Step forward for brewery partners

New brewery partners Jeremy Baylis (left) and Paul Anderson (centre) with Napier MP Stuart Nash as The Napier Brewery is opened at the Westshore Beach Inn. Photo / Doug Laing

No one was quite sure whether it was a step forward or a step backward.

But there was no question it was the right step, fermenting, as it were, for 26 years, but brewing only in the past 18 months.

It's a unique brewery which opened yesterday in the Westshore Beach Inn, where the punters can watch how it's done and have an ale at the same time. It may even be their own home brew.

It's a concept Westshore proprietor Jeremy Baylis started dreaming of in the days he was running the Criterion Hotel at the end of the 1980s and into the 1990s and embarking on a reshaping of Napier hotel and bar industry.

It started taking shape after he teamed up 18 months ago with Elephant Hill winemaker Damian Birchman, who with viticultural consultant Dr Mark Krasnow and stevedoring company surveyor Davron Adsett, had formed Bad Bay Beer Co.

Yesterday Mr Baylis recalled: "I used to flat with Curtis Wootten, the basketball coach, back then and he talked about me starting a brewery. I started doing costings back then."

Among those in the circle was then Paul Anderson, who had arrived in town to play cricket for Marist and who, like Mr Wootten, enjoyed a bear at "the Cri".

Mr Baylis and Mr Anderson, now proprietor of Indigo Restaurant, formed The Napier Brewery Co, a name they were surprised was still available, in a city which has a brewing history dating back at least as long as the Hawke's Bay Brewing Co, which lost a brewery in a fire in Hastings St in 1869.

Mr Anderson completes another part of the picture. "My middle name is Napier," he said.

The Napier Brewery was officially opened by MP Stuart Nash. "This is a tough job but someone has to do it," he said when he arrived to open the brewery, and was invited to have "a cold one".

The plant - "a German system taking advantage of the great water in Hawke's Bay", said Mr Birchman - will brew 400 litres at a time, to be sold on tap at the Inn, but could also be used by home brewers if they wanted to extend themselves past the capabilities of their own plant.

Mr Nash said: "This is great for Napier - Jeremy has always been innovative and this is another step."

The days of guzzling down pints had gone - replaced by enjoying a fine, locally brewed ale, he said. Who knows where it may lead? Another Napier brewery, known just as The Brewery, advertised in 1909 its "invalid stout - as rended by the medical faculty".