Each day the brewery produces an average 1200 kegs of beer. About once a week, the bottle line is fired up and machines are filling and capping at the rate of 400 bottles a minute. It's a hard day but ultimately a satisfying one, Mr MacEwan says. It takes 18 people to man the line so it really is a case of all hands on deck. There's a terrific cameraderie.
People get to extend themselves, and they enjoy it.
They are sterilised and individually inspected each time, he points out. The trip has changed over the years. In the old days there was a lot of variability depending on the raw materials and the human element. The recipe for Tui is said to be an evolution of the one laid down by Henry Wagstaff when he began the brewery in 1889. He sold it in 1903 to Henry Cowan, who renamed it the North Island Brewing Company before a final name change to the Tui Brewery in 1923.