The Croucher Brewing Story...
Picture this… a long long time ago (okay it was only the 90’s), far far away (in the deep south), a guy by the name of Paul Croucher had a dream. It started while as a student in Dunedin, took him around the world, and eventually back to his home town of Rotorua. This dream? Well, Paul’s dream was to produce truly great premium beer.
Background
Paul had been a casual observer of New Zealand’s developing taste for flavour. Coffee drinkers have shifted from instant to exotic blends, while wine drinkers have switched from Chateau Cardboard to a raft of high-value high-quality varietals. Beer drinkers had been slower to embrace change having been indoctrinated by strong brand loyalty campaigns from the major breweries. However, a shift is occurring as this great nation’s beer drinkers look for greater substance and flavour from their beer than the traditional offerings provide.
Not surprisingly, this increasing awareness of beer’s character is mirroring what has occurred in the United States. New Zealand and the U.S. are both New World cultures and this is reflected in the maturity and development of their food and beverage industries. They were arguably the most regulated liquor markets in the world - each having real or virtual alcoholic prohibition. Subsequent to this, both countries have mass-produced beers with brand and consistency more important than character and flavour. However, a huge backlash has occurred in North America – brands such as Samuel Adams and Sierra Nevada are producing great beer and have changed the face of North American beer. Notwithstanding a minor hiccough in 1997, small American brewers have achieved double-digit growth over the past 25 years.
Living The Dream
Once settled back in Rotorua, Paul looked to make his dream a reality. Starting by experimenting at home, he began to produce quality beer on a very small scale. In fact in 2004 Paul entered the Brew NZ brewing championship, and won the Non-Commercial Brewing Section with his Bohemian Pilsner.
This gave Paul, and business partners Richard Croucher and Nigel Gregory, greater confidence to forge ahead with a commercial brewery. The Croucher Brewing Company was set up in 2004, premises hired in January 2005, with brewing commencing in the second half of that year. With each of us having to balance work and other commitments, it was a slow process.
Croucher Brewing made its commercial debut at the Mt Maunganui Blues, Brews & BBQ’s festival in January 2006. The beer went down a treat with great feedback and lots of sales. In April, Croucher Brewing also had a stand at the Auckland Wine & Food festival, which was another great success. June 2006 saw the ‘on-premise’ launch into a handful of bars, restaurants and lodges locations around Rotorua and Auckland.
Our First Beer Award
By August 2006, the timing was now right to put more time in to the business. Nigel left his job as Marketing Manager at SKY Television in Auckland to move back to Rotorua, while Paul was in the middle of a period of intense brewing to build stock levels. Also at this time Richard left the company.
The 2006 Brew NZ awards (think of it as the Olympics for brewers) took place in early September, and incredibly for such a young brewery, Croucher Pale Ale was awarded a Bronze medal in the hotly contested Pale Ale category. To put it in perspective, only five Gold’s were awarded across all 15 categories. And many more-established breweries went home empty-handed. It is a great result!!
2007
Our first full summer in operation was full of festivals, Blues Brews & BBQ’s at Mt Maunganui and Hawke's Bay, a Rotorua Food & Wine Festival, similar at Te Awamutu, plus the inaugural NZ Beer Festival at Ellerslie racecourse in Auckland. The festivals are lots of fun, and a great opportunity to try a range of craft beers from across the country. Make sure you get along to the ones nearest you—and come and say hi if we are there.
Following the success of The Hef and Pilsner at each of the festivals, we decided it was time to start bottling and selling these variants. It was at this stage that we decided to change the label design, after our bottle supplier had stopped supply of our preferred bottle the original label no longer sat perfectly on the bottle. On top of a new label, we also had to face the issue of keeping up with increased bottling and labeling, therefore we invested in a small single-head filler/capper machine that we imported from Canada, as well as a simple labelling gizmo. Once up to speed these investments relieved a lot of pressure from us (and our partners!!).
Paul and Nigel were asked to speak at a motivational conference held in Rotorua, called BLAST. The speakers included John Hart, the 42 Below team, Diane Foreman, Michael Hill, and was compeered by Susan Wood. It was a daunting thing to do in that company, but it went really well and was a great way to raise our profile.
