A lager born of import cuts, renamed four years later.

Steinlager was born out of a budget. The company says that in 1958 the Minister of Finance Arnold Nordmeyer cut beer imports in what became known as the Black Budget and challenged local brewers to produce a lager of international quality. English Wikipedia says the beer was introduced that year by New Zealand Breweries, the group that later became Lion. Its first name was Steinecker, which English Wikipedia says came from the company that made the brewing equipment the beer was produced in.

The name became Steinlager in 1962, the company says. Accounts of why differ. English Wikipedia, citing a beer-collectors’ history, says the change was made to set the beer apart from Heineken rather than in answer to any complaint from Steinecker; the beer writer Michael Donaldson wrote in Hoppiness in March 2024 that it followed a legal challenge from Heineken. The company’s timeline adds that the logo was changed in 1963 because the old one no longer matched the new name.

Lion still brews the beer. English Wikipedia says Steinlager is made at Lion’s brewery in East Tāmaki, in Auckland. Lion’s own lineage runs from New Zealand Breweries, formed in 1923, which became Lion Breweries in 1977 and Lion Nathan in 1988. Japan’s Kirin took full ownership of Lion Nathan after shareholders approved its takeover in September 2009, and the business has traded as Lion since 2011, English Wikipedia says. Kirin has therefore owned Steinlager, through Lion, since 2009.

Export came early. The company says Steinlager entered North America in 1973, sent its first shipment to Japan in 1980 and, in 1990, was licensed to be brewed in Sweden.

Green glass, a white can and a silver fern.

Colour has been Steinlager’s most deliberate design decision. The company says the turquoise-green can and a new-look label arrived in 1971, the first time what it calls the distinctive Steinlager font was used. Two years later, when the beer went to North America, it adopted a green bottle for export while New Zealand drinkers kept the original brown one; the company dates the green bottle’s arrival on the home market to 1977. English Wikipedia, citing the same beer-collectors’ history, says the switch followed advice from an American consultant that the beer should match the bottle colour of other premium beers.

The cans have their own story. The company says Steinlager first came in white cans in 1981, and that in 1992 it launched a green export can because, overseas, white cans were mainly seen as holding low-alcohol beer. The white can later became a rugby talisman: the company says the White Can returned in 2011 for the All Blacks’ Rugby World Cup campaign and again in 2015, and that a limited-edition black Challenger Can marked its backing of Emirates Team New Zealand in 2013.

The mark itself has been redrawn several times. According to the company, a new logo in 1994 introduced the bottle-green and gold colours; in 1998 the silver fern was added to the bottle labelling and a taller pint bottle came in; the flagship Classic was given a fresh look in 2009; and in 2021 the brand rebranded with what it calls a fresh new family packaging look, adding its first permanent can to the range.

Sponsorship has carried the identity as far as packaging. The company says Steinlager became an official sponsor of the All Blacks in 1986, marked by a campaign called “Stand by me”; that in 1994 the Steinlager logos on the All Blacks’ jerseys had to be covered during a tour of France because of local laws on alcohol sponsorship; and that in 1999 it became the team’s official beer under the tagline “Unconditional Supporter.” On the water, the company says, it backed New Zealand’s 1986–87 America’s Cup challenge in Fremantle with the yacht KZ7 and Sir Peter Blake’s Steinlager 2 in the 1989–90 Whitbread Round the World Race.

Design and documentation.

The seven brands in this group are all New Zealand beers: Speight’s, Steinlager, Monteith’s, Tui, Lion Red, Panhead and Emerson’s. Most of them belong to one of two brewing groups. Lion, owned by Japan’s Kirin since it bought Lion Nathan in 2009, owns Speight’s, Steinlager and Lion Red, all of which trace back to the old New Zealand Breweries, as well as two younger names it bought: Emerson’s, the Dunedin brewery it took over in November 2012, and Panhead, the Upper Hutt brewery it agreed to buy in May 2016. DB Breweries, founded in 1930 and part of Heineken since Heineken bought out Asia Pacific Breweries in 2012, owns Tui and Monteith’s.

A beer brand’s identity is usually carried less by the liquid than by a name, a label, a can and years of advertising, and the company behind the name may have changed hands, moved its brewing or grown far beyond the town it started in. Some of these names are more than a century old — Speight’s was founded in Dunedin in 1876 — while others are recent: the Monteith’s name has been used for the Greymouth brewery only since 1990, and Steinlager took its name in 1962, four years after it was launched as Steinecker. That makes the questions behind each name worth asking plainly: who started it, who owns it now, and where its beer is actually brewed today.

Each guide separates what independent sources record from what the company says about itself — its founding story, its owners over time, where its beer is made and how its labels and advertising have changed — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

From one lager to a family, and back to the returnable bottle.

The range has widened from the original lager, now sold as Steinlager Classic. The company says Steinlager Premium Light arrived in 2000 and Steinlager Pure in 2007, launched with a television advertisement starring the American actor Harvey Keitel and followed in 2008 by one with Willem Dafoe, when Pure went on sale in Hawaii, the United Kingdom and Australia. When Pure went on tap in 2012, the company says, the tap was designed by the designer Jamie McLellan. A lighter beer and a lower-carbohydrate beer followed in 2019, and the brand’s site now lists six beers, among them Classic, Pure and Tokyo Dry, which English Wikipedia, citing StopPress, dates to 2016.

Recent work has turned to packaging waste. The company says Steinlager achieved Toitū carbon zero certification in 2020, covering emissions from growing the grain to the time a beer spends in a consumer’s fridge; English Wikipedia gives the year as 2021. In 2024, the company says, it worked with the technology company Datacom on a pilot for returnable beer bottles built around a crate with a digital tag, and English Wikipedia, citing the brand’s site, says the scheme was relaunched in 2026 with Super Liquor stores in the Auckland region.

Earlier, in 2001, the company says it set up a “Dare To Be” scholarship with the fashion designer Karen Walker, whose winner received a semester at Parsons School of Design in New York.

For a design guide, Steinlager shows how a bottle colour, a can colour and a national emblem can turn a 1958 response to import cuts into a beer carried on rugby jerseys and racing yachts. Compare Speight’s, the Dunedin beer Lion also owns, and Kirin, the Japanese brewer that has owned Lion since 2009. For this guide we use bottle green, lager gold and fern silver with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Steinlager’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.