Lakeman Brewing Co
“From the purest water to the perfect pour”
From farming Simmental cattle and lambs to brewing award-winning craft beer
The light-heartedness and fun of Lakeman Brewing were born out of a time of change and uncertainty in the farming district around Taupo.
Back in 2009, James and Elissa Cooper were a young couple who enjoyed drinking a beer but had absolutely no idea how to make one. Elissa was working as a veterinarian in a local practice and James had taken on a lease block and was farming sheep and cattle. At that time there was a lot of change happening in the rural landscape of Taupo. Environment Waikato had found the freshwater quality of Lake Taupo was under threat and the amount of nitrogen reaching the lake from farmland and urban areas needed to be reduced to slow the degradation of the water quality.
A book, and an ultimatum…What came of the idea?
The idea resurfaced while James was thinking about how they could diversify. Why not use this water we are protecting to try and brew some beer? Elissa was hesitant about the idea, but they came to an agreement that he had three shots at making a drinkable brew!
The basis of a brewery was set up in an implement shed just below the house. Not one to muck around with a pilot brew system James with no home brewing experience but the help of YouTube and the brewing bible Home Brewing for Dummies brewed into a 1000-litre vat. The first brew went down the drain, followed by the second and third. Elissa can remember the disappointment. The money had very nearly run out, but James being James snuck in a fourth brew and it was so much better not great, but you could drink a glass.
The hard yards that lead to the turning point!
For the first couple of years, James and Elissa did all the brewing and bottling themselves. They would put their young family to bed and go down to the shed and go back to work again carting bottles in a wheelbarrow from one side of the shed to another to label.
With the brews improving and being not only drinkable but saleable in 2013 there was the official launch of Lakeman Brewery Co.
From day one local support was huge and so critical to the survival of Lakeman which they will be forever grateful for but it was after a successful first exhibition at Beervana in 2013 and then with a new distributor in tow, the orders really started coming in. The only problem was that even working seven days a week the couple couldn’t keep up, so the gamble was made and the first employee was bought on. As soon as the first employee came on board, Elissa exited the brewery side to concentrate on the business.
People and brews
Not long after this, a friend’s son was looking for a job, so he came on board to pack boxes, and a short while later James incarnated Rory Donovan as head brewer. “Rory got thrust into the top job when he was only 20. I call him Mr. Consistent because he checks all the little things, keeping the beer consistently good. He’s just a real natural.”
As the team started to grow so did the accolades. In 2018, Lakeman won the Champion IPA trophy at the New Zealand Beer Awards with their Hairy Hop IPA and went back-to-back in 2019 with a second trophy for Champion barrel-aged beer with Hairy Craic, an imperial stout aged on Southern whisky wood.
The team continues to enter competitions to ensure consistency and receive critical feedback and if they are not winning medals, they believe they are doing something wrong. In 2022 eight beers were sent to the Australian International Beer Awards receiving three golds, four silvers, and one bronze and at the 2022 NZ Beer Awards, Lakeman bought home thirteen medals.
