Dave De Vylder (Owner, brewer)
Obtained his engineering degree at the Royal Military School in Belgian and worked as electronics engineer for several years in the Belgian army. During this time he developed a passion for beer and was the youngest member of the local beer tasting association. In Brussels Dave completed a bio-engineering course for micro breweries and followed this up with brewing at micro breweries in Belgium and Switzerland.
History
A long time ago (read 1998) there was a man with a great passion...
Wanaka Beerworks is quite young for a brewery, it was founded by David Gillies. Fortune and luck brought this sale to the attention of Dave and Susan De Vylder. Both considered this a perfect opportunity as they have a passion for brewing and beers.
The brewery currently produces about 60.000L per year and this is likely to rise once we have added our seasonal portfolio. This will also change the course the brewery was following. Due to the restricted man power the brewery had only 3 main beers with an occasional special beer. From now on we will have 3 beers that are available all year round, add 12 seasonal beers to that ( 3 per season) and still try to have the occasional special beer
The brewery
In close proximity you will find the fermentation tanks, a 25 HL and 2 15HL tanks.
The beers we brew are first of all for your benefit, the customer. Not to say that we don’t have fun in the brewing, modifying, improving and also, like you, tasting them.
In the tasting room you can come and taste all of our beers, have a look at the brewery and get first hand information about brewing from the brewer.
The Brewers/owners, tour guide, ...
Susan Kiener-De Vylder (Owner, brewer)
Daughter of Walter and Therese Kiener, owners of the Moeraki Village Holiday Park, traveled around Europe for the past couple of years. She met Dave in Brussels and they both shared a lot in common, especially their passion for beer. Over the last couple of years Susan has been trained to brew beer the Belgian way side by side with her husband.
About us
David Gillies (Founder)(1998-Jun 2011)
David travelled through Europe as a field installation engineer and quickly became intrigued by the beer culture there. Under the guidance of Alan Knight he started the Brewery up with such passion, that it’s beers quickly became of an award wining standard. In 2010 David decided to spend more time with his family and put his business up for sale.
The brewery’s heart is a second hand DME brewery system from Canada. It ables us to brew batches of of up to 700l.
We also have 3 chiller rooms, two of them are to store our conditioning tanks (3 x 24HL, 6 x 12HL) and brite beer tanks (3 x 12HL).
Aisha De Vylder(Assistant)
Aisha is probably the most cute attraction at the brewery. Our daughter will most likely liven up the atmosphere when you drop by for a tasting :-)
For bottling we use the Meheen bottling machine and with this we can bottle about 1000 bottles per hour.
Finally there’s our Italian label machine, that will allow us to provide you with the proper information on our labels.
The paradox of consumption
The Daily Dump Snow Report
Peter Holsworth (Former Assistant brewer)
( (Aug 2011 - Apr 2013)
The current brewer’s assistant, part of Wanaka Beerworks since Aug 2011. Peter is a chef by trade and his expertise with combining flavours will be most welcomed in the future beers to brew and the matching with food.
Peter has choosen to follow his muze and will travel the world for a while.
