Major brewers' prices stay ahead of CPI

One of the reasons DB Breweries has given for lifting beer prices this month is that prices have not kept up with the Consumers Price Index in recent years.

"Yeah, right", as its Tui billboard says. In the last nine years (June 1999 to March 2008) the CPI has risen by 61%, but beer prices rose by 82%. Wine prices rose by only 40%.

Breweries usually adjust prices on July 1, when the tax on alcohol goes up, by the annual CPI increase. The two breweries' annual price rise last July was 5.5%, 1.5% more than the CPI in the previous 12 months.

In the last six months of last year the CPI rose by only 1% yet DB last week raised packaged beer by 5% and tap beer by 2%, and Lion Breweries will do the same from the end of the month.

Expensive, too?

Organic food always seems to be dearer than non-organic.

Household surveys show that most think organic is the same as spray-free or grown without pesticide and herbicide sprays.

But it is more than that.

Processed foods carrying the claim organic certainly use spray-free ingredients, but the food also contains minimal or no synthetic additives like stabilisers, emulsifiers, antioxidants, preservatives or colouring agents.

The same is true for organic beer.

If a food label states the product is certified organic, the ingredients are organic and also free of genetically-modified ingredients. It takes a lot of time and effort for growers to convince BioGro NZ to certify their produce as organic, which adds to the cost and therefore price.

Certified organic malted barley for beer, for example, costs up to two-thirds more than non-certified. Most hops are grown organically now, but not all are certified and do not, therefore, carry a price premium.

Dunedin-based Emerson's Pilsner is one of the best of its style in the country, and one of the first organic pilsners to be made here in 1995.

Westport-based West Coast Brewery produces the Green Fern Organic Lager which has also won gold medals and trophies. This one is certified organic.

The first fully organic brewery was Founders, near Nelson, which is also vegan in that no isinglass (powdered fish bladder) is used to help clarify the beer.

The name of Dunedin-based Green Man Brewery (which is certified organic and whose beers are also suitable for vegan drinkers) is a clue to its culture: the Green Man is, in mythology, a connection between mankind and the natural world.

Tom Jones, who established the brewery in 2004, is proud to be a greenie, is into sustainability, reusing cartons and bottles and recycling the rest. About a third of bottles are refilled. Green Man produces 11 styles of beer (my favourite is an unfiltered lager called Keller).

Whitecliffs, at Urenui, north of New Plymouth, is also certified. Aotearoa Breweries in Kawerau has been producing Mata organic labels since 2005.

- Ric Oram.