October 2007 has proved to be the craziest month for the business so far, and for many reasons. The month started out with Paul almost blowing up a fermenter (he literally thought it, and all the beer contained, was going to explode). This is a pretty devastating occurrence, as it is one of those things you just don’t budget for (LOW). The next day Nigel and his partner Kate had the birth of their first child, a son, Isaac Finn Gregory (MASSIVE HIGH). Just a few days later Croucher Brewing was named the Destination Rotorua Emerging Business Of The Year at the Westpac Rotorua Business Excellence Awards (ANOTHER HUGE HIGH). A week or so after that the brewery was broken into and the laptop we use for all our business records, accounts, email, etc was stolen (MASSIVE LOW). But instead of sitting around feeling powerless, we offered a lifetime supply of beer (one dozen Croucher beer every month until death) to the person who returned the laptop. Well the story caught the imagination of the media, we were interviewed on TV ONE’s Close Up, on Radio Live, Newstalk ZB, More FM, 3 Australian radio stations, had stories written up in the local paper The Daily Post, and had the news story carried in papers and websites across New Zealand, Australia, United States, Canada, UK, Germany, France, India, and South Africa (ANOTHER BIG HIGH). Sometimes dark clouds do have silver linings… now if only the laptop would turn up!!!!
2008
With demand on the rise, we have managed to ‘borrow’ a 2400ltr brewery and bottling line that was the ex-Limburg/K.E.A. plant. Installation has taken some time (from around Oct 2008 to March 2009) but this has provided a massive improvement to our manufacturing capability. 2009 promises to be an exciting year for Croucher Brewing.
2009
An opportunity arose to open our own small craft beer pub in Rotorua, which we named The Underground Bar. It quickly gained a reputation as the only place in Rotorua to get a good range of craft beer, and built an extremely loyal bunch of supporters. Friday nights at The Underground was the place to be - it was a tiny bar and would literally be packed with punters.
The bar stretched human resources to the limit, with Nigel running the bar Paul was left to try and do two peoples jobs at the brewery. While the bar was a great way to spread the word about Croucher beer in Rotorua, it really did spread us too thin. Even so, it was a great shame that the restaurant we were working with (who supplied both the liquor licence and food) went under in January 2010 - ending an exciting chapter in our existence. Best part of a year later and we are still asked numerous times each week when we are opening a new bar… we’ll keep you posted!
2010
With the bar closed, and all hands back on deck at the brewery, 2010 has been a year of real growth. We put a lot of work into working smarter, and evaluating our strengths and weaknesses. One of these evaluations led us to consider contracting out some of the brewing and packaging for our bottled beers. We started working with Steam Brewing in Auckland (home of the Cock ‘n Bull beers, Epic Brewing, and a few other top class New Zealand beers), although the standard had been set high for them as just before we commenced brewing at Steam our Pilsner was named CHAMPION INTERNATIONAL LAGER at the BrewNZ Awards. This was a HUGE result for us, and was reward for a lot of hard work. The award, along with the excellent quality of the new Steam beers has given us a great platform for growth. One of the first big wins was bcoming an exporter for the first time, as we partnered with Northdown Craft Beer Movement in Melbourne Australia as our official distributor in that country. In December, our Pale Ale was named CHAMPION NZ BEER 2010 in the annual Capital Times Beer Necessities Survey, with both the Pale Ale and Pilsner named in the Top 12 beers of the year. We would look forward to 2011, but quite frankly there is still so much to be done before that!
2011
In a year that I'm sure we had committed to not getting side-tracked from our focus on producing beer, we go and open a our own Pub in Eat Street, Rotorua. While we had some great supporters amongst local restaurants and cafes, we had found it difficult convincing pubs and hotels to take the local beer. So we decided to establish a store-front, where we could push the brand to new heights in our key local market. In April 2011 we found a failing restaurant, borrowed some money, halted production at the brewery for 2 months (which is never a good idea!) while we renovated the pub with lots of help from staff and their families. The doors to BREW | Craft Beer Pub opened on the 26th of May, and to our great delight many of the same faces who had supported us at the Underground Bar were back. We spend the rest of that year trying to get back on track with production at the brewery, as well as run a pub. The first year and a half was tough going, as we worked to grow awareness of the brand, and we learned some tough lessons on staffing and managing a hospitality business.
A lovely win for the brewery that year was winning the 'New Zealand Beer Cup' with Croucher PATRIOT - an innovative knock-out competition run by the Brewers Guild Of NZ which pitched beers one vs another until a winner was found. Patriot was a newly released beer for us, maybe the first outright Black IPA produced in NZ, and this was a sensational way to launch it to the market.
2012
The year started brilliantly with Croucher PILSNER taking out Gold and Trophy for 'Champion Pilsner' at the Australian International Beer Awards (the second largest annual beer competition in the world). At BREW NZ we picked up Bronzes for Pale Ale and Patriot.
