CSB - Michael Donaldson - Beer chat

Weekly beer chinwag.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This is the Country Sport Breakfast with Brian Kelly on
gold Sport A long time ago, way back in history.
Well there was to drink whilst nothing but up to
teen along came on. But the name of honey wonderful

(00:23):
that he needed.

Speaker 2 (00:25):
Time to fill our glass with a nice cool cleansing
ale and talk beer with Michael Donaldson. This morning, Morning, Michael.

Speaker 1 (00:33):
Morning Brian.

Speaker 2 (00:34):
There's a brewery I believe that is celebrating its twentieth anniversary,
which I think with local breweries, that's quite something, isn't it.

Speaker 1 (00:42):
Twenty years is quite something, to be honest. You know,
there was a few years ago we had a lot
of people turned ten and that was sort of they
were the ones who were all catching the boom, if
you like, around twenty ten, eleven, twelve. But for some
to be turning twenty, that means they were in the

(01:03):
business before it all got trendy.

Speaker 2 (01:05):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:06):
So yeah, and that means you know, you've probably done
five or ten quite hard years at the start, you know,
just trying to convince people probably to have a go
at what you're doing. And it was certainly a lot
harder in the early part of the twenty first century.
So the yeah, the brewery we're talking about is called
Sawmill and they're based up in Mattakana, just outside of

(01:28):
Auckland for those who know. It very close to Auckland
now because they've got a new motorway that sort of
sprints through the hills there and you don't have to
do all the windy road, so you know, you can
get to Mattakana in about forty five minutes or an
hour or so instead of an hour and a half.

Speaker 2 (01:45):
So you know, and there beers are readily available around
the country too, aren't they.

Speaker 1 (01:50):
Yeah, saw Miller one of those breweries. They're kind of
you know, in golf, they talk about people who are
sneaky long. You know, they don't look like they hit
the ball hard, but it goes a long way. Padrick
Harrington was one of those anyway, So Sawmiller kind of sneaky,
sneaky long. In terms of their distribution, they're in a

(02:12):
lot of places, a lot of bars and restaurants, a
lot of golf clubs to be honest, you know, and
and they're widely available, but very prominent supermarket bear so
and part of that's just been around a long time.
But they're a little bit different to some other breweries
in the business because they've got this certificate certification called

(02:37):
bee Corp. And have you heard of that Bee Corp?

Speaker 2 (02:40):
No, but you can explain, yeah, yeah, it's a sort of.

Speaker 1 (02:44):
You know, in this day and age where we're all
sort of everyone's trying to be low carbon and sustainable
and all that kind of stuff. B Corps this international
agency that basically goes around and inspects businesses, but it's
not just on your actual energy efficiency or sustainability or
anything like that. They also look at how you do

(03:06):
business and that you're ethical and you look after your people,
you know, So it's environment people, just the whole I
guess methodology of what you're doing. And it's really hard
to get the court status and Sawmiller the only brewery
in New Zealand to have this, and so they do

(03:29):
a really good job on just all the waste and
the carbon use. And I can't the list of things
that you have to do to get this is seemingly
endless and I don't know how people actually do it,
but you know that they've managed to get this be

(03:50):
Corpse data, so it's really quite a cool thing. And
they're doing it in a you know, up in a
sort of small viligion, semi rural Auckland.

Speaker 2 (04:02):
Yes, to celebrate their twentieth anniversary. Are they releasing anything special?

Speaker 1 (04:09):
Well, one of the things that I've noticed, one of
my favorite beers from them is called used to be
called Extra pale Ale, and it's just been re released
in this kind of lovely looking lemon colored can because
it's got quite sort of a bright lemony citrus pascete

(04:29):
to it. But they've rebranded it as X a bit
like you know how Twitter got rebranded. This beer is
just called x so x pale Ale and yeah, it's
in this nice, light, lemony yellow can. Four point nine percent,
really delicious grape summer beer. And so I'm thinking that's

(04:54):
kind of a summary birthday beer to celebrate with. But
they do a a whole range of They've got a
great two and a half percent there called Nimble, which
I have a lot that's on tap it my golf club,
and it's really nice when you want to have a
couple of quick pints after a round of golf but

(05:16):
still drive home. So yeah, and it's delicious, you know.
They's just everything they do is really good and it's
a great place to go and visit. And you know
they've got a restaurant they're called the Smoko Room, and
you know it's on the main highway just out of Adakana.
For anyone that's in the area and looking to visit,

(05:37):
you just keep going through the township about sort of
four k's and you come to the brewery on the
side of the road there. So if you're in the area,
absolutely worth a visit. But you can find it most
of any good supermarkets, they'll have some Sawmill.

Speaker 2 (05:51):
Happy Birthday, Happy twentieth to saw Mill Brewery. They've got
the X factor. I love it. Michael, always good to
always good to chat. BM mate, let's do it next week.

Speaker 1 (06:00):
Absolutely, I'll be there one, two, three, four five.

Speaker 2 (06:12):
Yeah, damn good drinking song that one from the Clancy Brothers.
Beer Beer Beer. Michael Donaldson joining us as he always
does on a Tuesday morning here the country Sport Brick