Epic Beer

Selling beer at the equivalent price of a serviceable bottle of discount wine during a recession has proved surprisingly easy for an Auckland craft brewer.

Three-year-old Epic Beer has enjoyed 200 per cent growth over the past year after similar growth the year before. The company ranks within the top five craft labels in the country by size but compared with the big breweries it is tiny.

Founder Luke Nicholas says the recession had proved positive in spite of his beer selling for between $6 and $7 for a 500ml bottle.

While people were cautious about making big purchases of cars and furniture, those who had not lost jobs still had money.

'They were thinking, 'Let's go and buy something better than we normally buy."'

This resulted in a surge in demand he struggled to cope with in winter.

"I was completely behind the eight ball."

Nicholas is a commerce graduate and says a hobby became a business when he started working for a web-linked United States brewery realbeer.com between 1999 and 2001.

He said it was an idea ahead of its time and became a victim of the dotcom crash, however he is optimistic the connections he made in the US will pay off for Epic, which grew out of the Cock and Bull pub chain here.

In the first half of this year Nicholas will start exporting by the pallet-load to the US, selling through niche bottle shops, avoiding big chains.

"I'm not out there to take on Budweiser or anything because it's top end. If they wanted a container every week then that would be an issue."

There were now about 50 craft brewers in New Zealand and numbers are growing against a fall in beer sales of 4 to 5 per cent suffered by DB in the year to September.

Nicholas said he would not follow large global brewers which are trying to get drinkers on to low carbohydrate, or mid-strength beers.

"I kind of know what they're saying but their messages are very similar. They're giving the consumer warm fuzzies about 'if I drink this beer it's healthy for me'."

Epic's Armageddon beer has an alcohol content of 6.66 per cent and all lines are promoted and have won awards for their strong hop flavours.

The company also wants to expand in Australia and to Europe.

NZ Herald Article Link

Recently I came across an old post which listed the top 10 things Epic Beer achieved in 2008. I thought it would be fun to do it again this Christmas eve and highlight the top 10 things of 2009.

2009 was an amazing year, which then begs the question "can 2010 be as Epic"?

So for 2009 here are the achievements/highlights which I would rate as the top 10 for Epic Beer (maybe not exactly this order, but close enough).

1. Traveled to the UK to brew 100,000 pints of Epic Pale Ale at Everards Brewery for the JD Wetherspoons International Real Ale Festival in March. Video footage from the UK & the brewing.

2. Exporting to Australia started in May. As sales started to grow I made a visit to Melbourne to see what all the fuss was about.

3. In April I returned to the UK for the JD Wetherspoons Interntaional Real Ale Festival, and had the privilege of meeting Pete Brown, prior to his Hops & Glory book launch, which lead to the inspiration for the Interislander voyage (see point 5) Anyway back to this point, brewing with Kiwi Brewer, Kelly Ryan at the Thornbridge Brewery and making a special batch of Epic Halcyon. Then Kelly shipped a couple of mini casks to NZ for us to do a special tasting.

4. Bringing back Epic Armageddon IPA, as a seasonal and bottling it for the first time, then winning a Gold & Best in Class trophy for it. Armageddon created a lot of excitement in the NZ craft beer industry this year, hence the extended effort of video to bring in the back story of how it evolved

5. Sea Conditioning of Armageddon IPA, in American oak barrels on the Inter-islander. Six weeks and 126 crossings of the Cook Strait to recreate the ocean voyage from England to India. This beer was then sold for $5.00 for a 100ml tasting at Beervana held in Wellington, end of August.

6.  Launch of the Epic Beer Video Profile produced by Made from New Zealand

7. Bottled Mayhem made a couple of brief appearances in 2009 (February & December) Expect to see more in 2010

8. Change from 6 packs to 4 packs to make Epic more affordable, plus for Christmas making all four Epic Beers available (Family of 4 = Pale Ale, Lager, Mayhem and Armageddon)

9. The Epic Shoe

10. Twitter saw a huge switch in awareness by the online masses in 2009. @epicbeer grew from 500 followers to nearly 4000 in just 12 months. Also @epicbeer is one of the top 10 New Zealand brands using Twitter, and was the first brewery in the world to adopt this new technology to communicate with its fans.

I'd like to thank everyone that has supported, followed, friended, retweeted and bought Epic Beer this year. Without you all Epic wouldn't continue to become available in more and more outlets around New Zealand and Australia, plus I would have an awful lot of beer to drink by myself. Consumer demand wins at the end of the day (go the Naki).

I hope you all have a wonderful Christmas and a prosperous New Year. Hope I get a chance in 2010 to catch up and have a beer with you somewhere on my travels.

Keep drinking the good stuff

Cheers

Luke Nicholas

P.S. Don't forget Santa

BACK in 2006 Epic brewer Luke Nicholas brewed a festive beer for BrewNZ.

The brew was assertively called Mayhem and threatened to “willfully maim and cripple the palates of the most extreme hop head”. Formulated as a bigger bolder stronger version of the award winning Epic Pale Ale, Mayhem caused a real stir amongst those who tried it.

Mayhem was packed full of the same resinous piney stone fruit laced American hop aromas and flavours as Epic Pale Ale but with a higher level of intensity and a bigger slightly richer malt body.

Two years later Epic Armageddon would raise the stakes higher but at the time Mayhem was the last word in monstrously hopped New Zealand beers. Despite its success the beer didn’t return until February this year when it included a proportion of New Zealand Riwaka hops.

Now Mayhem’s back again, and for the first time you can try it side by side with both its little brother Pale Ale and its bigger brother Armageddon. Despite its muscular name Mayhem is not merely a blunt blast of hops but rather an expertly balanced package with a big complex nose of ripe peach, nectarine, lychee and melon.

In the mouth the beer has just enough firm sweet malt to support an array of fruity hop flavours with a lingering yet smooth finish.

Paired with something zesty and spicy like a Thai Squid Salad, a tall glass of Epic Mayhem may well be the perfect way to celebrate the arrival of summer.   

Cheers.

Link To Original Story

Today starts an epic series of beer tastings around Australasia.

Each link goes to a page with more details

13th October - Christchurch - Pomeroy's on Kilmore
(Official tasting sold out, but I will be in the bar from 4pm to 7pm talking about Epic Beer)

14th October - Christchurch - Pomeroy's on Kilmore
(maybe even a chance to try Armageddon on tap for the first time in the South Island)

20th October - Auckland -Elliott Stables - Six NZ Craft Beers
(Six beers, tutored tasting by Luke Nicholas, includes Epic Armageddon IPA)

29th October - Wellington - Malthouse Event
(secret)

17th November - Melbourne - Ale Stars - The Local Taphouse
(Luke to talk about his beers in Melbourne for the first time)

(Note: there maybe another tasting or two added to Melbourne for the 12th & 13th November, stay tuned)

Here is an article from the latest DrinksBiz magazine about Social Networking, which uses Epic Beer as a case study on how to use online social tools effectively.