A couple of brewing challenges arose this year. 1. We ran out of space at the brewery, and 2. The brewing kit we had been 'borrowing' got sold. We found an old 3000L brewing kit for sale - probably the most beat-up brewery in NZ - in our price range (i.e. cheap), and moved it to Rotorua. The next problem was that the tanks were considerably larger than what could fit in the brewery building. We managed to squeeze a couple of tall fermenters in between the beams, as well as the kettle, but the rest had to go to storage until a new site was found.
2013
Following the growing success of BREW Rotorua, we took the step of opening a BREW over the fence in Tauranga. With Nigel now living in Tauranga, it was somewhat of a natural step. With a great team on board, we are now working hard to educate Tauranga about the joys of Croucher beer as well as New Zealand craft beer in general.
Our lower alcohol LOWRIDER beer (a 2.7% hoppy IPA style) had a great year, taking out GOLD at the BREW NZ 2013, as well as being named runner-up BEST BEER at the inaugural SOBA Beer Awards. Our new Ethiopian Coffee Stout picked up a Bronze medal at BREWNZ too. We also launched Croucher ANZUS IPA, our 7% hop monster utilising Australian (A), New Zealand (NZ) and US (US) hops.
In December 2013 we finally found really promising new premises for the brewery, quickly signing a lease. Oh if only it were that easy!
2014
The excitement about new premises slowly turned to frustration as a hold up due to a massive Council error meant delay after delay. New date of takeover is August 2014. It is a massive challenge moving the brewery, trying to maintain production and supply while building one brewery and dismantling another. Should be fun.
More medals at the 2014 Australian International Beer Awards - Silver for Croucher PILSNER and Bronze for Croucher ANZUS IPA. Plus our biggest ever haul at the BrewNZ Awards 2014: Gold for St. Ella IPA, Silver for Pilsner, Pale Ale, Lowrider and Patriot, and Bronze for ANZUS IPA.
The essence of Croucher Brewing
We love great beer, and the passion that goes into making it. Whether it is our beer, or that of other great Kiwi brewers, please get out and support us all. Try something new, try different styles, find out what your favorties are, and then show all your friends. You can stay in touch with us by following Croucher Brewing on Facebook or Twitter (links in header of this page), we'd love your support.
Cheers, and thanks for reading our story so far...
Paul & Nigel
Background
Paul had been a casual observer of New Zealand’s developing taste for flavour. Coffee drinkers have shifted from instant to exotic blends, while wine drinkers have switched from Chateau Cardboard to a raft of high-value high-quality varietals. Beer drinkers had been slower to embrace change having been indoctrinated by strong brand loyalty campaigns from the major breweries. However, a shift is occurring as this great nation’s beer drinkers look for greater substance and flavour from their beer than the traditional offerings provide.
Not surprisingly, this increasing awareness of beer’s character is mirroring what has occurred in the United States. New Zealand and the U.S. are both New World cultures and this is reflected in the maturity and development of their food and beverage industries. They were arguably the most regulated liquor markets in the world - each having real or virtual alcoholic prohibition. Subsequent to this, both countries have mass-produced beers with brand and consistency more important than character and flavour. However, a huge backlash has occurred in North America – brands such as Samuel Adams and Sierra Nevada are producing great beer and have changed the face of North American beer. Notwithstanding a minor hiccough in 1997, small American brewers have achieved double-digit growth over the past 25 years.
Living The Dream
Once settled back in Rotorua, Paul looked to make his dream a reality. Starting by experimenting at home, he began to produce quality beer on a very small scale. In fact in 2004 Paul entered the Brew NZ brewing championship, and won the Non-Commercial Brewing Section with his Bohemian Pilsner.
This gave Paul, and business partners Richard Croucher and Nigel Gregory, greater confidence to forge ahead with a commercial brewery. The Croucher Brewing Company was set up in 2004, premises hired in January 2005, with brewing commencing in the second half of that year. With each of us having to balance work and other commitments, it was a slow process.
Croucher Brewing made its commercial debut at the Mt Maunganui Blues, Brews & BBQ’s festival in January 2006. The beer went down a treat with great feedback and lots of sales. In April, Croucher Brewing also had a stand at the Auckland Wine & Food festival, which was another great success. June 2006 saw the ‘on-premise’ launch into a handful of bars, restaurants and lodges locations around Rotorua and Auckland.
