You can thank local government regulation for the existence of Lakeman, a brewery located on a farm 20 minutes west of Taupo.
Farmer James Cooper didn’t expect to become a brewer. He had never home-brewed. But regulations basically imposing herd size limits to prevent pollution of waterways feeding Lake Taupo made the farm financially marginal. This led James and his wife, Elissa, to brainstorm for ways to diversify their operations. Dreams of a brewery seemed like a fun bet. Having survived (and thrived) since 2013, it seems it has become a winning bet.
It wasn’t always a sure thing. “It’s a marathon, not a sprint. Probably learnt that a little bit along the way,” says James. But with hard work and steady improvement, awards have been won and growth has followed, including opening their own bar, Jimmy Coops, in Taupo.
The brewery is busy the day I visit. It’s a double brew day, two beers are being canned, deliveries to be made, and, as always, tanks to clean. There is a big team working together to get it all done, helping each other and swapping around jobs.
Head brewer, Rory Donovan, shows me around. He’s been at Lakeman eight years but was about to move to Auckland. “You don’t notice it, but slowly, day by day, you become an industry veteran. The breadth to what I’ve learnt here has been awesome… everyone does everything, which is great because you get an understanding of the beer from grain to glass.”
We start at the brew kit. It’s Chinese-made, “medical grade copper. So the beer is medicine!” Moving on to the canning line Rory asks: “Have you had brewers monologue you about canning?” I hadn’t. Cue an interesting monologue, too long to relay here but it ends with: “A couple of hundred thousand dollars’ worth of equipment and it can still fall over.” He gets to work with James on canning.
Brewers Laura and Manu are tag-teaming on the brewing today. Manu is from Argentina, here escaping the high inflation there. His wit is so dry I’m never sure when he’s joking. While lifting malt bags to the mill in the hot sun he deadpans: “I would take my shirt off but I don’t want to ruin the pictures.”
Laura studied brewing in Toronto, working for a couple of breweries there before heading to New Zealand on a working holiday visa. At the time she had been at Lakeman for nine months and was planning to move on to Wanaka in another couple of months. I see her on the Lakeman stand at Beervana 18 months later and learn she had been promoted to head brewer!
There are some unique features of a brewery on a farm, for instance the forklift is a giant farm tractor. Laura says “yeah, I totally need to learn how to drive a tractor. It’s manual too. I don’t know how to drive a manual… It’s been an interesting lesson, but I’m getting the hang of it.”
It’s mid-afternoon. The tractor is loading some pallets of beer on a trailer on the back of a car for deliveries into Taupo. Farm dogs laze around in the sun. James realises Rory hasn’t stopped for lunch.
“You have lunch and I’ll have a happy brewer.”
“I’m always happy!” replies Rory.
“I’ve seen you on an empty stomach.”
The car heads off to town. I head off too, for dinner at Jimmy Coops, completing my day from grain to glass and grass to burger.
