Black Sands offers the best of the west I first became aware of Black Sands Brewery a few years ago when a friend who lives out at Cornwallis raved about their beer. I had just really started my adventure with New Zealand beer and Black Sands India Pale Ale was one of the first craft beers I consumed. Black Sands make lovely beer – fulsome, complex and robust; they package them well and their marketing is uncomplicated and effective. The connection between place and product is obvious – these are West Auckland brewers who are passionate about what they make and where they make it. It made sense to profile Black Sands seeing the part it had played on setting me on the path to a different way of drinking – where taste is more important than effect. A call to owner Ian Hebblethwaite 50 APRIL 2016 was met with enthusiasm and an invitation to spend some time with him and head brewer Mark Jackman to discuss Black Sands’ business. For those who haven’t spent time in West Auckland – it’s not quite Auckland. It has a sensibility and an ethos that is different from the rest of the city. It’s famous for the gum diggers and the winemakers who came from Europe and it has an irreverence to it that is refreshing and original. Even though Hebblethwaite and Jackson are immigrants to New Zealand, they are Westies and the whole philosophy of their company is about where they live and work – the tagline on their website sums it up best – ‘where yeast meets west’. For both men starting a brewery came almost by accident. “I was home brewing and as you do I was looking for bigger equipment, better equipment, and I heard of a local brewery (I live in Titirangi), so I came to have a look at it just out of interest's sake and the guy said he wanted to sell it. It seemed like a hell of a good idea to me so I bought it. I started Black Sands and was running it on my own, which was quite difficult and then I met Jackson who was starting up his brewery, which was Weezledog. I had some spare capacity, I was looking for someone to do the brewing and it all worked – suited both of us. Mark does all the brewing – for Black Sands and for Weezledog. We started brewing in October 2013.” Hebblethwaite says that the move from home brewing to industrial brewing was relatively seamless. “It hasn’t been difficult really. It’s been quite challenging in that it’s a very competitive market. Neither of us has professional brewing backgrounds – so that makes it interesting though we’ve obviously both done a lot of home brewing. Most people in craft brewing come from a home brewing rather than professional “We’re looking to launch an American Pale Ale, we’ve got a very nice recipe we’ve developed, and we’ve got our big boxes of American hops that have just arrived” B R EW T E C H Steve Best
FT-Apr16-vol51-3
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