As we approach our 1st 'bigger and better' anniversary we've been asking ourselves how can we give the best of us.

Because spinning up a brewery & taproom with just 2 of us has been so exhausting we often feel we're short-changing everyone, including ourselves.

Worse, we often forget just how far we've come. And we've come a long way!

We're now more consistently making good beer (having refined our entire brewing process, from scaling recipes to carbonating beer) and more confidently running our kitchen and bar.

We're particularly pleased with our Bianca pizza, the outcome of trial-and-error experiment to create a 'yum' topping from stock on hand:

We've more ideas for improvement (from menu to outdoor garden) but importantly, we're shifting focus to spread ourselves further, not thinner.

This includes making our beer more widely available within Dunedin and making our name more widely known at Beervana in Wellington.

And it may include changing our opening hours to start or run later, figuring what works best, so our brewery & taproom can be a good place for all of us.

We welcome your feedback!

Paul & Karen

We started Steamer Basin with the optimistic belief we could make a living with '1000 true fans.'

This idea, by Internet pioneer Kevin Kelly, is you can be a successful creator if you have a direct relationship with just 1000 fans of your work.

Kelly was thinking of artists, musicians, and writers, but reckoned his idea was "useful to anyone making anything."

Having started with the idea of being a neighbourhood brewer, we've always counted on fans of what we do: making seasonal beer using ingredients from our backyard, or not too far.

That's why we're incredibly grateful to each and every one of you coming to our taproom. We may disappoint ("Do you have a Hazy?") but without you finding us, we won't delight.

Thanks!

Paul & Karen

Apple founder Steve Wozniak once said "All the best things I did at Apple came from (a) not having money, and (b) not having done it before, ever."

That's what we hoped for with our new brew system but it's taken longer and been harder than we anticipated.

We've only started to get on top of each step — from mashing to carbonating — since going back to our old way of 'slow brewing,' taking care vs. pushing beer on tap.

We can still get better — we've still got lots to learn — but we enter 2022 a lot closer to our goal of making consistently good beer.

Paul & Karen

At the risk of being too romantic, we've also imagined being a third place.

American sociologist Ray Oldenburg first described these places — spaces for people to meet, gather, and linger — in the 1970s, having noticed European cities had them, and American cities didn’t.

He named them ‘third places’ because if your first place is home and your second is work, your third place is where you relax in public.

These social places are easy to access. They're open to people from all walks of life.

When we started with the idea of being a neighbourhood brewer, we pictured this:

Enjoy!

Paul & Karen

They say it takes a village to raise a child. We reckon it takes more to restore old buildings.

That's mostly due to new regulations but also because of old trades, such as brick pointing.

It was inspiring to watch a whole tribe of southern tradies bring 389 Princes back to glory, giving this RA Lawson-designed building a new lease of life.

And it was humbling to work with a team of experts squeezing a brewery into the basement floors.

From NZ Heritage Properties inspiration to Weldtech, Dunedin Heat Pumps, Atmos (now DBC), McIvor Plumbing, Adhesion Sealing, Jason Scott, Salmac, Dispense Worx, IPC Automation, and Zoom Tech ingenuity, we were buoyed by a collective 'can do.'

To now see their work through the eyes of our customers is a real joy.

Because it's everything we hoped for, a neat place, tucked down a laneway waiting for discovery.

Come see for yourself!

Paul & Karen

We've finally achieved our founding idea: to be a neighbourhood brewery. And it's been worth the wait, with a great building in a great location.

Tucked down a laneway, No Name Alley, in Dunedin's old Bond Quarter, it makes a great place for sharing a pizza and enjoying beer served fresh from the tap.

The laneway is easy to get around and safe to enjoy, and we want to take advantage of that with a friendly, family atmosphere.

Having started with the idea of being a neighbourhood brewer, making and selling our beer locally, we can now see the finish.

Enjoy!

Paul & Karen

This week is a much anticipated milestone for Steamer Basin. After all the wait we're no longer a 'building' but a brewery with fermenting beer in our tanks.

We've still got a few things to tidy up but we're now close to opening our doors.

Thanks for your patience. We can’t wait till the work is done and we can share our beer with you.

Paul & Karen

Since 2018 we've watched our 'brewery' take shape in the dark, boarded up for building security.

Now we can see it a whole new light:

and what a difference the doors make!

They're exactly how we imagined, open and inviting.

Soon!

Paul & Karen

They say whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. It's a comforting idea — that we can respond to stresses by becoming stronger.

But it's been incredibly frustrating to watch the weeks slip by while waiting for the building's structural and fire safety plans to be decided and drafted.

The bulk of that work has now been done and with council consent, our fitout can be finished.

By then we'll be 15 months behind schedule and at least twice as aged.

By that measure, we'll be twice as strong.

Paul & Karen

Winston Churchill famously said, "We shape our buildings, and afterwards our buildings shape us."

He was speaking about re-building the House of Commons, destroyed in 1941 by "one of the last bombs of the last serious raid," but his words still ring true today.

In Dunedin we're lucky to enjoy our country's finest built heritage. And in The Bond laneway, we're moving into the quarter that was centre of New Zealand's maritime trade (and the third busiest port in southern hemisphere) when built.

This legacy of gold-rush prosperity and slum (Devil's Half Acre was just across Princes Street) is why we can't wait to get started.

It invites you to explore both past and present, making connections between old and new.

Our new building is bringing this to life in a spectacular way. It's inspiring to see such care and attention to detail, preserving as much as modern codes permit.

These codes aren't shaped for old buildings. With further delays in finalising the structural and fire safety plans, the fitout of our brewery and taproom will now run into next year.

See you in 2020.

Paul & Karen