Yeastie Boys: The Beginning

The child of many late night discussions over a pint or three, the day came when Stu and I brewed our first commercial beer. The big day happened, of all places, down at the bottom of the country, at the Invercargill Brewery. Under the stewardship of one of the best brewers in NZ - Steve Nally - we turned one of Stu's favourite recipes into a 1200 litre commercial brew.

Pot Kettle Black is in the style of an American Brown Ale, likely to be around 5.7%, with a chocolately malt palate with a serious orangey hop bite. This will be a hoppy beer to test the Kiwi palate.

The brewing itself is relatively simple exercise. First step was to unload the 360kg of malt into the miller to break up the husks. The milled malt is then put into the mash tun, where the malt is mixed with water at a temperature of 68 degrees to create the 'mash'. The temperature of the water is important, as it dictates the degree to which the starches from the malt are converted into sugars. The mash is then sparged (rinsed) and filtered before the liquid - called the 'wort' - is pumped into the kettle to boil. The wort was boiled for 90 minutes to sterilise it and prevent infections. It is during the boil that we added our 3 varieties of hops, giving our beer it bitterness, flavour and aroma characteristics. After the boil is finished, the wort needs to be quickly cooled to around 20 degrees on its way into the fermenter (again to prevent infection, as well as other off-flavours that occur at high temperatures and to achieve the optimum temperature for 'yeastie' activity). Once into the fermenter, we 'pitched' the yeast into the brew, which over the past couple of weeks has been turning those sugars extracted form the malt into alcohol. Since then, Steve has transferred our beer into a conditioning tank, where Pot Kettle Black will be finished off.

So now Pot Kettle Black is only a couple of weeks away from release - planned for the Beervana festival at Brew NZ in Wellington, September 5 & 6. The 1200 litres will be keg-only, and as well as the beer festival, will be available at some of the best independent bars and pubs in NZ. I'm looking forward to a taste - I hope you are too.