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Dreaming Of Beer ft Kelly Ryan
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“I do still wake up at night and think of beer recipes and beer names and what I could do with certain hops.”
Time for the last of the interviews recorded while we were in New Zealand for hop harvest in March. And, while Kelly Ryan works for Freestyle Hops, the reason we were keen to chat with him wasn’t so much to pick his brains about his current role as to enjoy time in the company of one of the beer world’s most gracious and charismatic figures.
Prior to swapping the mash tun for the hop bine, Kelly enjoyed a fine career in brewing. It started out at DB Breweries – one of New Zealand’s largest – before he spent a few years in the UK, most notably at Thornbridge in the brewery’s earlier years, where he worked alongside BrewDog co-founder Martin Dickie as the unique, game-changing operation transitioned from a tiny space in an outbuilding of a 14th century mansion to their current production facility.
Back in New Zealand, he burnished his reputation as a brewer at the likes of Epic, Good George, Fork & Brewer and Boneface, while his finely-tuned palate saw him invited to judge across the globe.
As thoughtful and engaging as anyone you’ll meet in beer, our conversation travels far and wide to the extent that we could probably have recorded a six-part series with him and still not come close to exhausting his breadth of knowledge or anthology of anecdotes. He’s simply a delightful human so we’re sure you’ll enjoy the chat.
There's a bit of a difference to this week's intro, as it features snippets of a chat between Will and two of the collaborators on a beer debuting at this year's Pint of Origin: Jack from Mr West and Chris from Banks Brewing, who've created a new IPA with the UK's Cloudwater. It formed the basis of article one in a new series, The Pints of Origin, highlighting some of the key beers appearing at May's festival.
Other new stories to hit the site this week include features on the Gold Coast's newest brewery, Padre, a Canadian brewer who recently joined Ocean Reach on Phillip Island, and a piece on serving beer which will hit the site before the weekend.
Start of segments:- 0:00 – The Week On Crafty Part 1
- 2:57 – Banks & Mr West on their Cloudwater Pint of Origin collab
- 6:16 – The Week On Crafty Part 2
- 16:04 – Kelly Ryan Part 1
- 44:06 – Entering the Royal Adelaide Beer & Cider Awards
- 45:35 – Kelly Ryan Part 2
To find out more about featuring on The Crafty Pint Podcast or otherwise partnering with The Crafty Pint, contact craig@craftypint.com.
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Transcript
Introduction to the Pint of Origin festival
00:00:05
Speaker
Hello and welcome to the Crafty Pint Podcast. I'm Will. I'm James and we're coming at you, in in my case at least, from a room stacked high with ah posters and core flutes and t-shirts and all manner of things, ah which means Pint of Origin must be yeah must be coming soon, Will, um which I guess we know from last night's ah launch party.
00:00:27
Speaker
Yeah, we had a wonderful launch party at Proud Mary, an awesome Melbourne coffee roastery. They were generous enough to host us in their function space. Thank you to everyone who came along. It's the first time we've ever done anything like this. It's meant doing a lot more work for the festival earlier on, but it was really nice to see a lot of people in the room excited for, you know, a relatively rare thing, which is ah a beer festival continuing on after 14 years. Yeah. Yeah, well, there's there was a lot familiar faces there. Some people were wearing sort of, you know, T shirts that have made especially for part of origin back in 2016. And there was actually one guy came up to me and he goes, Oh, you know, you're talking about that bus tour, really, I think
Memorable moments from launch party and festival plans
00:01:06
Speaker
I was on one of those. And think it's the on off bus tour, we did a good beer week for part of origin back in like, I don't know, 2014 or whatever. So there's some serious ah long-term fans there, but a few new faces. um Great job by um Liz O'Brien, who does all our sort of community um and sort of membership stuff, pull pulling it all all together. And Georgie Barnes, um who's been doing our PR ah this year and seems to have a whole bunch of stuff lined up. It was really good. We had um you know five beers on tap, some delicious food from Chicky Boy. um
00:01:36
Speaker
I think everyone sort of turned up seemingly at the same time. Liz had thought it be a good idea for you and I to um be on the be on the bar, Will, you know even though we're not necessarily professional bartenders. I think you last bartended in a previous decade, got your ah RSA back last week. and It turned out to be one of the most hectic sort of bar shifts for the first 45 minutes you can imagine. and I think, you know, is it it Matt, um our producer, who's worked at the Catfish a few times during Pint of Origin? He goes, that was like Gab's weekend at the Catfish. It was just ah pretty frantic, but it was just good. There was a really good buzz there. um And it was just nice to, you know, just sort of tell people...
00:02:09
Speaker
I guess we were new to it and some of the media were there about the history of the festival and and what we've got planned new this year. And yeah, meet a few people who have you know partnering with the festival, the guys from Drinking History Tours that you're doing a tour with, the guys from Beer Belts that going to jump on the bus with. So yeah, I mean, if we can maintain that then excitement and momentum leading into the festival, which would awesome.
Collaboration spotlight: Mr. West, Banks Brewing, and Cloudwater
00:02:28
Speaker
Yeah, definitely. And as part of that, as part of our sort of hype into the festival, we've launched a series on the site. We wanted to shout out some of the beers of it. Sometimes it can get a bit lost that ah a lot of the beers that pour are really exciting, very exclusive to the festival. So we've got a new article on the site this week, and um we're going to cut to a little snippet of myself chatting to Jack from Mr. West Bar and also Chris from Banks Brewing. So here they are to talk about their beer with Cloudwater.
00:02:57
Speaker
Hey, listeners, I'm joined by Chris from Banks Brewing and Jack from Mr. West. We're here to talk about a beer pouring during Pint of Origin that they are particularly excited about. Welcome, guys.
00:03:09
Speaker
Hey mate, how are you? Hey mate, thanks for having us. no problem. So tell us about this collaboration. ah Yeah, sure. So obviously we are doing the UK for Pine of Origin this year. um We've got a bunch of really exciting beers coming over, um but being imported, they they do kind of tend to start creeping up in in in price. And also just the fact of having having spending time on the water, would kind of like to be able to showcase breweries that are going to be a little bit more fresher. So we have decided to do a local collaboration between with Chris and the team at Cloudwater just so we can get some kind of yep fresh air fresher brews on tap during the week. So yeah, pretty excited about that.
00:03:58
Speaker
Cool. And Chris, what kind of beer is it? Would you believe it's a hazy IPA? i would. Yes, yes. No, it's, yeah, it suits both brands, you know, both both like making IPAs and drinking IPAs, so works well.
