New craft beer brewery Inu Hake, offering different local flavours on Niue

Ihu Hake craft beer in local flavours like honey, vanilla, coconut and pineapple offers a different taste for locals and tourists on Niue.

After many years of having only imported beer on the island, a locally owned brewery has finally opened offering local flavours like Niue honey, vanilla, coconut and pineapple are just some of the flavours of craft beer brewed at the Inu Hake Brewery.

“So far, everything we did, people loved. We came up with some crazy flavor like pina colada with pineapple coconut, we do lemon, we do different things. Basically, it’s a craft beer and we’re trying to. When people come here as a tourist to give them a beer that they cannot taste in New Zealand”, explained owner Avi Rubin.

After more than 30 years since the closure of Fiafia Larger, Inu Hake Brewery was opened last month providing local craft beer to tourists as well as locals.

Avi Rubin said that one of the key reasons for starting Inu Hake Brewery is to help minimise the importation of aluminium cans and bottles from overseas beers being imported to Niue. 

“It is also about job creation, right now they are employing two people to brew the beer. I didn’t like the idea that we’re bringing in cans and bottles. We’re basically shipping in water, beer is 98/99 percent water.

“We can do the same thing here just with different technology. We can probably do it better, create employment on the island. So now I’m employing two people to do the beer here”, said Rubin.

The venture is one of Avi and Lau Rubin’s businesses expanding their family business portfolio from a restaurant, fish processing, accommodation property to now opening a brewery so they can brew their own beer for their bar, The Ark.

“We don’t have any bottling or canning so people come and they enjoy the beer and have a good time”.

Rubin explains the difference between the pressure brewing which is the method used by Inu Hake Brewery and imported commercial beers. The benefit of pressure brewing is the carbonation is done naturally in the keg, so we don’t add any CO2 to it. Commercial beer companies add CO2 to after the beer is brewed which can give people headaches or hangovers. With our one there’s no hangover.