Pub plans unique beer

A pub on the outskirts of Blenheim is connecting with its late 1800s roots and setting up a ‘‘vintage style brewery’’.

The pub is located on State Highway 1 between Picton and Blenheim and has thousands of trucks and cars barrelling past it daily.

Grovetown Hotel owner Damian Johnson said he planned to restore the hotel to its brewing glory days.

He said they would use water from its well, grain from Canterbury and hops grown in the back garden.

The focus would be on brewing ‘‘heritage style beers’’, Johnson said.

They would start brewing, sampling and getting feedback from the public over the winter, with plans for a ‘‘proper launch’’ at the beginning of summer. ‘‘Bring your milk bottle, your glass jar, your flagon, or your growler ... just as my father or grandfather would have done.’’

A Marlborough Express article dating back to 1890 talks of the beer the hotel used to make.

The article stated: ‘‘T.P Ransom begs to inform the public of Marlborough that he has COMMENCED BUSINESS at Grove Town as. BREWER AND MALTSTER, and trusts to solicit a fair share of public support.

‘‘All BEER turned out of his establishment guaranteed to consist only of Malt and Hops.’’

Johnson said they wanted to put themselves on the map and ‘‘remodel what they did in the late 1800s but do it with a bit of a contemporary twist’’.

He hoped to make hoppy, malt driven beers, and use no preservatives.

‘‘Beers that would have been drunk here 100 years ago.’’

Hop seeds imported from the United States were undergoing a ‘‘breeding programme’’ and were being cloned with local Tuamarina wild hops.

‘‘That will help with disease resistance but will also give us a really strong story.

‘‘It’s beer that’s come from a local grown product, so it will have a really unique flavour to Marlborough.’’

They planned to mill the grain using a belt driven water wheel and had scored a crucial, old piece of farm equipment while fossicking through an farmer’s shed, Johnson said.

‘‘Creating a milling machine based off water, it’s quite innovative.

‘‘It’s not something that you can just go order from China to turn up in a parts box. We’re finding old farm equipment to modify, to do the job,’’ he said.

‘‘But what we love about it, is it’s got all these old farmers excited about what their grandfather or great-grandfathers had and we’re going through people’s barns and sheds looking at old farm equipment.’’

They had had lots of input from locals, he said. ‘‘The final product will be quite special I think, because so much invested thought has come from so many people. It’s quite a community driven project.’’

They were keen to have a visitor base of brewers that would visit the region to showcase their beers, he said.