00:04:14
Speaker
And have you, how have you sort of worked it out with Cloudwater? Is there anything like, ah sorry, yeah, Cloudwater, is there anything particularly Cloudwater about the beer? um Yeah, we've sort of done, we're we're trying a couple of new things that we sort of, you know, back and forth with Paul sort of discussed um that they really haven't used and we haven't done a lot with, with a, a different malt in this one. um But, you know,
00:04:39
Speaker
I think the the main thing is last time we made a beer with these guys for the same event, Jack, I believe. Yeah. yeah It was a super well received. Just really nice hazy IPA. Everyone really
Festival activities and special highlights
00:04:52
Speaker
got around it. It was good hanging out with Paul when he was here. So yeah, sort of like built that relationship a little bit with them. And and obviously we've got a great relationship with Jack and the team at Mr. West. So we've sort of just thrown the beer together to be, you know, as it's not going to be, ah you know,
00:05:09
Speaker
I suppose, crazy in your face IPA because we're trying to make it at that that nice drinkable point for for the guys at Mr. West so they don't get get stuck with too many heavy beers. But um but yeah, it's going to be a ah really sort of juicy, mostly so ah Southern Hemisphere hops in this one. So i' sort of taking that part from what we do and then, you know, a bit more on the mulch structure of what Cloudwater do.
00:05:34
Speaker
Cool. And Jack, anything exciting you about it or how you're present it or that kind of thing? Yeah, I mean, it's going to be pouring all week during the festival. So obviously starting from 15th of May, we'll be doing an event around it on the second weekend and we'll be pouring a few of the banks. birthday beers and doing that alongside a few of the cloud water kegs we have one of them is like a quadruple IPA so yeah there's going to be some really cool stuff pouring on that second Friday 22nd think is yep
00:06:11
Speaker
Wonderful. Well, Chris and Jack, thank you so much for joining me. Thanks, mate. Thanks, mate. Cheers. um Yeah, nice one there, Will. So, yeah, that's that's the first of a series we're calling The Pints of Origin. So there'll one for each of the five crawls. um If you are planning to come to Pint of Origin or but maybe this chat has persuaded you to change your plans and come down.
Brewing Scene Updates: Ocean Reach and Padre
00:06:30
Speaker
It's up from May 15th to 24th. The full website went live last week, which means you can now sign up for a free Pint of Origin passport. That's kind of your, m I guess, your passport, your key to um bonus drinks along the way, enter competitions as well. Anyone that signs up for the passport goes into a drawer automatically to win Keggerator, two-tap home Keggerator system from Kegland. There's also prizes from our sponsor brewers, so Boat Rocker,
00:06:53
Speaker
Shore Brewing, Double Vision in Wellington, Bridge Road Brewers, Stomping Ground, um and Feral. There we go. was so focused on the ones that are local to us and and Feral as ah as well, all of whom had beers pouring last night. So ah yeah, jump online um at pineoforigin.com. You can sign up for that and get ready for some good times next month.
00:07:14
Speaker
Yes, we can't wait. And we have kept the site running this week, despite all of the adventure. And I ran a story earlier in the week about Jake Lambert, who's the new head brewer at Ocean Reach Brewing. um Ocean Reach are a real favourite of mine. that They're sort of close-ish to where I grew up. So I've always had a special place in my heart to them. I was talking to one of the owners, Simon, who You know, he's been doing basically all the brewing since day one with his dad and he's finally hired a head brewer a head brewer who comes from Canada. So I was like, oh, that's that's very interesting to hear. Someone will make their way straight from British Columbia to Phillip Island. So I caught up with him. It's very insightful chat as well. i Talking to Jake, he has a deep love of nature and exploring the world and the The photos he sent through were quite remarkable of where he took some of his previous breweries beer. So I'm sort of keen to see where Ocean Reach's beers end up now in photos.
00:08:09
Speaker
Yeah, no, it was a really great read, actually. and Not just, you know, say just about the beer, but about his outlook on life and some of the adventures up to. And guess he's come to a pretty good country to ah get up some more adventures. So best luck to Jake in his ah life down under. um And another story that we've run on the site this week was about Padre, which is a new brewing, guess brew pub really, that opened on the Gold Coast late last year. According to our person on the ground, Joss from Hopon Brewery Tours, who wrote it was her first article for the site. we've Featured, a I guess, as a guest and interviewee and sort of a spotlight on some of the stuff she's done around the beer industry in the past. So she gave us their heads up. The Padre was opening late last year. Went and caught up with Mitch, um the the head brewer there, who seems to be a heck of a popular guy. the The socials went off. Yeah. And it's, it's a beautiful venue as well. Like I i can't wait to check it out. It's a very distinctive looking brew pub, uh, very nicely put together. just has a real, really different aesthetic, I think to it. it's kind of no wonder that it they seem to have hit the ground running really with what they're doing.
00:09:15
Speaker
Yeah, and I think, you know, the the guy i just who founded and later sold Zpickle, which was a real sort of popular burger chain around Southeast Queensland, that they're investing in the business as well. Mitch did assure me after it went live that um he does smile occasionally because the two photos we've used, he's looking very, ah very serious, very stern. But I love the idea that you got this guy covered in tats, looking pretty stern and listening to Lana Del Rey while he's making beer. I'm not quite sure if he was being totally honest with the answer there. But my daughter, who's a big Lana Del Rey fan, was certainly very pleased where when I pointed that out to her. But yeah, um but um I'd love to go and check it out. It sounds like it's going great guns up there. And according to Joss, it's sort of um who is based on the Gold Coast and runs brewery tours. There's a lot of events there. there's sort of been this clutch of breweries at the top, sort of around Southport, sort of end of the Gold Coast. and then there's a clutch around Burley. And since Lost Palms closed last year, there's been a bit of a gap for anyone looking for a you know brewery, ah yeah I guess, drinking fresh beers at source in between and so Padre has filled that gap and yeah seems to be going really really well.
