158-year-old West Coast pub expanding its brewery
The owners of a historic West Coast pub have expanded into craftbeerandtwoextrapremises.
Colin and Leanne Cutler took over the Woodstock Hotel, just outside Hokitika, in 2007.
The hotel was first built about 1870 on Clements Rd in Ruatapu and in 1878 it was jacked up on empty beer barrels and pulled by horses about 180m up the hill to its present site. It has served as a public house, meeting place, post office and even a morgue over the years.
Colin Cutler, originally from England, came to New Zealand in 1991 and moved to Hokitika after visiting for the Wild Food Festival two years later.
“I loved it. The West Coast was wild. It was untouched. It was rugged. It was good fishing, good hunting, everything. Scenery was amazing,” he said. “And so I came across, opened a little restaurant here serving wild food and never really looked back, never think of going anywhere else.”
He met Leanne and together they took on the historic hotel.
Colin Cutler used to brew beer back in England but took it up again in 2016 when the British and Irish Lions were touring New Zealand and he failed to secure a supply of Emerson’s Porter.
“I re-established my brewing credentials and started brewing beer again. And when they finally turned around and said, ‘Oh, now we've got some available,’ it was like, ‘Thanks very much, but I think I'll stick to my own’.
“People liked it and it’s gone from strength to strength,” he said.
The couple has now purchased equipment to expand the brewery’s capacity from 500 litres to more than 1200 litres, with the help of a Development West Coast loan. It also allowed them to upgrade the brewery premises and buy a canning machine for cider.
Development West Coast was set up in 2001 with $92 million of Government money to offset the impact of the end of native timber milling on the West Coast economy.
Development West Coast also provided Woodstock with Government-sourced funding during Covid for advertising and marketing.
Cutler said the business had weathered Covid and a decline in the craft beer industry.
The expansion allowed them to sell their beers in more places, including Hokitika’s Treetop Walkway, a bottleshop in Hokitika and the Blackball Workingmen's Club. He also worked with Blackball Black Garlic to produce a black garlic beer called Vampire’s Bane.
“The brewing side's very exciting. We're enthused with it and it's something we really enjoy,” Cutler said.
The hotel has a beer garden overlooking the Hokitika River and hosts the Hokitika Music Club every week. It also has accommodation in the cottage next to the hotel and four self-contained units.
Leanne Cutler said there were now two more Woodstock premises: Greymouth’s Woodstock Bar & Grill and the Woodstock craft bar and eatery in Addington, Christchurch.
The original Woodstock was not just a bar or a brewery, she said.
“It's over 150 years old, which is unusual and there's still original parts to it. You've got a real community place here, which is not easily found in New Zealand any more.”