Brauhaus Frings

Our History

How Brauhaus Frings Came To Be.

The brewery was established in 1995, (which makes us one of the oldest microbreweries in the country) under the name Northland Breweries. The brewery focused completely on the sale of beer to bars, restaurants, clubs and pubs. The product range also included bottles and you could refill your flagon in the brewery itself.

Although the beginning was very promising, it showed that the brewery could not supply the market with a consistently high standard of beer. This damaged the name of the company severely and soon went up for sale.

How did I hear about it ? Do you have some time ? Well ...

I heard about the brewery long before I ever saw it. I stayed in New Caledonia for two years and it just happened that my partner was out on a friends boat and they had difficulties undoing a knot. They asked for help from a passing dinghy. These friendly, helpful people were Germans and two weeks later we all met. I told them that I am a brewmaster and they mentioned a small brewery in Whangarei directly at the harbour and they even thought it was for sale. This was in 1999, but I had no thoughts of leaving New Caledonia at the time.

When I felt that my time was over in New Caledonia (and this is another story, I can tell you) I looked for a new destination. I met quite a few Kiwis in New Caledonia and they all looked like really nice people, so thought that maybe the whole country is like that. Apart from this I didn't know anything about New Zealand. I arranged the tickets and came for three weeks to New Zealand with a "simple" task: find out if the Kiwis are really nice people, and if they are, what are the chances to work there.

The first part was easy, yep, they are nice people.

The second part was a little bit trickier. I already had an offer to work in China and another offer in South Africa. China is not high on my list of dream destinations (it's probably a great country, but that's just my preference) and I'd already been to South Africa.

It was there in a rented apartment in Auckland, that I asked myself: "what do you want in your career?" and I realised that I want to work for myself, and make the bloody best beer in the Southern Hemisphere without using chemicals or preservatives.

This still didn't bring me any closer to finding work. I brought plenty of addresses from friends in New Caledonia and just called the first one on the list - it was a woman living here in Whangarei. And where did we meet? In the carpark at the town-basin. And , what did I see while waiting? The sign from a microbrewery. Later that day I saw the inside of the brewery (and I can tell you this had nothing to do, with how it looks now!) .



Two weeks later we met with the owner of the brewery. After twenty minutes (without seeing the books, and without them ever checking my qualifications) we shook hands and I became a 50% shareholder in a brewery.

I went back and arranged the transport of my goods (and the finance!) and one exhausting month later arrived at Auckland International Airport in the best tradition of migration, the will to work hard, the optimism to achieve your goals and the hope that all will work out.

When we took over the brewery.

I had no idea how much work would be involved. We had to clean up the mess of eight years, we had absolutely no money and the beer was really bad.

So we started from the beginning and first of all cleaned up the place. It was rare enough that the telephone rang and somebody wanted to order some beer, and it was even rarer that somebody came into the brewery and wanted to refill his flagon, so we had the time to re-arrange (without spending any money) the interior, so that it looked more appealing.

At the same time I started to (first rescue and then) re-design all the beers. You have to understand that each country has different tastes and therefore you have to make a beer that suits the country. Now this does NOT mean you go into a liquor shop and buy the best selling beer (we all know which companies we are talking about) and try to copy it.

It means that you have a rough vision for your beer and you start brewing. When the beer is ready you ask for feedback from the customer (because he has to like it) and you extract the relevant information out of it and you adapt the brewing process.

If you do this (and actually it is nothing more than field research) you will receive a product that is closer and closer to the taste of your customers.

This is what I really love about a small brewery - you are in direct contact with the customer. If John comes early in the morning and he didn't like my last batch of beer I expect that he will tell me. I can’t hide behind a Marketing Researcher, Public Relation Manager, or Quality Controller. This is me, this is my beer and now you judge for yourself. Or do you know the brewmaster from Lion?

In big breweries you just brew according to a recipe and on good days you will not see a single drop of beer. It is all in nice and fancy tanks and vats, but something very important is missing. If you go into mass production (no matter which product you will have to produce as cheap as possible and you have to sell with the biggest possible margin. This means the "bean-counter " will tell you how they want the beer to be done so that the production costs are lower. They don't care about the quality, as long as people still buy their beer . Everything is optimised and calculated. But there is something that has been lost: the soul of a beer.

Computers control the beer making process. They decide (according to their program) what to do and when. Do you really think a brewmaster in a big brewery goes around and samples each tank? That he is the last one at night to listen into the silence and making sure that he does not hear anything that does not belong there before he closes up? That he smells the work and thinks by himself this will be a darn nice brew?

Get Real !

I worked in big breweries and I tell you it is nothing like this. It is just a big machine that makes Booze. Fast, efficient and consistent. No Art.