00:10:19
Speaker
Nice one um we've also despite being hectic at our own event last night we've also had other Crafty Pint related events going on as well. Yeah, that's right. So Brownie Leibik from Flavologic, who does a fair bit of writing for us these days. In fact, all being Welsh, you should have another piece on how to ah serve serve your beer and you know keep your glasses clean ahead of Cicerone's Beer Clean Glass Day this weekend. She obviously um does a lot of stuff through Cicerone as well. So her and Jono Outred from the IBA, who also has a bit of writing for for us based in wa they hosted a i guess a sensory um you kind of learn how to take taste beer better event at rocky ridge um burrswood last night so um it sounds like that went really well and we actually got one more event this week as well you have to be listening to this um i guess in melbourne and on the day that it goes live on the thursday that this is this has gone live um i'll be at benchwarmer in west melbourne tonight with uh jules from whiskey and ailment and locky from benchwarmer um
00:11:16
Speaker
I guess it's almost a bit of a Pint of Origin teaser as well. So Benchwarmer are going to be ah showcasing Japanese beers and breweries during Pint of Origin again. And Whiskey and Almond will be our Boilermaker Hub again. And they're actually going to be pairing Japanese whiskeys and Japanese craft beer during the week. And so the event tonight is a a very Japanese Boilermaker night. So I'll be co-hosting with Jules.
00:11:37
Speaker
a chance to taste some um amazing Japanese whiskeys and beers paired together um and learn all a bit about this sort of um drinks culture over there. So if you want to um come and join us, we'll put a link to that in the show notes. There's a discount for Crafty Cabal members,
Conversation with Kelly Ryan: Brewing expertise and experience
00:11:50
Speaker
of course. And hopefully I'll see a few of you there later today.
00:11:54
Speaker
Yes. And on to our guests this week. This is the last of our conversations we recorded in New Zealand. And what a strong note to end on. Hey, James. Yeah, well, I think we sort of we we kept it to you know around about, and you know I guess, what's become our normal length for our podcast, probably a bit longer than we planned when we set out.
00:12:15
Speaker
But we said at the time, i was like, we could probably do an eight-part series with Kelly. um So a lot of people in the industry certainly will know Kelly Ryan. and He's been brewing mainly in New Zealand for the last couple of decades. I met him many years ago, I think just before he started at Fork & Brewer. um He was...
00:12:31
Speaker
Production manager at Thornbridge in the UK, which is arguably the best, you know, um the new work was certainly one of the best of the new wave of breweries over there in the last 20 years in the UK.
00:12:42
Speaker
Makes some cracking car scales as well as and craft beers. Their Jaipur IPA is an absolutely like modern British icon. So in the early days, Kelly was a production manager there working alongside a guy called ah Martin Dickey, who some of you may have heard of ah BrewDog co-founder before he went off to found BrewDog along with Italian brewer who was a bit of a legend who was there. i think when Kelly left, it was Keelan Vaughan, who's now the head brewer at Stonewood, took up that role. And so, yeah, he's got, it gives a bit of an insight into Thornbridge, which is a very unique brewery. It used to be based at this incredible 14th century pile When I say pile, like as in grand mansion. So he gives us some insight there. But he's also just an incredibly lovely, talented, um humble, loquacious, in all the best ways guy who you could just you could just sit to and you know listen to and chat to. for hours on end. um And it's really just, a I guess I suggested chatting to him because knew what sort of guy was. There's no there's no hook to it necessarily. It's just like, here's a guy who just loves brewing and is just a bloody good human. um And he was, yeah, he was great company.
00:13:47
Speaker
Yeah. Um, so he's at freestyle hops now as well. So we get to cover both, you know, it's always interesting to hear people who have spent a long time as brewers and then go into the supply side as well. So we get to pick his brains about that a bit. Um, so yeah, that's coming up soon. Enjoy the chat with Kelly. If you ah do make sure you leave us a review, like subscribe, anything like that on how you get your podcast, or you can email us directly at podcast at craftypint.com. So on with the show. Cheers.
00:14:16
Speaker
Cheers.
00:14:18
Speaker
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00:15:14
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00:15:29
Speaker
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00:15:44
Speaker
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00:16:04
Speaker
Kelly, thank you for joining us. Thanks, Will. Cheers, James. It's ah great term great to be part of the show. Loving it. Thanks for having us here at Freestyle Hops. you Tell us a little bit about what your role entails here at Freestyle Hops. Yeah, so it's, um my role is, ah sounds fancy actually, it's a brewery solution specialist, which is just probably a really nice way of saying I sell hops to brewers. And I say yes, I look after New Zealand, Australia and Asia um and look after sort of technical sales and sales for those regions, which obviously Asia is um getting a bit, but a bit sort of busier actually, which is really cool. You know, brewing is growing over there and and there's a lot of opportunities, I think, for us to to get into the market and get some good hops out there. So it's not great. So yeah, it's been a bit of a um
00:16:46
Speaker
A bit of a change from the world of brewing that I've known for for so long, for 20 plus years, um but I'm loving it. So good. So I'm here on the farm, obviously during harvest, i'm looking at a lot of field century that we do.
00:16:59
Speaker
For the last two years, I was part of running the hop kilns, so I'm kind of happy to to not be in the kilns this year because it was pretty warm work. um But it was great. Such an incredible experience, something that I really wish I'd done as a young brewer was to actually probably still a harvest or two and really understand what's going on. And I've just learned so much about hops that I i guess I wish I knew back in 2001. Yeah, I guess most people would know you as a brewer. You brewed, you know, yeah number of places in New Zealand as well as overseas. We'll come to that in a bit. But yet what was behind the decision to go, you know what, I'm done with brewing. i want to go to the other side or not another part of the part of the industry. Yeah. Well, i don't think I don't think most brewers or some brewers get will be happy to be done with brewing, but I've never really been that guy. I've always loved brewing. I probably still, I do still wake up at night and think of beer recipes and beer names and and and what I could do with certain hops. And so it's sort of, I guess, once you've done it, I've I started at university studying brewing science and it's just been pretty much my entire life since then. So it's never going to leave my my ah my blood and my you know, it's definitely part of who I am. But there was yeah an opportunity came about. um I was working for a brewery just out of Wellington. and got approached. um My partner, actually, she was working for ah a company that had invested in a hot farm. um
00:18:17
Speaker
So she said, Oh, you should talk to the, you know, talk to the invest, you know, the the team that sort of um looking after the farm and chat to the owner. And i ended up going and doing it just a little presentation about New new Zealand brewing scene and craft beer and, you know, how brewers were using hops.
00:18:32
Speaker
And um a few months later, out of the blue, they said, Hey, do you want to come in and work for us? So this was a farm that is um is now one of our partner growers here at Freestyle.
