Brewery boss drinks in Baylands’ new site
Lower Hutt’s only brewery is going from strength to strength.
Baylands, which moved to its Petone site in November, has upped its production ten-fold since its move from co-founder Aidan Styles’ double garage in Newlands.
Styles, who owns the craft brewery with wife Nikki and fellow beer enthusiasts Steve and Kim Young, said things were going well so far at the site.
But it hadn’t always been clear cut that Baylands, named after the street that played home to Styles’ infamous garage, would move to Petone.
‘‘We looked at sites all over the place. We looked in Seaview, in Upper Hutt, in Tawa.’’
Styles said the Victoria St site, which formerly housed a motor repair workshop, was really suited to being converted to a brewery.
Getting the brewery operation up and running and being granted a liquor licence for the site’s cellar door took longer than Styles had hoped, though.
He had planned to brew his first batches with the new set-up in October, but it wasn’t until midNovember that brewing began.
Similarly, the process to get the brewery’s off-licence approved took longer than anticipated.
‘‘We finally got it on Christmas Eve,’’ Styles said.
It was great to be able to have a chat to customers when they came in, he said.
‘‘ The cellar door enables us to engage with our customers which we couldn’t so much before.’’
There were four beers on tap for filling flagons at the moment, but six more taps were to be added soon, Styles said.
‘‘We’ve been brewing about 10,000 litres a month. Before we were making 1200 a month, working parttime in the weekend and evenings.’’
The brewery isn’t quite operating at capacity yet, with the three large holding tanks not being filled to the brim at this stage.
It wouldn’t be long before they would be, though, he said.
And further down the track, depending on demand, there was room to fit a total 12 or so tanks, Styles reckoned.
‘‘It’s about scale and making things more efficient.’’
Styles had been working 80-hour weeks recently, which were ‘‘ pretty horrific’’, but was hoping to cut these down to more gentlemanly hours soon.
‘‘We’ve got a fulltime brewery assistant starting at the end of the month.’’
When the Hutt News visited the brewery it was still a bit surreal for Styles.
Not that many years ago, Styles would have been seen drinking the sort of beer you found in a green bottle, or perhaps a pint of Stella.
He only began brewing his own beer five years ago and what started as a relatively cheap way of experimenting with different styles of beer quickly developed into a more expensive hobby.
It wasn’t the first expensive hobby Styles had gotten into, though – he used to be a weekend racing car driver.
‘‘I used to race in a HQ Holden, then a Holden Commodore.
‘‘I won a couple of championships, got the Manfeild Winter Series once.’’
And it turns out it’s not just racing that Styles is good at – Baylands has won awards for its beers too, particularly for its Enforcer black IPA and Woodrow’s Veto, Baylands’ American IPA.