If New Zealanders could choose their titular saint of beer and brewing, Joel Polack must be a leading contender. The trader and land speculator established New Zealand’s first permanent brewery at Kororareka/Russell in 1835, importing the machinery, the hops and a brewer from Australia in what he promoted as “a preventative to the then rapid spread of deleterious spirits”. Polack’s enterprise was the springboard from which bounced the proverbial land of rugby, racing and, yes, beer.
Times and attitudes change but honest-to-goodness beer arguably underpins our national psyche, for better or worse – if no longer flowing entirely from the citadels of the beer moguls but also from a web of small craft breweries.
Ryan’s encyclopedic history contains a pervading bouquet of hops and a complex cultural palate with hints of political spice, shifting consumer tastes and commercial machinations.
He suggests the country’s history of beer-making and consumption should be examined in its own right as a major facet of our social history. The problem, as he notes, is that the story of beer in New Zealand has been submerged beneath the noise and fury of campaigns to ban it. “Too much of the existing literature is too inclined to take prohibitionist literature at face value and is largely devoid of meaningful international comparisons.”
Ryan plunges into the complex story of Aotearoa’s relationship with the frothy stuff, commencing with that fabled first New Zealand brew manufactured by the crew of the Resolution anchored in Dusky Sound in April 1773. The nautical Georgian home brewers incorporated rimu and mānuka leaves into a beer that even the notably picky Captain Cook described as “a very good, well-tasted small beer”.
By 1830, New South Wales was exporting 3300 litres of beer to New Zealand’s growing European population. Missionaries and Māori were also home brewing their own “beer” from sow thistle juice, supplejack roots, mataī sap, kohekohe bark and bush honey. Details of this concoction remain, mercifully, unclear.
Throughout the first half of the 19th century, New Zealand consumed substantially larger quantities of spirits and wine per head than Britain but substantially less beer. This pattern remained until the 1870s, due partially to importing difficulties and the time taken to establish a domestic brewing industry.
But Ryan says evidence to support the anecdotal image of the land of the long white hangover during the colony’s early decades remains sketchy. What is fact is that beer became an integral part of life here ‒ “an important feature of daily rituals and public occasions and an indicator of prosperity and stability”.
In war and peace, even during the acrimonious public debates over prohibition, beer emerged as our preferred alcohol of choice. The brewing industry became a vital part of the economy and the beer barons exerted substantial political and social pressure. Ryan’s history also reflects the influence that increasingly polished advertising played for decades in moulding public perceptions of beer as New Zealand’s national drink. It evokes potent images of an honest, straightforward beer-drinking, rugby-playing nation where men drank DB or Lion Pale Ale while – much later – women sipped smaller glasses of Steinlager. Throughout the 20th century, the images and words used in beer advertising also mirrored a changing society when the six o’clock swill gave way to more civilised drinking hours and beer took on a new, sophisticated image.
As a social history, Ryan’s book is endlessly fascinating. One to slowly sip and savour.
