McCashin's Story, The: How Craft Beer Got Started in New Zealand by McCashins

Author:McCashins [John McCrystal & Simon Farrell-Green]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781775534655
Publisher: Random House New Zealand
Published: 2013-09-14T16:00:00+00:00

On Friday afternoons, after work, everyone would stop and gather in the smoko room for drinks and fish and chips. Before the brewery got under way everyone drank cider, but now they had a choice of cider or beer. Terry had been approached by the owners of an experimental salmon farm at Takaka who were trying out different things as fish food, and wanted to give yeast a go. Terry happily supplied the yeast in exchange for salmon. For a time, everyone looked forward to Friday evenings with Mac’s ale and slabs of barbecued salmon.

Beer sales remained slow, however. Occasionally an order would come in, but there were long periods when things were just flat. They still had their regulars, who would roll up to the kiosk to have their flagons filled. Sheila Pollitt remembers one who wouldn’t even get out of his car. His little Morris Minor would roll up, he would honk the horn and roll his window down. He was lame in one leg. Terry and Bev recruited Graeme, an intellectually handicapped boy, to assemble the cardboard boxes that they used to put bottles into. He did an excellent job until the union learned he was being paid according to the number of cartons he made, not under any sort of award, whereupon they had to let him go.

So there was no shortage of hard work going in. All the McCashins needed now was some luck. Terry went on sinking money into plant and equipment without seeing any returns. But there was no going back. One day when he was chatting to his accountant in Wellington, Lindsay asked him how he was feeling.

‘It’s exciting,’ Terry replied. ‘But I’m also shit-scared. It’s like having a tiger by the tail.’

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