… And the rest is history for the quaint Arrowtown Brewing Co.
The brewery was founded in 2017 when three Arrowtown locals — photographer Michael Thomas, The Exponents bass player Dave Gent, and businessman Tim Hemingway — were enjoying a couple of pints and decided they should try to make some of their own.
Just as the business set sail, Hemingway fell ill with cancer and died just one day after their first beer, Arrowtown Brewing Pale Ale, was poured at local watering hole, The Fork and Tap.
At the time they were contract brewing out of Christchurch and the first recipe was the brain child of Dan Coxhead, manager at the bar at the time, working with Jim Holly (Renaissance, Twisted Hop, Bodgie Beer) from Christchurch, who also helped create their Sawpit Pilsner and Gold Lager in the early days.
Navman founder Sir Peter Maire has since come on board — he shares Gent and Thomas’ desire to have fun and make good beer.
The team are focused on their local area, rather than expansion, leveraging community and visitor support. And like many in the brewing industry they struggled in the wake of the Covid pandemic.
“We muddled along as a small boutique-y thing,” Thomas says. “We did it for about five years and of course went through Covid, and then it just became so hard. We were very close to saying, ‘Oh look, you just can’t make any money’.”
Enter Penelope Johnson — PJ — and Sam Gruar, owners of Arrowtown’s Slow Cuts restaurant. They just so happened to have wee brewery in the back of the restaurant.
Ironically, the building Slow Cuts calls home was home to Arrow Brewing — an early craft brewery that closed in 2014, a couple of years before the big craft beer boom.
All their equipment was taken out and when Slow Cuts moved in, it was refurbished, complete with a boutique brewery at the rear, which was, till recently, run by Lake & Wood.
So two local forces united and Arrowtown Brewing could continue producing beer. Thomas and the team stripped the business right back — they stopped canning and focused on selling kegs to local businesses.
“We’re probably at the stage now of being able to go out there and hopefully try and get a few more customers, but we can only make so much beer and once you get into freight and everything like that, you’re already on tiny margins.”
One of the benefits of brewing in Slow Cuts and working closely with PJ and Sam is the ability to marry beautiful food with tasty local beer. The restaurant specialises in slow-cooked comfort food – fried chicken, burgers, steak and ribs – perfectly paired with a beer. This is something Thomas expects to continue and develop over 2025.
While Thomas and Gent do a lot of the grunt work — milling grain, delivering beer and cleaning kegs — their trainee brewer Conor McCloskey takes care of the rest.
Thomas started his career working at Otago Daily Times before heading to England to work for the Mail on Sunday for around 17 years. Post-Covid was when the photography industry changed and he now spends a lot of time on sports photography here in Aotearoa – in addition to the brewery work, of course. Gent still works on The Exponents tours every now and again, and plays in local bands.
“It’s been a great little side line I think for both of us. We both had quite exciting lives, travelling and then when that slowed down, it’s been fun to have something where you get a lot out of it socially — you get to chat to a few people.”
Brewing happens about once a week and they focus on keeping it simple with a pilsner, a lager, a hazy IPA, a mango sour and a ginger beer. Feedback from the latest Dunedin Beer Fest was that the mango sour was an absolute treat. In the past they’ve put out an OTT Glacial beer, which was made using glacial water helicoptered from a remote alpine lake, deep in Fiordland.
“We do have a lot of fun. We get to go to a few beer festivals and chat to a few people, which is always great. It’s something interesting to do, because neither of us really had a background in this, as a photographer and a musician, and when Tim died, we were just looking at each other going ‘oh no’.”
Tim wasn’t a brewer, but he was the organised one, and the bridge between Thomas and Gent at the time. Thomas jokes that if Hemingway was still alive, the business would be a lot more successful.
“We’re just selling our beers in Arrowtown, so you’ve got to come here to drink it. We’ve had it down at the Carey’s Bay Hotel in Port Chalmers because it’s my favourite pub in the whole world.”
Arrowtown Brewing beers are currently available in several bars around Arrowtown including Bendix Stables, The Dishery, Slow Cuts and the Fork and Tap, or at beer festivals the team attend. You’ll have to make a trip down south to try their amber ale — winter is just around the corner!