Our First Beer Award
By August 2006, the timing was now right to put more time in to the business. Nigel left his job as Marketing Manager at SKY Television in Auckland to move back to Rotorua, while Paul was in the middle of a period of intense brewing to build stock levels. Also at this time Richard left the company.
The 2006 Brew NZ awards (think of it as the Olympics for brewers) took place in early September, and incredibly for such a young brewery, Croucher Pale Ale was awarded a Bronze medal in the hotly contested Pale Ale category. To put it in perspective, only five Gold’s were awarded across all 15 categories. And many more-established breweries went home empty-handed. It is a great result!!
2007
Our first full summer in operation was full of festivals, Blues Brews & BBQ’s at Mt Maunganui and Hawke's Bay, a Rotorua Food & Wine Festival, similar at Te Awamutu, plus the inaugural NZ Beer Festival at Ellerslie racecourse in Auckland. The festivals are lots of fun, and a great opportunity to try a range of craft beers from across the country. Make sure you get along to the ones nearest you—and come and say hi if we are there.
Following the success of The Hef and Pilsner at each of the festivals, we decided it was time to start bottling and selling these variants. It was at this stage that we decided to change the label design, after our bottle supplier had stopped supply of our preferred bottle the original label no longer sat perfectly on the bottle. On top of a new label, we also had to face the issue of keeping up with increased bottling and labeling, therefore we invested in a small single-head filler/capper machine that we imported from Canada, as well as a simple labelling gizmo. Once up to speed these investments relieved a lot of pressure from us (and our partners!!).
Paul and Nigel were asked to speak at a motivational conference held in Rotorua, called BLAST. The speakers included John Hart, the 42 Below team, Diane Foreman, Michael Hill, and was compeered by Susan Wood. It was a daunting thing to do in that company, but it went really well and was a great way to raise our profile.
October 2007 has proved to be the craziest month for the business so far, and for many reasons. The month started out with Paul almost blowing up a fermenter (he literally thought it, and all the beer contained, was going to explode). This is a pretty devastating occurrence, as it is one of those things you just don’t budget for (LOW). The next day Nigel and his partner Kate had the birth of their first child, a son, Isaac Finn Gregory (MASSIVE HIGH). Just a few days later Croucher Brewing was named the Destination Rotorua Emerging Business Of The Year at the Westpac Rotorua Business Excellence Awards (ANOTHER HUGE HIGH). A week or so after that the brewery was broken into and the laptop we use for all our business records, accounts, email, etc was stolen (MASSIVE LOW). But instead of sitting around feeling powerless, we offered a lifetime supply of beer (one dozen Croucher beer every month until death) to the person who returned the laptop. Well the story caught the imagination of the media, we were interviewed on TV ONE’s Close Up, on Radio Live, Newstalk ZB, More FM, 3 Australian radio stations, had stories written up in the local paper The Daily Post, and had the news story carried in papers and websites across New Zealand, Australia, United States, Canada, UK, Germany, France, India, and South Africa (ANOTHER BIG HIGH). Sometimes dark clouds do have silver linings… now if only the laptop would turn up!!!!
2008
With demand on the rise, we have managed to ‘borrow’ a 2400ltr brewery and bottling line that was the ex-Limburg/K.E.A. plant. Installation has taken some time (from around Oct 2008 to March 2009) but this has provided a massive improvement to our manufacturing capability. 2009 promises to be an exciting year for Croucher Brewing.
2009
An opportunity arose to open our own small craft beer pub in Rotorua, which we named The Underground Bar. It quickly gained a reputation as the only place in Rotorua to get a good range of craft beer, and built an extremely loyal bunch of supporters. Friday nights at The Underground was the place to be - it was a tiny bar and would literally be packed with punters.
The bar stretched human resources to the limit, with Nigel running the bar Paul was left to try and do two peoples jobs at the brewery. While the bar was a great way to spread the word about Croucher beer in Rotorua, it really did spread us too thin. Even so, it was a great shame that the restaurant we were working with (who supplied both the liquor licence and food) went under in January 2010 - ending an exciting chapter in our existence. Best part of a year later and we are still asked numerous times each week when we are opening a new bar… we’ll keep you posted!
