Hazzy Hunter, in search of great beer, tracks down Marcus Chawner from Manaia Craft Brewers.
Hazzy Hunter: Tell me how Manaia came to be?
Marcus: Well, it’s a bloody good story — believe it or not, it was a midlife crisis, I had already gone through one wife and I’ve already got a truck, so what else do you do for your midlife crisis? You get yourself a brewery. This is a true story, I was sitting in bed one night and I thought ‘I wonder if there’s any cool little breweries around’ and I looked on TradeMe and there was a little brewery called Manaia from up in Whangarei Heads and I gave the guys a call and I went and saw them and got the brewery from there and took it to the next level!
Hazzy Hunter: What makes Manaia unique?
Marcus: I think one of the things that makes us unique is that we do everything. I know there’s a lot of other husband and wife teams out there, but we literally do everything, every bottle that leaves this brewery is touched by our hands, we do everything by hand. It’s funny because people email us and ask, ‘can you pass this onto the team’ and I’ll look around and go ‘it’s passed on’ because I am the team. My wife Natalie she’s the CEO of the business, we call her the chief everything officer, but the uniqueness is that everything is just us and every bottle that leaves here has been touched by our hands and I call them my little soldiers and I’ll tell them, ‘go have fun my little soldiers’ as they leave.
Hazzy Hunter: Tell me something that most people don’t know about Manaia
Marcus: One of thing is the fact that we exist! We recently had somebody try our beer at The Lumsden in Newmarket and the first thing they said was ‘we’ve never heard of this brewery before’. We have no marketing team, no marketing budget, so everything that we do is just word of mouth and it’s just people buying our beer because they love us and our beer, so yeah the fact that we exist is what people probably don’t know about us.
Hazzy Hunter: What are your thoughts on the state of the current New Zealand craft beer industry?
Marcus: I’m going to put a very positive spin on this — I think it’s fantastic because the beer is fantastic and the people are and if you go around the world drinking beer you’ll realise we make good beer and it’s fantastic. It’s tough times, the money is tough, the government don’t help which makes it a bit tough, but as an industry and as people it’s great to be involved with.
Hazzy Hunter: Apart from Manaia, what is your favourite New Zealand brewery and why?
Marcus: That’s the hardest question you can ask me! I’m gonna say Salt District, a cool little brewery down in Whangamata, run by a guy called Liam, he makes great beer he’s got a great attitude. Stressed brewers make stressed beer, he doesn’t stress, he surfs, he has fun, he is just a great guy he calls me Uncle Chalky because we help each other out, that’s what we do, he has a great hazy called Sea Legs. He works hard, he is brewing 100 litres at a time so it’s a labour of love, it’s a great little brewery and he’s going to do well and it’s one of my favourites.
Hazzy Hunter: Last question, it’s the hardest question, are hazy beers here to stay?
Marcus: They are, they are definitely here to stay they’ve got a cult following I believe and they’ve got a whole generation of people that have got into craft beer because of hazy beer so they will always be there, I think it will come down to more of a core range in the future where the good ones will remain.