Dunedin brewer Richard Emerson has built his business from humble beginnings, helped by his family, a few good friends and a taste for a nice drop. Chris Morris reports.
More than two million litres of beer later, the results of his hard labour - the Emerson's Brewery, on Wickliffe St, in Dunedin - include a staff of 12, annual turnover of $2 million and a stable of award-winning beers, including the wildly popular Emerson's Pilsner.
The company's beers are shipped to all corners of New Zealand, and even across the Tasman to Melbourne.
They have been good enough to earn the praises of (the late) world-leading English beer authority Michael Jackson, who in 1997 wrote that Emerson's was ''the best range of beers that I tasted'' after a tour of New Zealand.
They even earned Mr Emerson's brewery an avalanche of awards, including gold medals and the title of New Zealand champion at the BrewNZ Beer Awards last year.
Earlier this year, Mr Emerson won the trophy for the champion wheat beer at the prestigious Australian International Beer Awards with his seasonal brew, Weizenbock.
And, just last month, the Emerson Brewing Company won the Westpac Supreme Business Excellence Award at a black-tie function in Dunedin.
It is all a very long way away from the company's humble beginnings for Mr Emerson, who began experimenting with home brew in his mother's kitchen in 1986, before establishing a pilot plant in the garage of a friend's home in Ravensbourne two years later.
His tastebuds were sharpened while he savoured Europe's finest ales as a youth, aged just 18, on a year-long sojourn with his parents in the Scottish capital of Edinburgh in 1983.
He left behind a New Zealand beer scene dominated at the time by ''lager, draught, and dark'' brews that, on reflection, ''made me cringe''.
Scotland offered something different - not the least being able to drink legally when New Zealand's legal age was 20, which Mr Emerson said helped give him a ''head start on my peers''.
Scotland also offered something else - access to the United Kingdom and Europe's new world of beers and drinking culture.
''They were lovely, malty, complex and flavoursome compared with the New Zealand beers. Not only that, it was the way people treated the beers - and the pubs.
''You didn't go to someone else's house, you met them in the pub. It was more of a social gathering place ... rather than in New Zealand going on a Friday night binge.
''That gave me the determination later on to cultivate our drinking habits here in New Zealand - drinking less, but better.''
The seeds were sown, and began to germinate when Mr Emerson returned to Dunedin the following year.
He trained as a lab technician at Otago Polytechnic while working at the Gregg's malt extract company in Dunedin, taking advantage of access to the plant's equipment and study materials and the chance to work on his home brew.
In 1989, after being made redundant, Mr Emerson ventured across the Tasman to learn more, working at the Matilda Bay brewery in Perth, ''one of the early pioneers'' of craft brewing in Australia.
He then returned to Europe for a two-month trip around the continent's capitals and bars, travelling alone with two essentials - a European rail pass and a copy of Michael Jackson's beer guide - as he sampled his way around some of Germany and Belgium's finest beer producers, taking notes as he went.
After that came a six-month diversion in London, working as an operating theatre assistant - ''I couldn't handle the sight of blood, but I got used to it after a few days'' - before returning to Dunedin.
Encouraged by his parents, his sights then turned to what was to become his calling - establishing the Emerson's brewery.
After nearly two years of initial work, Emerson's Brewing Company Ltd was established in October 1992, based in a converted building at 4 Grange St, in north Dunedin.
Financing, in the form of $90,000 of start-up capital, came from Mr Emerson and a collection of his friends and family, who remain the core of the company's 18 shareholders.
However, even with their input, Mr Emerson said, the project remained ''severely undercapitalised'' for years.
The first brewing plant was a cobbled-together collection of modified dairy equipment and purpose-built items, he said.
However, before the beer could flow, the paint had to be applied, meaning Mr Emerson and his helpers spent long hours working with builders preparing the new brewery's base on a shoestring budget.
''I pretty much painted the whole building myself. I built the brewing plant on a shoestring budget, just to see if you could make a go of it.
''I had family, friends. I had the builders. I had my former workmates from Gregg's. We were able to cobble a few things together.
''The brewery, when I look back on it, was quite primitive, but I was able to make some beer.''
Four months later, in January 1993, the first results were bottled and hit the shelves - perhaps not surprisingly, a dark, creamy London porter with its roots in the oldest style of English beer.
The early years were about growing the brewery's cash flow, with Mr Emerson taking only a small share of profits and pouring the rest back into
developing the business.
The focus was on ''buying another tank; buying another pump, just to improve things'', he said.
Even the marketing budget was limited, consisting of crates of the product distributed to those who pitched in to help.
''I knew they would share it with their mates and word would get around ... People were actually drinking my advertising budget.''
More beers were to follow, however, including the Old Ale (later known as Old 95) in December 1993 and Best Bitter (later replaced by Bookbinder) in April 1994.
