A Letter to NZ Brewers

Michael O’Brien of Craftwork Brewery in Oamaru argues for more organic malt.

We are a very small brewery tucked away in a small town in a small country. The beer we make is what we like to drink and it’s not to everyone’s taste, nor budget.

However, we think we’ve done well, with quite a few medals and a good deal of publicity for our nano-plant.

When we started out in 2014, we bought local and organic. That meant malt from Gladfield in Canterbury; hops mostly from NZ Hops in Motueka; golden sugar from Taste Nature in Dunedin; spices and fruit from our own gardens and the Organic Larder in Oamaru.

We decided that we were too small to be an organic brewery and the cost of registering as an organic producer is prohibitive. So we labelled accordingly, listing organic ingredients as such. As we brew Belgian styles, most of our beers are up to 95 per cent organic. Two beers, with very simple grain bills are 100 per cent organic.

Just before Christmas Gabi told us Gladfield would no longer be able to supply organic pilsner malt. An earlier warning was that they no longer certified their pilsner malt as organic. I was shocked as I never expected that and was obviously in denial as I ignored the warning signs of deregistration.

A quick look around, revealed other breweries we knew to produce an organic beer no longer seemed to do so, with “organic” removed from labelling. The reason for organic pilsner malt to be dropped was lack of demand. As much as we’d like to use more organic malt and do our part, we use all the malt our 100 litre brewery can handle.

In a recent trip to Belgium we found many classic producers, such as Brasserie Dupont, make an organic beer which sits alongside their conventional products. And one of the most famous breweries in the world, Cantillon in Brussels, is completely organic.

I remember an optimistic push from the Soil and Health people back in the 1990s for an organic, GM-free New Zealand by 2020. Four years out from that goal, organic production of New Zealand grown barley malt has ceased. Meanwhile, coffee for example has gone to organic free trade as the norm rather than as an anomaly. Top restaurants and chefs also vie for local and organic produce, which is no longer seen as weird but better, fresher and tastier. Yet beer drinkers, who never been more discerning and spoilt for choice, cannot buy locally-produced organic beer.

Yes, the organic malt is more expensive, around $50 a bag as opposed to $30 but I appeal to the brewers of New Zealand to have a big think about this important and symbolic issue.  Gladfield need about 5 tonnes of malt orders per annum to sustain demand for organic malt. One medium sized brewery could secure that on its own.

For us to remain organic, it will mean importing the malt from the other side of the planet, which adds food miles we needn’t spend if we could source our own product from our own unique terroir.