2010
With the bar closed, and all hands back on deck at the brewery, 2010 has been a year of real growth. We put a lot of work into working smarter, and evaluating our strengths and weaknesses. One of these evaluations led us to consider contracting out some of the brewing and packaging for our bottled beers. We started working with Steam Brewing in Auckland (home of the Cock ‘n Bull beers, Epic Brewing, and a few other top class New Zealand beers), although the standard had been set high for them as just before we commenced brewing at Steam our Pilsner was named CHAMPION INTERNATIONAL LAGER at the BrewNZ Awards. This was a HUGE result for us, and was reward for a lot of hard work. The award, along with the excellent quality of the new Steam beers has given us a great platform for growth. One of the first big wins was bcoming an exporter for the first time, as we partnered with Northdown Craft Beer Movement in Melbourne Australia as our official distributor in that country. In December, our Pale Ale was named CHAMPION NZ BEER 2010 in the annual Capital Times Beer Necessities Survey, with both the Pale Ale and Pilsner named in the Top 12 beers of the year. We would look forward to 2011, but quite frankly there is still so much to be done before that!
2011
In a year that I'm sure we had committed to not getting side-tracked from our focus on producing beer, we go and open a our own Pub in Eat Street, Rotorua. While we had some great supporters amongst local restaurants and cafes, we had found it difficult convincing pubs and hotels to take the local beer. So we decided to establish a store-front, where we could push the brand to new heights in our key local market. In April 2011 we found a failing restaurant, borrowed some money, halted production at the brewery for 2 months (which is never a good idea!) while we renovated the pub with lots of help from staff and their families. The doors to BREW | Craft Beer Pub opened on the 26th of May, and to our great delight many of the same faces who had supported us at the Underground Bar were back. We spend the rest of that year trying to get back on track with production at the brewery, as well as run a pub. The first year and a half was tough going, as we worked to grow awareness of the brand, and we learned some tough lessons on staffing and managing a hospitality business.
A lovely win for the brewery that year was winning the 'New Zealand Beer Cup' with Croucher PATRIOT - an innovative knock-out competition run by the Brewers Guild Of NZ which pitched beers one vs another until a winner was found. Patriot was a newly released beer for us, maybe the first outright Black IPA produced in NZ, and this was a sensational way to launch it to the market.
2012
The year started brilliantly with Croucher PILSNER taking out Gold and Trophy for 'Champion Pilsner' at the Australian International Beer Awards (the second largest annual beer competition in the world). At BREW NZ we picked up Bronzes for Pale Ale and Patriot.
A couple of brewing challenges arose this year. 1. We ran out of space at the brewery, and 2. The brewing kit we had been 'borrowing' got sold. We found an old 3000L brewing kit for sale - probably the most beat-up brewery in NZ - in our price range (i.e. cheap), and moved it to Rotorua. The next problem was that the tanks were considerably larger than what could fit in the brewery building. We managed to squeeze a couple of tall fermenters in between the beams, as well as the kettle, but the rest had to go to storage until a new site was found.
2013
Following the growing success of BREW Rotorua, we took the step of opening a BREW over the fence in Tauranga. With Nigel now living in Tauranga, it was somewhat of a natural step. With a great team on board, we are now working hard to educate Tauranga about the joys of Croucher beer as well as New Zealand craft beer in general.
Our lower alcohol LOWRIDER beer (a 2.7% hoppy IPA style) had a great year, taking out GOLD at the BREW NZ 2013, as well as being named runner-up BEST BEER at the inaugural SOBA Beer Awards. Our new Ethiopian Coffee Stout picked up a Bronze medal at BREWNZ too. We also launched Croucher ANZUS IPA, our 7% hop monster utilising Australian (A), New Zealand (NZ) and US (US) hops.
In December 2013 we finally found really promising new premises for the brewery, quickly signing a lease. Oh if only it were that easy!
2014
The excitement about new premises slowly turned to frustration as a hold up due to a massive Council error meant delay after delay. New date of takeover is August 2014. It is a massive challenge moving the brewery, trying to maintain production and supply while building one brewery and dismantling another. Should be fun.
More medals at the 2014 Australian International Beer Awards - Silver for Croucher PILSNER and Bronze for Croucher ANZUS IPA. Plus our biggest ever haul at the BrewNZ Awards 2014: Gold for St. Ella IPA, Silver for Pilsner, Pale Ale, Lowrider and Patriot, and Bronze for ANZUS IPA.
The essence of Croucher Brewing
We love great beer, and the passion that goes into making it. Whether it is our beer, or that of other great Kiwi brewers, please get out and support us all. Try something new, try different styles, find out what your favorties are, and then show all your friends. You can stay in touch with us by following Croucher Brewing on Facebook or Twitter (links in header of this page), we'd love your support.
Cheers, and thanks for reading our story so far...
Paul & Nigel