Freestyle Hops: Custom hop selections and brewing creativity
00:18:42
Speaker
So it all was quite serendipitous in that I um started working there and we began to to develop our own brand looking at direct sales to brewers. um And then ah Freestyle and and and the Waimea West Farm got together and we're like, hey, we this is some more terroir for us. It's um something interesting and kind of the rest is history. So they said, hey, do you want to come and and do sales for us here at Freestyle? And i was like, hell yeah. Yeah, so that's I mean, it's been just awesome. It's been a pretty um
00:19:13
Speaker
Yeah, I've been pretty lucky, really. You know, that's how it's worked out. have you Freestyle hops in your last brewing job as well? That's right. Yeah. Yeah. So started using them in the early days when when Freestyle began. Obviously, they were working. It was a lot smaller. They were just starting to get their hops out there, doing a lot of work with Garage Project in Wellington. And then they um started branching out. And I think selecting, you know, just...
00:19:34
Speaker
you know, talking to a few brewers in the industry that were, you know, probably love the hops and I i guess I was one of them. And um and yeah, they sent some hops up to us, you know, send a list out what they had available. And I can still remember the first brew because I did something quite unusual. The samples that they sent through, one of them was at that time um we were growing Pacific Jade here and it was the most phenomenal aromatic batch of what usually is a bittering hop. And I was like, this is going to be awesome. I had a really good batch of late Nelson Sovin as well.
00:20:03
Speaker
And they just seemed like they were going to work really well together. And so I ended up dry hopping with them with Pacific Jade, which is an unusual thing to do. And actually even dry hop from day zero. So it was kind of even more unusual. um And this was for a bear down in Queenstown every year. They have the Smith's New Zealand IPA challenge.
00:20:21
Speaker
um so We've been talking to him about potentially bringing it to Australia. So there you That's great. And so I teamed up with them. Deep Creek was still going back then up and up um north of Auckland and teamed up with their brewer, Johan, who's now back um brewing over ah in Scandinavia. But he came down. We just we sort of on the on the spot. We'll do this. We'll do this. We'll do this. And um it ended up winning the the New Zealand IPA challenge. And that straight away said to me,
00:20:47
Speaker
that was 100% based on ingredient quality. Like, you know, we we both knew how to brew IPAs, and but it was really just this intensity. And the the character was like nothing I'd smelt before, you know, and from other other farms, even though I'm not saying other farms don't don't produce that quality, but they, um um this was just over the top over the top so um the yeah kind of worked and from then i was a little bit hooked really so um yeah so we continued through my last brewing job we we had ah a freestyle contract we used lot of the uh the freestyle pacifica and a hazy and um yeah i was pretty smitten and i really you know the idea of of a brewer being able to really select what character they want from a hop is pretty unique you know we've never had that option here in new zealand apart from with freestyle And so as a brewer selling to brewers and being able to tell them, hey, you want something early, you want something a bit more citrusy, you want something late, you want something a bit more funky, resinous, cannabis, whatever, you can have that plethora of options even with the same same hot variety. And that's ah
00:21:46
Speaker
that's game changing stuff for me. You know, it's, you know, like I was saying a well earlier, you can you can make sort of a pretty good beer out of good ingredients, but you can make a great beer when you've got great ones, you know, and that's the the whole premise behind um what we do here and what we want to um provide to brewers. that's it. It's good fun. And how have you sort of, it giving you new appreciation for, I'm sure it has for hops, but you know, for yeah brewing, like working with brewers and things like that, I'm sure you're traveling a lot more, talking to a lot people like, has it sort of changed your view on brewing as someone who's been doing it for a long time? It's made me, made me realize um that not all brewers are organized as I was. But it's good and I love it. It's a real it's a mixed bag in terms of who you're dealing with and the customers you're dealing with and and um what they know as well. And that's a probably the the thing that I found, i guess, in the early days growing up with um
00:22:38
Speaker
when craft beer was only just a thing when I started. You know, it wasn't, you know, back and when I started, brewing was a sort of an industrial job that I never even knew that much about the craft brewing world, to be honest. And why was it you took that first step into commercial brewing? Well, it's actually,
00:22:54
Speaker
I was really lucky and ah I was studied down at the University of Otago in Dunedin and I'd done a microbiology degree and then ended up doing um like an honours degree in food science and did postgraduate food science, sort of different dissertations and all that sort of thing.
00:23:10
Speaker
But our head of department at food science, um who'd arrived in the mid 1990s, was at a Belgian brewing professor called Jean-Pierre Dufour, who's affectionately known as JP. And this guy was like no one anyone had ever met. And he always was impeccably dressed with his shirt and a tie. um He really um he asked us all never to wear aftershave, never to wear deodorant. Don't wear garlic before his classes. ah so don't we Don't eat garlic or wear. Vampires. No vampires allowed. um Eat garlic or onions. or So it was effectively a um come in as neutral as you possibly can. So we maybe have a shower. for Yes. Yeah. Being a student, Dunedin can't afford hot water. So yeah, just swim in the Leith River or something. But um yeah, so that was kind of quite interesting. And then we we progressed through from 200 level to 300 level to postgrad.
00:24:05
Speaker
And I kind of noticed every one of his lectures was kind of bent a little bit towards sort of yeast and brewing. And he was one of the top sort of um in terms of characterizing hop aromas in the early 2000s. He did some of the sort of seminal work in that. And he has he brought over a giant yeast collection because he was he'd set up the master's brewing program at the Catholic University in Leuven and um in Belgium. So he had this amazing knowledge. So it kind of also there's something in this, you know, we do favor chemistry you know papers and I'd be doing um fermentation science and biotechnology papers with them. And and um I kind of got a little of a bug for it, you know, and I love microbiology. You know, I started off doing a medical science and with the hope of I studied hard enough getting into medicine. But I see sort of student lifestyle. as like But i yeah did I did that for a bit and I really was fascinated by microbiology. And then I saw this sort of overlap, particularly between food chemistry and microbiology. And that was all
Thornbridge Brewing: Innovative techniques and iconic beers
00:24:58
Speaker
around fermentation and and particularly around beer. And then I straight out of university, um DB Breweries here in New Zealand, which at that stage was owned, co-owned by Asia Pacific Breweries in Heineken. For the first time in about 10 years, they offered ah a graduate trainee, sort of a brewery management trainee program. And that was an entire two year. You'd go through from everything from learning to run the laboratories,
00:25:21
Speaker
right through to um spending time in the malting company here that that was used by DB at the time. um And then, you know, finances, accounts, sales, marketing, out with the the seller, you know, technical services team onto under trade. So it was a real holistic overview. And at the same time, I was based at a brewery in the North Island called Tui Brewery. And it's a in a place called Mangatanauka and we'd get all the water from the river, we'd treat all the water ourselves, and we'd make the beer out of it, we'd have a wastewater treatment facility and we'd get the water back into the river in a cleaner state than it came out. so But that was, I mean, to as a young, what was I, 21 year old, um to be there and having the importance of of looking after this and learning this and understanding how all these things work, it um
00:26:05
Speaker
It was like crazy. it was so so much information in two in two years. And we do our Diploma of Brewing examinations through the Institute of Brewing and Distilling while as part of the program. But weirdly, the one part that got cut short was we were meant to come down and spend time at harvest, but we um ended up doing a big packaging redevelopment up in Auckland, which took a lot of the trainee brewers time away. So I never did that. So I kind of...
