A love affair with fermentation sees biochemist turn brewer

Wednesday, 20 March 2019

Three Boys Brewery owner Ralph Bungard pouring a glass of Three Boys Oyster Stout.

He once studied rain forest re-establishment in Borneo and Malaysia, but today Ralph Bungard is in beer heaven with Three Boys Brewery.

He made the change back in the early 2000s after returning to New Zealand from Britain, where he had done a PhD in Plant Biochemistry.

Bungard and his wife, Brigid, already had a child and were feeling the pull to return to New Zealand.

But six years in the North of England in the ex-industrial town of Sheffield had benefits. His science career had thrived, for a start. The industry in the UK was incredible, he said.

'There's money and there's good opportunities and there's great people involved, but the pull for coming home and having that quality of life was too strong.'

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Ralph Bungard developed a love for beer and ales while living in the United Kingdom.

The other upside was the beer. After discovering the wealth of styles and flavours available in Britain, Bungard began experimenting with making beers at home.

'We spent a lot of time over there drinking quality beers. At that time in New Zealand we had a limited selection of styles. Going to the UK and Europe was a real eye-opener in terms of amazing flavours and different styles of wheat beers right through to those British ales to European lagers. It really opened my eyes to brewing.'

Nancy Teawhe bottling beer at Three Boys Brewery

Bungard was offered a Marsden Grant to do research on photosynthesis using parasitic plants at the University of Canterbury, and moved back with his family in 2001. After the relative financial liquidity in fundamental science research in Britain, Bungard found the New Zealand landscape much different.

'I loved science and I absolutely still love science. But there's a lot less money around in New Zealand science and you spend a lot of time justifying your position, justifying what you're going to spend money on and that's pretty hard for someone like myself that had gone into fundamental research rather than having an application.'

Three Boys Brewery was damaged in the 2011 Christchurch earthquake.

Particularly in the early 2000s, if you were looking for money for something, you had to show that there was a commercial angle to it, he said.

It was then his home-brewing became a lot more serious - 'I needed to generate some good beer styles for drinking' - but he enjoyed the science behind it as well, and with degrees in viticulture and oenology, perhaps it was a logical next step to make a deeper dive into fermentation with beer.

'There is a lot of chemistry and biochemistry going on. Dealing with yeast and dealing with hops. For me you have that lovely thing coming from a horticultural background in those incredible ingredients, malt and hops, that you can turn into this beautiful product.'

Although Three Boys was launched in 2004, Bungard spent the best part of four years developing it while still lecturing and researching at Canterbury University. Brigid was working full time, providing a regular income for the family, while Bungard perfected his brews. The brewery's moniker comes from Brigid referring to the pros and cons of having a house with her 'three boys' - her husband and their two sons.

The Three Boys Brewery in Woolston, Christchurch, where it shifted to after the 2011 earthquake.

'Our first brewery was literally a shed, which is a classic way of starting a micro-brewery in New Zealand. We started under the house and then moved to a shed, and moved from there to something that resembled a real brewery,' he said.

Learning to run a business was a steep learning curve. Dealing with taxes and hiring and managing staff didn't come naturally but he thinks he's pretty good at it now, 15 years in.

'I find being a scientists allows you, I think more than anything or more than any sort of education, to be more critical and analytical about things and that's a nice approach to developing product.'

Ralph Bungard judging at the New World Beer and Cider Awards in March 2018.

Then, when the Christchurch earthquake struck in 2011 Bungard and his family had to start over again.

Both the brewery and the family home were affected by the quake, with the brewery suffering enough damage that the business couldn't continue to operate. And moving a brewery is not like moving an standard office, he said. With lots of liquid and processess at different stages of readiness, it was a logistical nightmare.

'It was a massive deal because we had the business and a private house and property tangled up in red zone as well. It was a sort of double whammy in a way. It gives me goos bumps thinking back to that terrible time. It was terribly hard.'

Interestingly, getting the business back on track was easier and smoother than the residential stuff, because business insurance paid out.

Help from the brewing community in New Zealand was forthcoming, too.

'At that time we had people offering us space to continue our fermentations and pieces of equipment and all sorts of really amazing offers from people involved in that community.'

Now based in Woolston, Christchurch, Bungard hopes the business won't have to move again, and is happy focussing on the local market, which is very loyal, he said.

'We find that works really well for us. Beer is one of those parochial products. People love their local brewery. It's almost back to the future in a way for brewing in that respect', he said, referring to a time when every Kiwi town had a brewery before being reduced to just four in the 1970s.

Apart from developing new and unique beers for Three Boys' Brewers Reserve range, Bungard spends a lot of time judging other brewery's beers at national and international competitions. He was a judge at the Beer and Cider Awards in Wellington.

'You see a number of styles coming through from brewers that are incredible. Amazing combinations of ingredients and flavours that brewers have been making all around New Zealand.'

The role allows him to keep abreast of new styles or combinations of ingredients that are trending among the craft brewer community.

Local New Zealand varieties of hops are distinct and in demand from breweries around the word for their citrus and passionfruit flavour profiles, and brewers today have access to hundreds of styles of malt, hops and yeasts, he said.

'By the time you combine all of those, the world is your oyster.'