Co-founders Paul Brown and Jarred MacLachlan. Photo / Supplied
Co-founders Paul Brown and Jarred MacLachlan. Photo / Supplied
Just months ago Deep Creek beer was only sold at the owners' three bars around Auckland.
But after winning a couple major awards, they can now be found across New Zealand and will soon hit the national market in Australia.
Already the brewery is selling craft beer in Melbourne where it recently won the Champion Small International Brewery Trophy at the Australian International Beer Awards.
Co-founder Jarred MacLachlan said the beer was performing well in Melbourne.
"It's a craft beer city, much like Wellington," he said, "and we've managed to get some good presence there."
Everything seems to have happened at once for the Auckland brewers. Prior to winning the Australian award, Deep Creek signed a national distribution deal with alcohol supplier Hancocks. This coincided with the brewery winning two gold medals at the New World Beer and Cider awards which also won them shelf space across the country at New World supermarkets.
One of their beers, the Double IPA, performed so well on the shelves, New World decided to keep it in its core beer range. Deep Creek is now projecting a 70 per cent increase in volume from March 2017 to March 2018.
MacLachlan, and other co-founder Paul Brown, say they've already had interest from bigger breweries.
"There's always big breweries sniffing around for smaller ones," MacLachlan said. "But we're focused on doing our own thing."
"Never say never," Paul said, "it's just not our focus at the moment."
While Wellington remains king of craft beer, MacLachlan said Auckland is showing a lot of potential.
"Bar owners who are coming off big brewery contracts are ringing us up and saying 'hey can we put a couple taps in?'" he said.
For Deep Creek, the Auckland-Wellington rivalry is a friendly and positive one.
"While there's certainly a rivalry, it's a good rivalry. It ensures we are all making a top quality product. It keeps us always pushing to be at the next level," MacLachlan said.
"The craft brewing industry is very collaborative, we know all the brewers but we compete with them too," he said.
"It's always a good trip to Wellington."
The brewers are now preparing for a national distribution contact in Australia which will kick off in the next few months. This means changing priorities for Deep Creek and they will be putting two of their bars on the market in order to refocus and grow their brewery.
"We traditionally focused on our bars," MacLachlan said, "but now it's time to focus on the brewery."