00:26:28
Speaker
When I finished it, toy I'd never got the hops part of my my education, apart from obviously using the brewery and and doing our big, what we do, three brews would be about 105,000 litres. yeah So it was ah was a big big, pretty big, and I'd never homebrewed. I'd never i'd never um really, i drank a little bit of beer. My first sort of craft beer in New Zealand was Emerson's Bookbinder, and that was the one that blew my mind. And then with ah J.P.
00:26:53
Speaker
I distinctly remember a flavour commercial laboratory which was Duval, a Chimay white, a Chimay red and a Chimay blue and we all had to characterise, write down all the aromas that we thought and then we ran the the um samples through gas chromatography, olfactometry and and um would then see all the spikes and which aroma was that spike and so it was just a real holistic, again and like a real cool way of of learning about beer. So you got into the trainee brewer program. There were four of us um that that joined and i was at TUI. The um other three brewers ended up up up in Auckland at Waitamata and you did that for a couple of years and then my student loan keep getting bigger and bigger and I wasn't quite getting paid much as a trainee brewer to to cover the repayments. So yeah, so my um my partner back back then and I went
00:27:41
Speaker
um I had a friend teaching English in South Korea, so we ended up three years teaching English and i got to play bit of rugby over there and travel around doing that, which was cool and and um paid off our student loans. And then it was off to the UK and war brewing. Yes. um How did you end up in pretty senior role Thornbridge? I mean, it's pretty early years for Thornbridge well, but it was making waves as one of the like ve craft breweries in the UK, like really changing people's perspectives on beer.
00:28:09
Speaker
yeah So how did you go from you doing your sort of training in a big brewery over here to ending up in, you know, but or some bakewellers a Bakewell, isn't it? Bakewell, yeah. Bakewell in Derbyshire, you know? That's right, yeah. That was you quite interesting, really. I'd ended up, I'd got a job interview up in Scotland, um which is always the the one place I'd of loved to... ah visit as a wee lad, my mum making me learn the bagpipes and all those sorts of things. And yes, I ended up up there for an interview, but this at Fine Ales, so kind of heading towards the west sort of between Oban and Glasgow, just incredible, beautiful top of a sea lock, um you just magic spot. And it's got such a big place in my heart still.
00:28:46
Speaker
And we arrived here and had the interview, but they let' say Tuggy and Johnny who own the own, the brewery Tuggy and Johnny DeLapp. They're like, oh, I've actually hired someone. However, he's just fallen off his motorcycle and completely destroyed his hand. So he can't work for probably two months. And they said, oh, do you want to just stick around? You can live with us. So, um so yeah, my partner Catherine and I live with the family and and just sort of got the the small brewery bug, I think. I think one weekend, one weekend to into being there, the rest of the brew team had to go away for something. So I was just thrown completely in the deep end after doing something which was controlled by computers and and had had very minimal manual sort of a component working for the big breweries to complete like manual everything. Were you making some car scales there as well? That was all car scales. Yeah, so that was the other sort of um new thing was was obviously car scale, the word of car scale and having not really had too much of that and in New Zealand before I um went went abroad.
00:29:45
Speaker
So, um but for me, a couple of pints and I was hooked and I still, I still miss it. Like it's, you know, if we can, if I can get to places like the free house here in Nelson and then smash a few car scales, I'm i'm happy, you know, it's, but yeah, so that was really cool learning the, something I'd read about a lot when I'm doing my brewing exams and things. And I was like, oh, never need to know about bottle conditioning and glass conditioning and, you know, what's this stuff? And then straight away, I'm just immersed. So yeah, did that for a couple of months and then, um, Tuggie, who owned the brewery, was quite heavily involved with CBER, the Society of Independent Brewers Association. And um she was like, oh, there's heaps of breweries that are looking for brewers. Because this was at a time in the middle of 2006 where there were only about 400, 450 breweries in the UK. But it was just on that on that curve where they were just beginning to to start off. Hang on, there's something in this. And a lot of smaller breweries were starting.
00:30:35
Speaker
And I did a few interviews and got a few jobs here and there and everywhere, one down at Western Brewery in Kent, um another one in Bicester at an Oxfordshire-based brewery, and then this is brery um one at Thornbridge.
00:30:47
Speaker
So went along, it was an assistant brewer position originally, and they only had two other brewers, um a very talented Italian brewer by the name of Stefano Cosi, and they are... equally talented Scottish brewer by the name of Martin Dickey. So my Martin was umming and ahhing about potentially leaving to start his own little brewery. How did that go? Yeah, it's gone all right. I mean, we've been all right for a wee while.
00:31:12
Speaker
I want payment for my shares, Martin. And they, um yeah, so he, i I ended up taking over, it was under Martin's wing, effectively, to be just, you know, so um to get the sort of hanging of everything. And was that still in the original little brewery at Thornbridge Hall? It was, a little converted stonemason shed that had a 10 barrel brew house, British barrel. one thousand six hundred and forty litres, give or take, brewing. And that was the original Marston Moore Brewery, it was called. So that's where they got the brew kit from. um
00:31:45
Speaker
And yeah jumped in there as an assistant brewer, but within three months, four months, maybe um Martin moved on. So it was just myself and Stefano and off we went, you know, and it was um it's interesting because I guess CarScale had always been thought of as that sort of, you know, that the sort of the more elderly gentleman or or ladies drink um in the UK pub scene particularly. But and I guess it wasn't ready for a couple of sort of young brewers that I guess understood the tradition, but didn't really understand the tradition, you know, particularly with um the, you know, what ingredients you use, what hops you use. We were like, no, let's just have a play and see what happens. So, so Stefano and Martin obviously um came up with the magic that is Jaipur, which is still a still going strong 20.
