It’s a tough choice for Jason Bathgate — is he happier with McLeod’s winning the Champion Medium Brewery title or Tropical Cyclone winning the Champion Beer at the New Zealand Beer Awards in August?

After just a brief pause, he’s matter of fact: “I’d have to say the Champion Beer.

“Winning that one is really cool because first you have to first get down to the top 14 and the beer’s been through everyone’s palates. We have some amazing judges, and they are hyper-critical of quality so even to get to the last 14 is really hard.

“Because of that I’d say that one would trump — I hate to use that word — the champion medium brewery award, and also we’ve won the champion medium brewery title before … so yeah, the champion beer first.

“It is a really lovely beer and that batch in particular was tasting fantastic.”

McLeod’s had two beers in that final taste-off, where all the trophy winners are judged against each other with Blue Sky Pale Ale also making it through as the best international pale ale.

In total they had eight gold medals, which is a phenomenal performance.

“Every time we go to the Brewers Guild Awards I tell everyone ‘we may do well, we may not’. You never know. You put the best beer forward and hope that it presents well and this year we happened to do surprisingly well.”

The gold medal beers were Tropical Cyclone, Blue Sky, Harvest Moon, Celtic Warrior, Amplifire, Billycan Milk Stout, Cherimoya & Sage Sour Ale and Traders Scotch Ale.

What happened with Longboarder?

There was one exception to their exceptional night and that was a non-medal for the multi-award winning Longboarder Lager.

Bathgate laughs when that comes up — “there’s a story there,” he says.

“Before entering the awards we do a tasting with the brew crew, and this year the staff are really green, no-one has been here more than a year, and they were like: ‘they’re all golds’. And I had to say: ‘No, they’re not!’

“We had some nice discussions and all the beers we thought were shiny silvers we put forward.

“With Longboarder when we did our tasting we had three batches, one in bottle, two in cans.

“We always have subtle variations between batches and the team thought the bottle version was tasting the best, but I thought it was showing a bit of age. While it was drinkable it came across as a bit sweet and wasn’t as crisp and light as our traditional Longboarder would be.

“So we talked about it and I said: ‘this is going to be a great lesson, we’ll put in the beer my staff want’. It was an in-house experiment to get the judges’ feedback and when it came back they were like: ‘Ah, we get it.’

“So now they understand what we’re trying to achieve and that batch was not acceptable.”

Of the eight gold medals, and multiple trophies there were a couple of highlights over and above the performance of Tropical Cyclone.

The gold medal for his Cherimoya & Sage Sour Ale was particularly special.

“Those Smuggler’s Bay beers are my babies, I do them all myself. I have staff help me when it’s time for packaging but outside of that those are my creative playground, so any time those do well is a personal ego boost.”

The gold for Harvest Moon, a dark IPA, was also personally satisfying.

“That beer is the staff favourite, there’s a keg on at the Pizza Barn at the moment and it’s what we have at the end of the day, every day. I absolutely adore that beer, it’s one of the all-time favourite beers I’ve made and it’s also under-appreciated. I think if more people tried it, they would enjoy it.”

Bathgate says previous awards success hasn’t necessarily translated into commercial success, but he saw a major uptick in sales of Tropical Cyclone after it won the Champion Beer.

“With each batch of Trop Cyc we do around 180 cases and some kegs, and we sold through that and had to make it a couple of more times, so this year we did feel a little poke, which was nice.”

McLeod's

The hope now is for a good summer after a lean winter.

“Our Auckland keg sales have been pretty bad,” Bathgate admits. “But I’ve talked to some other people and they’ve done way worse, so maybe our reputation might have helped us.

“The past three months haven’t been great and I haven’t heard one other person say it’s been awesome.

“But we are feeling bullish for Christmas. If the weather’s good everyone will do well. If the weather’s shit then it will be more of the same.”

In the wake of Cyclone Gabrielle in 2023, and ongoing repairs to the road north from of Auckland over the subsequent 18 months, Far North businesses —including the famed McLeod’s Pizza Barn — could definitely use a hot summer, so here’s hoping the only tropical cyclone this year, is the one that hits the back of your palate!