Fancy dropping in to Three Boys Brewery for a beer and a chat? Ralph Bungard tells Cityscape about their plans for offering customers just that, and what his picks are for the best beer and food match this summer.

What’s new at Three Boys? We had a relatively good winter amongst all the hard work in hospo in the city, and now we’re looking forward to a great summer. We have a little bit of a buffer because of home consumption. It tends to be that people don’t stop buying what they like, they just choose where they buy it. In Christchurch there’s a bit of a lull because we are through the rebuild so there is less money sloshing around with consultants and contractors and now the second wave of hospo is starting up. But the city is starting to look cool, people are realising they can go out again. We’ve been focused on looking after our local customers, making sure they get the best at the best value. We’ve been having a look at refurbishing the front of house, which we haven’t really touched since we moved here six years ago. We’ve had the fill station but now we have an on-licence so people can come in and buy a beer and drink it here. There’s a bit of building work to do. We will finish that in the new year and set it up. There’s a lot of that in the US. We don’t want it to turn into a pub, just keep it at operating hours. Also, providing food is a real pain for people like us so we are going to involve the local Woolston eateries – it will be the opposite of a normal BYO because you will bring your own food. You can grab Indian or Thai or fish ‘n’ chips and eat it here. It saves us the whole kitchen thing. It’s also more casual and looks after our friends locally. We will have menus onsite; you make your choice and phone it in. We’ve always got new beers on the go in the Brewer’s Reserve range – one-offs to experiment with among the core range. They’re a bit more unusual, hoppy pale ales that use unusual hops, like Zythos and El Dorado, both North American hops. We’ve got a couple of sour beers. This usually involves a type of yeast. Gose is our sour beer. It’s not only sour but also a bit salty. That style is from Leipzig, where the breweries used to get their water from the river, which was a bit salty. Another one is ‘kettle sour’, which uses bacteria similar to the ones used in yoghurt.

What’s your beer and food match for this summer? Well of course summer is barbeques and you can’t really beat a good hoppy beer, the taste goes on and on. Or a light wheat beer, that’s a real food beer. It’s light so it’s not dominating the food. We have one with lemon zest and coriander, which is a Kiwi-ised version of a Belgian style that uses orange peel and coriander. They go especially well with the American-style smoky barbeques. Or you can have a cool, crisp lager while you’re flipping the burgers. The Three Boys Lager has been a real hit for us, that uses German hops.

How’s the cider coming along? I made it for a bit of fun but we launched a strawberry and rhubarb cider for Cup and Show Week. It works really well, it’s a great combination.

What are the interesting trends in beer? Sour beers, also low alcohol – that’s a big thing for us, particularly over the next couple of months, where people want to be able to go out and still enjoy a few beers. Beer is a beautiful thirst-quenching drink and there is not much other than water that is so. It’s not easy to make a good low-alcohol beer but we are doing it well. The techniques have come a long way – the flavourful hops substitute for the alcohol.

If there were a craft beer Olympics, would New Zealand be a medallist? We are ranked quite high around the world. We are behind the North American resurgence in microbreweries but New Zealand has been up there. Because we cross so many latitudes, we’re lucky here to be able to grow malt as well as hops. It all starts with the ingredients and we have some fantastic ingredients.

Three Boys Brewery 
592 Ferry Road
03 940 5621
threeboysbrewery.co.nz