00:32:32
Speaker
21 years later as the biggest selling bear at Thornbridge. So the 5.9% IPA, which obviously was quite strong for an IPA at that time as well, when you've got your Jukas that were sub four and, you know, it was... Green King would be similar. Yes, year view that's right. And... um all-american hot which is interesting so back then it was a a two hot beer chinook and a tarnum and over the years that evolved as hops changed there was one year there was a um a large warehouse fire and um over in the states and we could the hot quality wasn't right and we were but this is there's something wrong with this and oh yeah there was a fire and does it just completely dried it out yeah um so it was always a always a constantly evolving sort of um
00:33:13
Speaker
recipe just to ensure that we could get really good consistency and make it taste the same. We were using all flower hops. It wasn't a dry hop beer. It was you know obviously a different time in some ways. um But the just the nuance and and the intensity that you could get just from using particularly flower hops with hot side and playing with that, it still blows my mind you know that it's not something that's done much today. And it's something that works so, so well. And we progressed on to do a bear called Kipling and Kipling was the United Kingdom's first ever Nelson Sovin hopped bear.
00:33:44
Speaker
So it was um this is only what sort of five years after Nelson Sovin was commercially released. So it was still pretty new and that got a real cult following that bear. And ah but yeah, and then just the rest keeps coming. You know, we we we were there when the bigger production. Yes, that was that was a crazy thing as well. i was thinking about that um the other day. I was when we built this so hit we stefano and i were both in our 20s got given quite a large budget to build ah a um a forever brewery for thornbridge effectively which which was going to be a 50 hectolitre brew house four vessel system um stefano been italian we we went through a few companies but he decided to work with a company that's now defunct up in northern italy called valo who used to make a lot of filters and things as well and wine equipment
00:34:29
Speaker
And they did an incredible job of making this brewery. You know, Stefano was very fastidious with some of the stuff, but we we did. We made sure we could do decoction. So it had a decoction option. We could do, obviously, normal infusion. could step mash. You know, loudotone you could use. We had, what's the an external calendrier boiling system, which could thermosyphon to be lot more gentle on the wort. We um also put in a really unique vessel called a hot back from a company called Rolex. That's hot Nick. And that was something that only was ourselves.
00:34:59
Speaker
Victory Brewing over in Philadelphia, Odell Brewing in Colorado and Meantime Brewing in London that had purchased these vessels. So we kind of had our own little crew with the Hopniks and we would just try and figure out how this thing worked because this was made for for flower hops. you know So it wasn't just those. We'd also do like pellets, which which we do in our kettle whirlpool. And then we could just run it through this bed of fragrant, beautiful hops. And it was made to be a closed system. We had some really passionate Italian engineers that came over when we commissioned the plant that could sense our passion so much that they even were calculating things like the wort residence time and the hopnik and what that did to the um how long it was in in um contact with the flowers. So we could get this data as well, which is cool. You know, and we could really just dial everything in. And the great thing for us was um some of the local sort of, um you know, sort of beer supporters.
00:35:53
Speaker
When we moved from Ashford in the water in Thornbridge Hall to our Bakewell on the beer won't taste the same. It's going to be rubbish now. Different water, different water. You know, the the usual things you get. um Obviously, we we care about that and we made sure the water chemistry was exactly the same. But the really cool thing was the very first brew of Jaipua out of Thornbridge Hall, which I think was in 2005. It was beer of the festival at the Sheffield Beer Festival, which is a really big festival. And ah the first batch of Jaipua out of the Riverside, ah one beer of the festival, Sheffield Beer Festival. And they didn't know we didn't we didn't tell which brewery come from. We've seen it in. So for us, that was kind of like, you know, we've got a lot of, you know, the whispers that sometimes happened or it's not going to be the same. going bigger. You know, it's not traditional anymore to, you know, the beer tells the story, you know, so pretty amazing. Really give people some context about Thornbridge Hall where where the original breweries and there's still brew brew there as well a bit. but they but they moved they move They have moved it now. Yes, they've moved the actual original brewery on site to to Riverside. But the Thornish Hall will give you an idea what that we're talking about here. So a 100-acre estate. I think about 16 or 18 bedrooms. um I think it's originally...
00:37:05
Speaker
think the um sort of Jacobian, you know, had a self titled Lord that would that lived there for a bit, Lord Jobson Marples. So we named our better off lord after Lord Marples and you're quite an interesting eclectic history. But the whole thing when Jim and Emma Harrison, who are the who own Thorbridge, will purchased it, um the whole thing was run down. So it was actually when it rained, it would rain inside. It was completely just, you know, just destroyed. So they spent, that was their labor of love, you know, they spent sort of, you know, 10 plus years getting everything right. But the great thing is the, know, beautiful gardens and, you know, you would drive um out at night and you'd be at the beer or the badgers would be sort of, you know, running down the hill and there was heron in the um in the lake and oh, just unbelievable, you know, and um and it's, some yeah, it's sort of,
00:37:53
Speaker
The great thing was they had four full-time gardeners. So as brewers, what do we do? we came up with our dream herb garden. So we went through all of the brewing textbooks we could, looked at all the historical brewing herbs that could from Alicampane to Rue to Wormwood to Chamomile to licorice so we could look at the licorice route, we just went the whole whole. you know whole whole um And then what we did is we started experimenting with those botanicals and we did it in quite a subtle way because this wasn't a time when people were throwing all these sorts of things into beer and talking about it, particularly in the Cascale world.
00:38:26
Speaker
So we kind of just started doing our one off monthly recipes and including a few things, you know, and just seeing what sort of impact that would have on the finished beer. And to couple with that was um my partner at the time, Catherine. She was asked by Thornbridge when we took the job because again, the pay wasn't very high. and like oh We can't really afford to live off of that.
