By Eva Kershaw of Frank Film
Richard Emerson is lauded as the godfather of New Zealand craft beer.
His name may ring a bell – “Emerson’s” is branded on the red-banner logo that sits on the label of some of this country’s most loved craft brews.
Emerson’s has been a paragon of the Dunedin brewing scene since it was first founded in 1992. From its conception on a kitchen stovetop to early production using repurposed dairy vats, it’s not just the brewery that has an interesting history. The founder himself has a pretty good story too.
Emerson was nine years old when his grandfather, a Dunedin home brewer, came down the path of his backyard garden carrying a jug of beer with a large, creamy, frothy head.
“I’ll never forget the memory of that,” says Emerson. Decades later, his own brewery was sold to Lion Corporate as a standalone business unit for $8 million, with Emerson remaining involved in the company as head brewer.
How has he done so well?
“I’m not just an ordinary guy,” Emerson tells Frank Film, pouring a pint of London porter, “I’m someone with something a little bit different.”
Richard Emerson wears his heart on his beer. His latest offering, a heavy German Weissebeir, is named Ingrid, after his mother who died last year.
It was Ingrid who taught Emerson, who was born profoundly deaf, to lip-read. From a very young age, Emerson learned to watch peoples’ faces and track their muscle movements while they talked (this was long before the 2006 passing of the New Zealand Sign Language Bill).
“Mum was doing the hard yards in getting me to speak,” says Emerson. “Not many people realise the amount of effort it takes to learn. So, it’s a good tribute to my mother, doing a damn good job of bringing me up, not only to be a speaking person in a hearing world, but also to make beer.”
Emerson’s spiced ale is called Taieri George. The name mimics a misspelling by the Dunedin city council in honouring Emerson’s father, George Emerson, former associate professor of biochemistry at Otago University and co-founder of Taieri Gorge rail journey, while also acknowledging George’s support for his son’s brewery dreams.
Even Emerson’s popular 1812 pale ale takes its name from the last four digits of the Emerson’s phone number.
“We thought it had a good ring to it,” quips Emerson.
As a teenager, Emerson began brewing beer on his mother’s stove top – producing 4.5 litres at a time.
In 1992, after being kicked out of his mother’s kitchen, Emerson began setting up his own brewery. He spent three months fitting out the brewhouse with borrowed, restored, and re-purposed equipment where possible – which included modifying dairy vats to save on costs.
He took his first barrel of London porter to the happy hour at his father’s Biochemistry department. “They were my very first customer,” says Emerson.
The brand grew quickly, from producing 3000 litres per annum in its first few years to 14000 litres per annum in 2003, by which time the brewery was required to shift to a larger site for the second time.
By 2012, Emerson felt it was time to give back to his shareholders, as “they were in their golden years.”
He had been shoulder tapped by a number of larger businesses, but Lion stood apart because it vowed to keep the brewery based in its hometown.
“Lion realised that Emerson’s was part of Dunedin,” says Emerson. “There was no point taking it somewhere else.”
Emerson remains involved with the company as head brewer and chief taste tester.
“Quality control,” he says, “is such a hard job.”
Emerson’s sales and marketing manager Greg Menzies estimates that Emerson’s now sits amongst the top four craft breweries in New Zealand volume wise.
“When Lion purchased Emerson’s, we were brewing about 900,000 litres of beer, and now we brew in excess of 2.5 million litres,” he says, admitting that the demand for Pilsner has grown so much that some of it must now be brewed in Auckland.
In 2016, Emerson’s opened a brewery and taproom in central Dunedin. Emerson insisted that, to honour Dunedin tradition, the official ceremony involved bagpipes. “Fine for him,” states the inscription on the plaque. “He didn’t have to listen to them.”
“We had to have a home for the brewery so people could come and have a beer, have a meal,” says Emerson.
And beer, he says, is class-less.
“It’s not like wine, that people are a bit snobby about. People just want to get together and have a beer and enjoy life.”
