By Chris Whitworth
For decades a nagging problem has plagued, frustrated and confused the Kiwi male – how to consistently make home brewed beer that doesn’t taste awful and is the toast of your mates.
Most men have endeavored at least once to brew their own beer. Some are swayed by the promise of a good cost-to-quantity ratio – usually during university – while others often pick up the hobby later in life with grand aspirations of creating the next Great New Zealand Beer.
Kiwi Master Brewer Ian Williams claims to have unlocked the riddle, unveiling in Auckland this afternoon the world’s first Personal Brewer.
“You’ve got bread makers, you’ve got coffee machines and this is the first beer machine in the world,” he says.
The hi-tech brewer takes seven days from start to finish – a quarter the time of traditional brewers – and promises 23 litres of commercial standard beer that maintains its tap-fresh taste years longer than household brands.
“It’s probably the ultimate thing for your man cave. It’s almost like it’s a boy cave until you have one of these,” says Mr Williams.
Home brewing has been popular in New Zealand since the 1970s but Mr Williams says very few people stick with the hobby.
“Out of the 1.5 million guys in this country, half a million have tried home brewing…but they’ve all stopped.”
He says too often home brewing by the Kiwi male ends in frustration, with four weeks of hard work going down the drain – often literally – when their prized creation turns out to be too yeasty, too bitter, too fruity, too cloudy or just plain too awful.
Mr Williams says his machine uses commercial brewing science to eliminate problems of oxidization, temperature control issues, and lengthy carbonation time.
“The machine takes away all the harder work at the time – infections and not doing it right – but with the ingredients you can still play around with and do funky little flavours,” he says.
But does perfection come at a price?
The Personal Brewer goes on sale today at $5,500 plus GST – well outside of the price range of many industrious university students and hobby brewers.
Auckland bar manager and beer enthusiast Ben Quigan says the guarantee of a perfect brew could also be seen as undermining the very essence of home brewing.
“If you can just brew something perfectly every time, to me that takes almost the fun out of it,” he says.
“The whole thing about hobby home brewers is you talk to people and everyone’s got a story about when they cocked something up. It’s that learning process that lets you get your craft down to more of a skill.”
But Mr Williams says the invention offers three different types of brewing, ranging from: the Basic “idiot proof” Method, which allows even beginners to brew commercial quality beer; the Advanced Method, that requires more ingredients and preparation and can create all 78 beer types; and lastly, the Creative Method, that sees the experienced brewer go wild with creativity.
“That’s where you say ‘I’ve done all your 78 recipes and now I’m gonna make my own beer’,” he says.
“And who knows what we could invent? We could invent a new beer style.”
But how well does the term “new” go down in an industry regularly marketed on its vintage methods of production and flavours.
Mr Quigan says traditional brewing methods are often seen as a mark of quality and prestige, and says the beer community may not readily embrace the state-of-the-art Personal Brewer.
“There’s still gonna be a whole lot of purists that are just going to pooh-pooh it and say, ‘what’s wrong with doing it this way, doing it the proper way’,” he says.
“So to me, newness or something that takes a shorter amount of time doesn’t really seem like the best marketing strategy.”
Mr Williams says he is using quality and accessibility as his marketing strategy, banking on his lifelong obsession with beer brewing.
For decades he has traveled the world visiting breweries to offer his knowledge and expertise on flavour refinement. In the late 1990s he helped lead Tiger Beer Brewery in China to win the prize of Best Packaged Lager in the world in 1999.
He then used his credentials to fine tune the Personal Brewer along with high school friend Anders Warn – a six-year venture that saw him taste his fair share of beer.
“I spent every night following every brew from day zero to day 14. It took a massive amount of research from me into the beer. I've been brewing constantly for the past five years just so people can go, ‘yep, tastes like beer’,” he says.
He says the statistics speak for themselves.
Mr Williams conducted a series of blind taste tests that saw his Personal Brewer beer beat the world’s best beers in New Zealand, Australia, USA, Japan, India, Czech Republic, Denmark, Holland, Mexico and Germany.
“Its not that we’re trying to say here we’re the best or anything, it’s just we need to be in that commercial beer range or I’ve got nothing, even if its made in seven days.
“Otherwise I’ve got an expensive way of making home brew.”
The beer community will make its own conclusion in the coming months to see if Mr Williams’ world first can quench the Kiwi male’s thirst.
3 News