World Famous in New Zealand

http://www.stuff.co.nz/4717117a13.html

And if that looks like a big grin, that's because it is about the 50th I have had to pull! Taken at the "commercial launch" of Pot Kettle Black, at Bar Edward in Newtown (Wellington). Was a successful night, the first keg on the Yeastie Boys went very quick, and we weren't far off going through the second. And it was tasting delicious off the hand pump again.

Plenty of inquiries from the article - which was seen as widely as Marlborough and the Hawkes Bay, as well as being feature article in the Business section of the Dominion Post. Not a bad start for the Yeastie Boys...

BrewNZ & Beervana '08

This was it, the first time Yeastie Boys went public - at BrewNZ, NZ's annual beer awards and Beervana festival.

Unfortunately there was no award for us. The low down is that though the judges enjoyed our Pot Kettle Black – and it made it to the second round – ultimately it was not considered for an award as it was deemed that it wasn’t entered in the right style. Apparently it should have been entered as an ‘International Porter’, rather than as the 'American Brown Ale' we entered it as. Word is that if we had entered it as an ‘International Porter’, it is likely we would have won a medal of some description. So that is a bit of a bugger, and I guess is a beginner's mistake we can learn from.

However, it was a good night for Steve Nally and Invercargill Brewery - who we brewed Pot Kettle Black with - as it took two best in class awards, for his golden lager 'Biman', and with his Boysenbeery. Well deserved. But it was Tuatara that took out the Champion Brewery award.

But it is the opinions of the punters that really matters, and it was at Beervana that Yeastie Boys was a huge hit. I don’t think it could have gone any better. Got such awesome feedback from so many people. Many were shocked at the taste and how it challenged their perception of what a porter should taste like. The most brilliant was the guy who, after taking his first sip, told me that we were “fucked up” and that the beer was "weird"…and then proceeded to have 3 glasses in about 15 minutes. Lots of people said it was the best beer they had tasted on the night and wanted to know where they could get.

The story was a real hit as well. Everyone loved the local flavour (a piece of genius having us labelled as 'Wellington') and the fact that we were just starting out, contracting brewing recipes from the backyard shed, and still in our day jobs. The ‘Yeastie Boys’ branding worked a treat as well, pulling people in and getting a lot of comments.

A lot of credit also needs to go to the 'marketing team' that was out on the floor. There were Yeast-T's everywhere, telling people where to go and try Pot Kettle Black. Lots of other stalls had fancy set ups, but this viral advertising was the coup of the night I think. People were tracking us down. We should have had some Yeast-T's for sale, everybody wanted to buy one.

We went through 2 full kegs over the two days in the end. We couldn’t have got through much more. I would say that would have been the most of any single beer sold. And if they had a Beervana public vote for most popular beer, I would have been surprised if Pot Kettle Black didn’t win it.

But this all came at a cost – my feet! I was absolutely beat. It was hard work for a desk jockey like myself. I pretty much manned the stall the whole time, so I pretty much stood for 2 days straight – when I went for lunch on the Saturday I literally couldn’t walk on my heals. And I pretty much talked myself hoarse – it was just a constant talk fest with the punters. I could hardly lift my arms they are so sore from lifting and moving kegs and boxes. This manual labour and customer service is hard work!! And most surprisingly, I hardly drunk any beer myself, I just didn’t get the chance.

So it was a great debut for the Yeastie Boys, it was a shame Stuey wasn't there to share in it. Since then we've already had orders for at least half our kegs, and there have been enquiries at places about when they are going to have it in. So now the planning starts for the follow up to Pot Kettle Black. At the moment we are thinking a low strength bitter for summer, and doubling the batch size. Hopefully it will go down as well as the Pot Kettle Black.

Some photos of the Beervana on the Friday night and an indication of how much the Yeastie Boys 'marketing team' enjoyed themselves...

Yeastie Boys: Live In Wellington
Media release: Yeastie Boys
25/08/2008

New kids on the brewing block, Yeastie Boys, will launch their hoppy Pot Kettle Black porter at the Beervana festival on 5 September, Yeastie Boys co-founder Stu McKinlay announced today.

‘Pot Kettle Black is the result of a friendly debate I had with Wellington beer writer Neil Miller over whether hops or malt is the most important element in beer,’ said Stu.

‘I’m all about malt, while Neil is a certifiable hop head. Pot Kettle Black, the first release from Yeastie Boys, is an American-style porter that combines the delicious elements of dark malty beers with the huge hopping rates usually reserved for modern craft pale ales. This beer will certainly save us a plenty of time arguing at the bar.’

In true Kiwi style, Yeastie Boys' recipes all originate from a 40 litre pilot brewery in a Wellington backyard shed. ‘Operating on such a small scale there was little chance of the beer making it any further than ourselves and those in the know, until we partnered with multiple award-winning brewer Steve Nally of Invercargill Brewery to produce our first batch of commercial beer,’ said Yeastie Boy Sam Possenniskie.

‘Part of the Yeastie Boys concept is to utilise the excess capacity of New Zealand's best little breweries and to promote the diversity in New Zealand’s craft beer scene. Steve, being one of the best experimental brewers in the country, is the perfect partner and mentor for us to produce our first beer with.’

Yeastie Boys Pot Kettle Black is only available on tap for a limited time. It will be available at the upcoming BrewNZ "Beervana" festival, and at selected outlets specialising in craft beer from early September. For more information on availability see www.yeastieboys.co.nz.

Rather than a hip-hop tribute band made up of gynecologists, as the name may suggest, Yeastie Boys is the brewing brainchild of local brewer Stu McKinlay and New Zealand's most notorious beer hunter Sam "The Grandmaster" Possenniskie. In the name of research these two beer lovers have spent the last three years immersed within the secretive inner sanctum of the brewing world, tasting more than 2,000 different beers, in 70-plus different styles, from over 50 countries. Yeastie Boys are now set to unleash this research with a series of seasonal beers unlike anything else the New Zealand beer drinking public have tasted. Stay tuned…

Pot Kettle Black by Yeastie Boys
Tech info: ABV = 5.2%, OG = 1061, IBU = 47
Malt: NZ Pale Malt, Melanoiden Malt, Crystal 55L, Pale Chocolate, Black Patent Malt.
Hops: Nelson Sauvin, New Zealand Styrian, Organic New Zealand Cascade.

For further information please contact:
info@yeastieboys.co.nz

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.