Wednesday, 01 September 2010
KAWERAU’S Aotearoa Breweries has won another clutch of awards at the Brew NZ awards in Wellington.
The brewery, which produces the Mata range of beers, is regularly named among the winners at the annual awards and this year is no exception, with three being judged worthy of some top prizes on Thursday night.
Mata Manuka and Mata Artesian earned silver and bronze medals respectively, however a new brew, Mata Taniwha won a gold in the “festive brew” category.
“This year theme was ‘let’s go native’ and our entry was a hangi-flavoured beer,” head brewer Tammy Viitakangas said.
“The Tamaki Maori Village in Rotorua kindly donated us the use of a full hangi pit for an afternoon and we filled it with kumara, potatoes and also malted barley, which we turned into a beer. The beer tastes awesome is silky smooth and has smoky and earthy aromas and flavours and is 7.3 per cent alcohol per volume.”
Mata was also named the trophy winner in the packaging category – a bonus result from a recent rebranding of the range, in which the company’s former slogan “a beer from the edge” was abandoned for something more geographically specific.
“Our latest look features the home of our beer, Kawerau, in both the front of labels, and four-pack boxes. It also features a story about the Eastern Bay area. Our new packaging also has a sustainable feature and we are utilising wasted space from the printing of our four-pack cartons by having it converted into tourist and business cards,” Ms Viitakangas said.
In total 450 beers were entered in the awards, well up from 348 entries in 2009.
“We now have nine awards for our artesian from nine entries, so have received an award every single time.
“Our manuka took a little over a year of fine tuning before we got our first award and since then this beer also has achieved an award every single time.
“We are proud that we are continually proving that we can consistently produce great beer again and again and our beer is clearly beer that can be trusted in terms of product quality and taste.”