American craft brewer Matt Walsh will visit Dunedin to attend this weekend's Craft Beer and Food Festival. He tells Rebecca Fox about the craft beer movement in the United States.
Man's passion for beer is well-documented, so it should come as no surprise to hear that he gave up a high-paying job to sweep the floors in a brewery.
The American is now the head brewer at Modern Times Beer, the fourth-largest independent brewer in San Diego.
He is being brought to New Zealand by Wellington-based specialist beer importers Beer Without Borders and will be guest speaker at Dunedin's beer festival.
His journey began like many in the craft beer industry, as an enthusiastic home brewer. He had been in the military for many years in an engineering capacity and continued to work with them in the private sector afterwards.
''I gave up a well-paying job with benefits for a low-paying job. I totally changed careers,'' he said.
As luck would have it, the ''second wave'' of craft beer popularity in the mid-1990s came about as he hit drinking age.
''It was new and exciting.''
So while he was still young enough to make a risky change in career, he chucked in the engineering for a $6 an hour job in a brewery.
''It wasn't a lot of money then and isn't now. I cleaned kegs and scrubbed floors and I was lucky my previous experience in engineering lent itself to the job.''
There was a lot of science involved in the ''craft'' of brewing so it married together well, he said.
It was a process he advised others to follow, especially if they had no commercial experience of running a brewery.
''Go in at entry level. See how tough it is for a year as an entry-level grunt, and if you are still keen, go for it.''
Mr Walsh now oversees a brewery which specialises in ''sessional'' beers, which in the United States means beers which you can have two or three glasses of and ''not fall off your chair''.
The beers were ''packed full'' of flavour and aroma, but without the high levels of alcohol normally associated with craft beer, he said.
Their highest alcohol level was a 6.8% ''hoppy, tropical, amber ale''.
Many craft beers were around 9% alcohol, which over the course of a ''session'' could mean a person drinking two pints of beer was in fact having nearly three, he said.
Modern Times was a 30-barrel brew house, which this year produced about 20,000 barrels of beer.
To be a ''craft brewery'' in the US you have to produce less than 6 million barrels of beer.
As one of the rare breweries which also had a coffee roastery on site, they combined both into a coffee stout.
It also did saison-style beers, based on a style traditionally popular in Belgium and two ''hoppy'' low alcohol (5%) wheat India Pale Ales.
They were regularly trialling new beers thanks to the flexibility of their brewery, which enabled them to do smaller batches to try out different flavours and combinations.
''We try things out on ourselves not on our customers, and even when we do put something out, we rely on feedback from sales and the internet to fine tune. Making beer is a very collaborative process.''
The craft beer industry in the US had gone through three waves of popularity, he believed.
The first in the late 1970s, when laws changed allowing small breweries to operate, but they struggled with limited interest from drinkers used to picking up their favourite six-pack from the big brewers.
The second wave came in the 1990s and saw a lot more variety in beers start to hit the shelves.
The third, and strongest, wave had come in recent times due to increased globalisation and people having greater willingness to try new flavours, experiences and tastes in food and beer, he said.
While the process of brewing was basically the same as it had always been, what had changed was the availability of ingredients and equipment.
''I buy a lot of New Zealand hops. Ten years ago, that would have been impossible.''
One of the biggest challenges for craft brewers was finding ways to pack their beer well and in a cost-effective way so a drink did not cost $20.
''It's hard to package and make beer last.''
Four years ago, the cost of canning beer was prohibitive and unaffordable for small breweries.
But since the popularity of craft breweries was growing, companies were willing to take the risk to provide the technology to support them, he said.
''Other entrepreneurs are coming out with machines to can beer that are within our budgets.''
In the US, IPA-style beers were still the most popular as the trend towards older traditional brewing styles became popular.
''These are styles that have often fallen out of favour in their home countries. There are a lot more traditional European styles making a big resurgence in the US.''
