised, highly priced cask-conditioned, bottle refermented beer in both the United States and New Zealand.

The beer is made under the company name Australis, and is modelled on old-fashioned international brewing processes. After being cask conditioned for up to six months, then reseeded with yeast and priming sugar, the brew is bottled and refermented. The product is vintage dated and can mature in the bottle for up to four years.

``Old ale'' styles have been produced by Keith Galbraith and partner Ben Middlemiss and sold through Galbraith's Alehouse for around 18 months, but the heavy flavour of the brew has been slow to catch on so far, Mr Galbraith says.

That may all be set to change. Distributors have come on board after the brewer's top old ale type, Benediction, was singled out for attention in several seminars and industry get-togethers in the United States where it was described as good or better than the Belgian abbey style beer it was modelled on.

Mr Galbraith will not talk figures too specifically, but says his yearly production of 10,000 litres of the three types of ale looks set to be upped to the same amount every month for the United States market.

The beer will retail there at about $US4-5 ($NZ8-10) a glass in more discerning establishments, he says. In Auckland, the brew retails for around $8.50 a bottle, and the price, combined with the fact it can range between 6.3-7.7 per cent in alcohol content, makes it ``not suitable for large volume quaffing.''

The brew is not destined to sit alongside tavern peanuts, but targeted squarely at the dinner table. ``New Zealanders may be more willing to try it when it gains a bit more recognition,'' Mr Galbraith says. ``We try to push the envelope with our beers, and these three `old ale' styles are aimed at wine drinkers - they're beers for the table.''

As well as maturing in the bottle like wine, the ``old ale'' brews are only slightly chilled to retain flavour and drunk from a vessel resembling a wine glass, giving off a fruity, Gewurtztraminer-like aroma.

Australis has had to get cracking on increased production of the wine as there is a long lead time for each batch (around 4-6 weeks for the brewing process). Mr Galbraith says the company intends to plough a capital expenditure of $200,000 to $300,000 into developing facilities for the increased production.

``There is definitely a growth in the high-end beer products,'' he says. ``DB have Monteith's and Lion has just taken over the distribution of Mac.

``But we are the only company in New Zealand to do `real ale', described by the Oxford dictionary as a product matured and served from the same vessel; not filtered, processed or pasteurised.''