Eddyline Brewery Nelson | Beers for any adventure
Lifting the lid on local suppliers
- Date Published
- 5 October 2022
Eddyline Brewery is a 100% family owned New Zealand brewery, opened in 2016 by Mic and Molley Heynekamp after decades of success in Colorado, featuring boldly-hopped ales and crisp, refreshing lagers. Unique hops from around the world, NZ malts, and specialty yeast strains come together to create the award-winning beers we are now known for.
The brand Eddyline was born in Colorado, USA back in 2009. It was not until 2016, that Eddyline Brewing New Zealand opened when Mic & Molley Heynekamp & their children emigrated to New Zealand after holidaying here from 2010 and falling in love with the country, the people & the land. Nelson was the place that Mic & Molley kept coming back to and is ideally situated for a brewery close to where all the hops are grown and a great place to raise a family.
Eddyline is the vision of Molley and Mic who have been brewing for over 20 years. Allan Wood & Toby McLachlan brew our beers with a fiery passion and dedication, with Nic Reeves running the canning line and helping out with the cellaring and packaging of orders. Regan Armstrong helps Nic package the orders and keep all the paperwork straight.
The name Eddyline comes from the line separating the fast flowing current in a river from the eddy where the water slows allowing kayakers to stop, rest, catch up, and celebrate their victories much like we all do when we stop into a pub. So Eddyline as a brewery is about creating beers to celebrate after an adventure with friends and family.
When Eddlyline create a new flavour of beer it really is a team effort, from either looking at the market and seeing the need, or a creative drive to try new hops, malts or yeasts to create a new beer. We are always looking to make a beer bolder, more unique, or more drinkable! Often the beer ideas come from a discussion amongst the team and then a recipe is created and then later refined as a beer is brewed repeatedly.
In the past few weeks, Eddyline has won 14 medals at the 2022 Brewers Guild Awards including a gold, four silvers and nine bronze medals, then a week later won the 15th Annual West Coast Challenge in Wellington run by The Malthouse & Fork & Brewer. Eddyline, are also investing heavily into other brewery projects including building a world-class tasting room, becoming sustainable and carbon neutral with a CO2 recapture system (a first for a NZ craft brewery) and 60kW of solar for the energy needs of the brewery.
Eco Efforts
Eddyline is committed to reducing its carbon footprint and a focus on becoming a more sustainable brewery.
- A NZ craft brewery first, installing a CO2 recapture system, capturing the CO2 from the brewing process and reusing in the brewery thus reducing our reliance on fossil-fuel derived CO2.
- Installed a state of the art centrifuge & developed new techniques to use it to capture 100% of beer both pre and post fermentation.
- Use an electric steam boiler for heating. Over 90% of our electricity is generated with carbon friendly hydroelectric generation plants currently and in the later half of 2022, those electricity needs will be serviced by our new 60kW solar system that is being installed.
- Capture and re-use our cooling water and recycle our cleaning caustic.
- Use locally sourced ingredients as much as possible, including100% NZ grown Gladfield malt.
- Have developed innovative procedures that increase efficiencies while raising our beer's quality.
- Direct ship to accounts (no distributor) that reduces the distance to market while minimizing the shipping impact on beer quality.
- Educate all staff on the importance of conservation efforts to minimize our footprint.