Nevertheless, it was a ''frustrating'' period of ''hard graft'' for limited reward for Mr Emerson, due to the limitations of the brewing equipment and the fact that most profits were poured back into the company.
''It took about three or four years and then the pace started to grow ... It was hard graft - very hard graft.''
It was a challenging period made more complicated by Mr Emerson's profound deafness.
He was born deaf in 1964 after his mother contracted rubella in Christchurch, and it meant his earliest days of paperwork in the Emerson's office required a telephone answering machine and a fax machine.
Those calling the office would leave a voice message, prompting Mr Emerson to call his father, George, and get him to check the message. George would write down the message and fax it to his son to read.
The arrival of cheap computers, emails and cellphones made life easier, but so too did lip-reading - a skill Mr Emerson thanks his parents for encouraging him to develop.
He laughs as he says he knows only two pieces of sign language, raising one middle finger and then the index finger beside it.
More beers followed as Mr Emerson sourced ingredients from New Zealand and Europe to produce his beers.
A significant milestone came in 1997 when, after years of hard slog, his beers won three gold medals and a silver at the New Zealand Brewersfest competition, as judged by beer authority Michael Jackson.
The Emerson's wheat beer Helles Weissbier was also named the overall winner after gold medal-winners were compared.
''That was a real defining moment ... having my beers acknowledged by him [Mr Jackson] was fantastic. I was on the right track,'' Mr Emerson said.
By 2000, the company had outgrown its Grange St site and the decision was made to relocate - across the street.
The company moved into a larger building at 9 Grange St and continued to flourish, adding new beers to its product range, and brewing more of them.
However, the new site was to be a temporary home.
By 2005 it was time to move again, as annual production reached 200,000 litres a year, meaning the brewery had again outgrown its base.
That led to a slow shift from Grange St to the brewery's current harbourside home on Wickliffe St.
The company has continued to flourish since, with a stable of 12 regular and seasonal beers sold to more than 400 outlets, and annual production doubling to 400,000 litres last year.
Distribution had also just achieved nationwide status, after sales recently began in Auckland, but the Dunedin market of restaurants, bars and other buyers still accounted for 35% of sales and remained the company's most important, he said.
There were no immediate plans to expand to export markets beyond Melbourne.
Export growth could be a ''quite costly and expensive'' exercise.
''We don't want to rush around taking on new customers without making sure we have the capacity, otherwise we will have egg on our face.''
Mr Emerson has also ''lost track'' of the number of awards received, but said each was an acknowledgement he and his staff were maintaining high standards.
''We have not let our standards down,'' he said. ''Quality and consistency - they are the two main things.''
One of the brewery's beers - Bookbinder, the New Zealand twist on an English bitter - started life as a seasonal release in 1996 but quickly became a regular and top-selling product, until surpassed by Emerson's Pilsner.
The Pilsner, unveiled in August 1995, now accounted for half the company's total production, he said.
''You have to find what clicks with the public. Some beers will never be big sellers, but they have their cult following.''
Asked what his own favourite was, Mr Emerson's laugh returns - that, he says, is ''the wrong question''.
The right question, he insists, is to ask instead what beer perfectly suits the situation.
However, he still reflects on what might have been his best brew - the 14 dozen bottles of beer brewed while working in the Ravensbourne garage all those years ago, 10 dozen of which were eventually abandoned and tipped down the drain.
Four dozen weren't and were instead stored while Mr Emerson travelled through Europe.
Upon his return, he was handed one of the remaining four dozen to sample, and mistook its taste for Belgian beer Duvel.
The rest was lost and was unlikely to be replicated, he believed.
''I couldn't believe it. It's a crying shame.''
It is a passion for his craft that drives Mr Emerson, with sleepless nights and the occasional ''wet dream'' - drooling on a pillow - as he considers his latest brew.
With his staff of 12 including a dedicated administration and production team, Mr Emerson's time was dedicated to experimenting with and developing new ideas and ingredients for beers.
''It's not possible for me to do everything now. If I get bogged down with the day-to-day running of the business, it would stifle the creativity,'' he said.
The industry had also changed in his time running the brewery, with the number of craft breweries in New Zealand more than doubling from 20 to 50.
That included the Green Man Brewery, started by former Emerson's worker Tom Jones, whose brewery took over from Emerson's at the 9 Grange St site in 2005.
At the same time, despite continuing concern over New Zealand's binge-drinking culture, Mr Emerson detected a shift away from booze barns and towards more sophisticated beers and intimate drinking environments.
''The market is shifting towards smaller intimate bars that are personal - more like the English pub,'' he said.
''It's something I have been wanting to [encourage] and it's slowly changing, but it's taking a while to move the old Kiwi boozing image.''
The advice he had for others wanting to follow in similar footsteps was simple - pursue something you love and do it well.
''I took a hobby and turned it into a business.
''If they are very, very passionate about the industry and prepared to work long hours to make money out of it, that's good.''