00:38:47
Speaker
And um they said, Oh, we're actually opening our first pub, our first Thornbridge pub. um Would you like to run it? Have you ever been involved in hospitality? And Catherine had obviously worked hospital as ah when she was a student and things and and was like, yeah, we'll give it a go. So we ended up, um ah we spent about a month or so living at Thornbridge Hall, which is pretty cool, you know, in the and the luxury of
Kelly's New Zealand journey and craft beer evolution
00:39:07
Speaker
Thornbridge Hall. and um Then we took over the pub and they we lived upstairs for four and a half years above ah above the very first Thornbridge pub. So every single guile, every single um batch that we produced, at least a couple of casks were coming home with me in the boot and going into the pub. um And I was learning the entire process from you know from so you know hards to softs, to spiraling, to tapping, to... you know um making sure that it was, you know, everything was um get chopped right with the wooden chocks and, you know, cask line cleaning and and the whole everything. So it was such a great sort of overview of the entire process right through to the customers actually drinking the beers so I could get feedback. So if we had done something a little bit different, I'll be, you know, ask the local that drinks that and, you know, and it would be amazing, you know, and it's um not that we did it all by subterfuge, obviously, but every now and then we just do a little tweak and just see what the what the customers and the people that would they're drinking every day are doing. And it's just you can't learn, you know, that's the best way to learn from crunching the grain in the morning between your teeth to to having a chat to the local at the end of the night before you go to bed and with half a pint or whatever. And it's You you were vertically integrated. Oh, yes. Nice one. That's good. That's good. Like what you're doing. yeah it's the might type attach
00:40:24
Speaker
And I mean, what brought you home? Yeah, um yeah that good old classic starting a family and getting back close to mums and dads and things. So yeah we'd been we we'd originally gone over to Korea in 2003 and then we moved back at the end of 2010. It was So I'd actually been i do a bit of judging and stuff. So I've been over um doing a World Bear Cup um in Chicago. It was in 2010 and caught up with ah Luke Nicholas from Epic Bear. and um And we'd actually done a collaboration a couple of years earlier when ah at Thornbridge when he was over for the Wetherspoons Bear um Real Hour festivals that they used to do.
00:41:04
Speaker
And he said, hey, man, do you want to, you know, if you ever come back, let me know. well I'll get you, you know, we'll make a job for you. Because it was just him running Epic at that time. And i was like, cool, man. Yeah, that sounds good. And um gave him a call and got back and we announced that ah Epic had its first ever employee apart from Luke. um And yes, I was with him for just over a year and had a lot of fun. You know, we did New Zealand Craft Beer TV and and sort of the little foray into how that would work, and um which was interesting. And yeah. came up with some cool beers, hop zombies and and started playing around with larger bottle formats and and trying to bring a bit more sort of, I guess, style and class to what was just emerging in terms of the branding of beer. So we do 750s, we did like, you know, really nice label stocks and the coffee and fig stouts and started collaborating with with local, you know, coffee companies and just stuff that was kind of we're seeing that was being done overseas, but it wasn't really happening at that stage here in New Zealand.
00:41:59
Speaker
So um yeah, and then, yeah, so first package double IPA in New Zealand as well, which was obviously took a few, you know, shocked a few people when they wrapped their laughing gear around that. so um but no, it was good. It was really cool. And then it was on to um Brian Watson, who's um good George Brewing Company. he's for He spent a bit of time in Australia brewing as well. He um he had actually gone through the same trainee program at DV with me ah a few years earlier. and um Had to get that in. exactly Yeah, exactly. How many years, Brian? And um he, um again, he said, hey, I'm looking at starting a brewery. It's, you know, from from the ground up, we're going to build it um in Hamilton. And do you want to come? And not always my dream had been to live in this seaside village called Ragland because I'd grown up on the west coast of the North Island, New Zealand. It's just, you know, it's in my blood, that sort of thing. And, you know, I say, yeah, let's do it. So we built this brewery called Good George and um and which was, a you know, full on full on process and and um but amazing, really good. And i I was there for a couple of years, um you know, doing things like brewing for the Hobbit and movie set and you know doing and it was just it was crazy times and it was
00:43:03
Speaker
huge, huge growth over a short period of time. We were anticipating to hit our maximum volume output in one year and then look at hiring and we hit it in six weeks. Wow. So it was a pretty busy time. We weren't quite set up to be hitting those volumes just just one brewer, but um But it kind of taught me that to be a little bit resilient. And then when I went on to my next job in Wellington at Fork and Brewer, which was a one man operation up some stairs and a pretty cruddy old brewery and every keg for one sort off site, every full keg brought back up to the chiller by all by hand and every bag of grain, every wet bag of grain. So all these little skinny arms would do is just be lifting stuff and running around a brewery all day. but It was amazing there for six and a half years and lots of beers and, you know, a few good awards. And yeah, so it's just been an experience. Then I for a couple of years at an upper heart of Brewtown and then um obviously got got ah enticed into this world and in a strange twist of fate. and so So it's been it's been a cool, cool journey. I've loved it. You know. Right. Well, let's take a quick break. Yeah. Oh, cheers, guys.
00:44:07
Speaker
It's a special feeling to win a trophy at the Royal Adelaide Beer and Cider Awards and you don't want to miss your chance to be a part of it. To tell us more, here's Chris De La Rue from Eclectic Brewing on that unforgettable moment.
00:44:18
Speaker
So last year at the Royal Adelaide Beer and Cider Awards, Eclectic Brewing was lucky enough to pick up the Champion IPA and the Most Outstanding Beer in Show. That was for our double IPA mosaic theory, which is all hopped with mosaic Cops from America.
00:44:38
Speaker
The award was, I know I broke down in tears when it was announced. I personally don't enter professional competitions expecting to win. just want the feedback and to know that I've got a product in the market that the consumer wants to look by.
00:44:54
Speaker
But for us to be able to compete against large and small entities in the craft beer industry and while we are very tiny in volume and and the right processes and beer design. So yeah, it was it was an amazing thing for us and I'm still in awe of what's actually happened to us.
00:45:23
Speaker
You've got to be in it to win it. Enter the Royal Adelaide Beer and Cider Awards today at www.beerciderawards.com.au.
00:45:35
Speaker
Welcome back. ah Kelly, tell us about, you know, what's your thoughts on New Zealand's beer position at at the moment? We, in Australia, probably see closures. In New Zealand, probably hear about Australian breweries' closures and not much else. Like, how do you sort of make the scene right now? mean, think... I think it's sort of um there are similarities, you know, it's um a lot of New Zealand brewers are struggling a bit with um you know excise tax and and it being based on inflation and sort of keeping, you know, sort of culminates and increases and increases. And and um so that's having a bit of effect on people. um But
00:46:10
Speaker
there are There are green shoots, you know, there are green little sort of ah hot shoots that are that are around and a few breweries are for sale, a few businesses are sort of looking to getting out but in a soft way. It's not like a... If it happens, it happens. Exactly. Yeah. So it's not like ah we' we're buggered, we need to get out of this. It's more of a, okay, it's probably time to to sort of maybe ramp it down a bit. And and if someone wants to take this opportunity on... So we're hoping the flame gets passed, which has happened you know over the years with so many breweries.
00:46:41
Speaker
um But yeah, it's still strong. and We're getting pretty good growth. I think the Lagers, the Pilsners, the Lowen, No Elks, it's a pretty big scene over here for low carb. ah It's a real good push. The big breweries have been pushing that and it's kind of trickled down a little bit to small breweries playing around and experimenting with them with low carb hazies in particular. Yeah.
