By Emma Joliff
The winner of this year's Champion Brewery Award is a one-man band who uses someone else's equipment.
Soren Eriksen is Danish but his company name 8wired cashes in on good old Kiwi ingenuity, and his funding comes from a most unlikely source.
“It's amazing. It's the biggest thing you can achieve in New Zealand brewing,” he says.
This weekend's Beervana is the perfect chance for punters to have a taste.
Eriksen runs a one-man brewery and his wife keeps the books. 8wired is only two years old.
He submitted 12 beers, and out of the more than 400 entries won awards for eight. So what's his secret?
“Attention to detail. Make sure every detail is right, no beer is ever perfect and can always be better,” he says.
He sources most of the malt and hops from New Zealand, but some specialty ingredients come from Europe and the US.
He already exports to the US, Australia and his native Denmark.
“In order to achieve big flavours you need to use a lot of ingredients, and that's what I do,” he says.
But Eriksen doesn't own his own equipment as it's too expensive. Instead he makes 8wired at Marlborough's renaissance brewery when he's not brewing for them.
The biochemist was inspired by Little Creatures craft brewery in Perth, so his wife bought him a home brew kit.
“That's really how it started and I just knew, this is great, this is what I want to do,” he says.
One hundred and sixty thousand dollars of start-up funding came from an unconventional source.
“I won the NZ Poker Championships, poker's another hobby of mine. I’ve played the championship three times and won it twice,” he says.
Eriksen produced 60,000 litres of beer this year, something he says the big boys of brewing produce three times a day.
But he hasn't spent a cent on marketing. He hopes the award will help keep it that way.
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