Bootleg Brewery – for the Love of Beer
However, a different Graafhuis family member is credited with planting the seed of a beer idea. “I’d just come back from overseas and my brother Rhys gave me a home brewing kit for Christmas,” Fraser says. “It was pretty basic, just one of those big plastic fermenters, and it sat in my cupboard for a year. But one day I got it out and made a brew. I found I just loved everything about it, the whole process of taking these raw ingredients, putting them together and a month later you’ve got this amazing beer.”
An early win
“It didn’t take long and I think I was making beers better than the ones I could buy. It was such a cool thing to do.” The addictive hobby evolved into a business when the policy planner joined forces with former schoolmate and insurance broker Jaden Hatwell to launch Bootleg Brewery Ltd. Within a year, the duo’s Apehanger IPA beer had collected a ‘best strong ale’ gong at the 2017 Brewers Guild awards. It was only their fourth attempt at a commercial brew.
Ownership has since expanded to include friends Elton Ward and Nick Binnie as well as the two Graafhuis siblings. In 2020, the friends renovated one section of the boiler house building to launch their Bootleg Brewery taproom between Covid lockdowns. They would finish their respective day jobs and give up weekends to wield tools. “We did it ourselves. It was our blood and sweat, out there doing the fit-out every night for six months. Sometimes till horrendously late.”
Hands-on hard slog
“I’ve got video footage of my sister, who’s an accountant for a big firm, on a tractor doing demo work removing concrete. Simon, who’s chief executive of the Chiefs Rugby Club, is really good at the business side but he also rolled his sleeves up and did a huge amount of the building work. Nick is a draftsman and good builder, so he did all the drawings for the consents and our brewer Elton slogged his guts out doing the building and fit-out.
“I had two little kids so I’d work all day, tuck the kids in and work half the night, till 1am or 2am.”
The work has paid off in the shape of a rustic, welcoming community space strung with lights and dotted with a leather sofa, old church pews and a rusty train carriage dubbed the Alabama Express. And great beer, of course; their own ever-changing range, with guest appearances from other independent New Zealand breweries.
Beer with personality
In 2022, Bootleg’s T-Straight Burnout Smokey Stout won a top 30 place in New World supermarket’s national beer and cider awards. The dark beer - deemed to have a gentle smoky bacon aroma and sweet, creamy chocolate palate. In 2023, the brewery nabbed two places on the top 30 list, overtaking about 800 entrants to win with Late Night Monk Fight Belgian Quad and Apehanger IPA. “We’ve always tried to make beer that’s got personality.
“I always say we make Ken doll beers on Barbie doll kit. People look at our brewery and scratch their head because our fermenters are tiny, it’s pretty unimpressive to look at. So we’ve had to make every bottle of beer count and have as much impact as possible. Covid reinforced this principle, as was a matter of survival.”
While Fraser has passed along the brewing baton, he still gets a kick out of the creative side of the business. In its first two years at the Matangi location, Bootleg Brewery produced more than 100 different kinds of beer. He loves to conjure beer recipes and dream up cheeky new names like Red-Nek, Lemme-Kill-Mr, Pea-Knuckle-LADA or Flat Earth pale ale.
A community hub
The owners and their patrons appreciate the site’s rich history; the brewery and taproom sit inside what was once the world’s biggest dairy factory. It is associated with some of New Zealand’s most significant brands including Anchor butter and the New Zealand Co-operative Dairy Co that would become dairy giant Fonterra. Nestle Condensed Milk was once canned in the building next to the boiler house. “In future, there will be more activity and regeneration here like residential and visitor accommodation and more commercial retail premises. In the meantime, we could see the locals desperately wanted a place to call theirs.”
The taproom offers occasional live music venue and features a rotation of visiting food trucks to feed patrons. Otherwise it provides simple fare - hot dogs, cheese platters and toasted sandwiches made with locally-produced Meyer cheese and Volare bread - from its undersized kitchen. “So we’re half craft brew pub, half community hub. And we’re determined to stay true to our roots to the diversity, flavour and taste of great beer styles. I think our motto to ‘outrun ordinary beer’ sums us up pretty well.”
