Rebekah Hay – Hakanoa Ginger Beer

Our suburb has drink named after it. Here’s a little more the story of Rebekah Hay the founder of Hakanoa Ginger Beer.

Rebekah Hay’s journey to founding Hakanoa Ginger Beer is a story of rediscovering a lost art and a passion for authentic flavors. It begins with a childhood memory, a taste of ginger beer made the old-fashioned way.

As Rebekah recalls, “When I was a kid, in the 1970s, I used to help our close family friend Joan make ginger beer at her home.” Joan had a ginger beer ‘plant’ or ‘bug’ – a jar of cloudy liquid, carefully fed with ginger, sugar, and water, kept bubbling away. This wasn’t the mass-produced stuff; it was a living, breathing brew, full of character. Joan would brew a batch every week before her children’s birthdays, ensuring a fizzy treat for the celebrations.

Fast forward to 2007, Rebekah was living on Hakanoa Street in Grey Lynn, Auckland. The memory of Joan’s ginger beer lingered, a stark contrast to the commercial versions available. “First, I wanted to make ginger beer just like Joan’s,” she says. “It’s what I liked, and I couldn’t find it anywhere.”

Rebekah embarked on a culinary quest. Her kitchen became a laboratory, filled with experimental brews. She meticulously documented her progress, charting recipes and results on her fridge. Thankfully, she had a group of honest friends who provided critical feedback. Week after week, she tweaked and refined her process. Not every batch was a success, but with each attempt, she got closer to replicating that authentic, super-quenching flavor she remembered.

When she finally got it right, the response was overwhelmingly positive. People loved the nostalgic, genuine taste. This positive feedback spurred her on, and she realized there was a market for real, traditionally made ginger beer. Thus, Hakanoa was born.

However, turning her passion into a business presented challenges. The fresh, live ginger beer had a short shelf life, sometimes only two to three weeks, and required constant refrigeration. This wasn’t practical for wider distribution.

Rebekah was committed to using only natural ingredients, ruling out preservatives. Sterile filtering, while extending shelf life, stripped the brew of its live cultures, cloudiness, and much of its flavor. The only viable option was pasteurization – heating the ginger beer to eliminate the wild yeast and lacto-bacilli responsible for fermentation. The tricky part was that to preserve the fizz, this had to be done after bottling, which meant using glass bottles.

The quest to find a brewing partner was another hurdle. Large breweries were wary of Hakanoa’s wild ginger beer ‘plant’ and the potential contamination it posed to their beer. “We were rejected by every beer brewer in NZ,” Rebekah recalls. This period of struggle led to the phrase “MADE THE HARD WAY,” which is proudly printed on Hakanoa’s bottles.

Eventually, Rebekah found a partner. They worked together to perfect the pasteurization process, balancing the ingredients, brewing methods, and heating to achieve a stable, long-lasting product without compromising the flavor.

Hakanoa’s commitment to quality extends to its ingredients. The ginger used is grown in rich mountain soil by villagers who have never used pesticides or herbicides. Rebekah specifically requests that the ginger be harvested at the end of the season in August, when it has a higher concentration of gingerol, the compound responsible for its intense flavor.

From a home kitchen experiment to a thriving business, Rebekah Hay’s Hakanoa Ginger Beer is a testament to the power of passion, perseverance, and the pursuit of authentic flavor. It’s a story of bringing back a lost art and sharing a taste of tradition with a new generation.

Local entrepreneur and talented cook Rebekah Hay from Hakanoa Handmade taught gourmet cooking class all based around ginger this Sunday 22nd July at the Grey Lynn Farmers’ Market

The class will cover an entrée, main and a pudding, all using ginger as a key ingredient.   Avocado rice paper rolls with spicy ginger dipping sauce.  Sticky pork spare ribs.   Rhubarb and ginger pavlova