00:47:00
Speaker
So yes, there's definitely probably change. you know, if I think back, you know, even 10 years ago, it's, you know, it's very still very much a hazy dominated craft scene. um But you know, that's a good thing. They use hops. So hopefully that means that they can come to me and ask for something like, cant yeah, I can get you those. um But yeah, I mean, it's again, i'm I'm a big fan of sort of the classic classic IPAs, the New Zealand IPAs, the New Zealand Pilsners I love. Do you reckon there's maybe an age? wi above which everyone likes you know the more bitter West Coast IPAs and below which people are into your juicy hazies. reckon there is. i could probably we could probably talk about being young as we are. Obviously, I like the hazies. um yeah the um Yes, I think so. I think there is. you know and it's
00:47:43
Speaker
But it's this... um and I've got so many theories, but you know we're being kind of um not deprogrammed, but in terms of what we eat as food, you know a lot of people eat quite a bit more processed food. They don't eat as much food that they're growing and cooking at home. And we've all grown up, you know, eating things that might be a little bit bitter because, you know, they let my mum and dad pick the lettuce a bit late in the garden the leaves are a bit bitter, but they still made part of your salad, you know. So pellets are getting more and more used to sweet things as opposed to the complexity of of bitter things. And that's something that does come with age. You know, you start to understand the complexity of flavour and aroma a lot more as you're older, as you've experienced more things and you can associate those sort of memories with with certain tastes and flavors and and obviously aromas as well. So I think it's got a little bit of it to do with that. know, people don't like things that are confronting or challenging anymore. You know, I'll talk to even else some of our sales team about my peanut butter, cucumber and alfalfa sprout sandwiches. they're like, oh, God, that's disgusting. I'm like, try it. yeah It's very healthy. You know, it's just things like that. know, I think it's a big part of why the hazy and the sweet sort of beer culture is is permeating because they're they're easy to understand, you know. Yeah.
00:48:57
Speaker
And when do you do get a hazy that's got a bit of bitterness in it and isn't and isn't as balanced, it's something that you you pick up on, you know, and you kind of think, oh, that would have been good bitterness in ah in a um an IPA or ah or an American Pale Ale or something, but maybe not so much a hazy. So, yeah, I think that's part of it. um But it's always going to be changing, you know. it's it's um Even when we were doing what we were doing in the UK, you know, it was that very much that car scale was bitter, it was brown, and it was mild. So to have super pale, you know, you had your... your Crouchvale breweries, you had your Oakums, you had all these sort of like movers and shakers that were getting into these sort of pale hoppy car scales. Roosters brewery was another one. So it's just that time when things change, you know. And if you'd said 10 years ago to someone that had just drunk mild with their life that they're going to be drinking a 5.9% American hopped car scale, they probably would have laughed in your face. So it's sort of the, there's always going to be this evolution. You know, it's a good thing. I thought It was interesting. i I think back to that time before I moved out to Australia and I'd always drank real ales from when I started drinking beer. And then the beer that became my go-to in the last few years in Nottingham was Castle Rock introduced their Harvest Pale. And I loved it. And again, it's paler than most, you know, obviously paler than the best beer, paler than traditional real ales. Yes. But I loved the character and I didn't know until I went back there years later to...
00:50:12
Speaker
after I started writing about beer over here, that it was used the three C's yeah and it would have been one of the first English pale, you know, car scales to actually use American hops. That's right. yeah And I didn't know. i just knew I loved that beer. It was, it was, it was, and it still was, it so hopefully it's still around and it's still a good beer, but it was yeah incredible. And that's it. And then there was that, there was another one was, um, Oakham Ales with, um, Citra, uh, yeah, the Citra before that, uh, JHB, the Jeffrey Hudson bitter. And,
00:50:38
Speaker
Funnily enough, the guy that um had broken his hand at Fine Ales was the ex-lead brewer from Oakham. He was moving to Fine Ales. And then now Fine Ales' largest seller is a bear called Jarl. And Jarl is an all citra. So there's little it's always this cross-pollination. you know It's the way it works. but it's um But yeah, and but I think, I mean, the sad thing probably for me with beer is um we've moved quite way ah ah quite a bit away from probably the mixed forment fermentation, the sours, and all those sort of like outliers that for me, just that's the fabric of what brewing is, you know, is having this like, you know, assortment and plethora of all these different styles and flavours and aromas. um So I really do hope that that kind of in small pockets at least lasts not just in the traditional kind of countries making those type of beers, but in places like New Zealand with guys like Brewers like Wilderness and Craftwork and and you know so in obviously Wildflower and and things over and um over in Australia as well, you know even though it's sort of closing closing up shop. But you know is it like we need those styles, we need to have this complexity, we need to
00:51:40
Speaker
I don't know, bring it back to the table a little little bit as well. You know, there was that great food and, you know, food and beer sort of time and the know sort of in the late noughties and the tens and and um it's kind of disappeared now, you know. And again, hospitality has been affected post-COVID. There's all these sorts of things that are coming into it in terms of disposable income.
00:51:57
Speaker
But we don't want traditional loss, you know. It's happened a lot, many times before in brewing, but we want to keep that keep those things going.
Global impact of New Zealand hops
00:52:03
Speaker
When when i was researching this trip, I actually see where craft work was and I was just too far for us to get down there because one of my favorite stories about publish I think was one of Jono Gurska stories, he he went down to visit them. The photos were amazing. The the character you know in their beers and in their story was just amazing. but yeah It's just too far for us to do it in a week. But it's worth it. It's just so cool. And they just do it do it properly and and they taste great, the beers. you know so it's um But yeah, think, you know, there's, as an industry, we need everything, you know, we need we need ah the big and the small and the eclectic and the and the mainstream. And it's, but yeah, it's always a worry that maybe the small and eclectic won't be as around as much anymore because everything costs so much, you so...
00:52:44
Speaker
Save it. Drink something drink bring something strange. drink Drink something strange. Drink some sour beer. Yeah. yeah And what's your take on you know New Zealand hops and those styles led by them? Because NZ Pilsners have been around forever. yeah And then we saw Italian Pilsners rise, which I kind of think were NZ Pilsners, but with noble European hops. And then there's been West Coast Pilsners, which to me are kind of like NZ Pilsners, but with American hops like what where do you sort of see that trajectory and and the fact in Australia we're seeing so many beers labelled as NZ IPA. Yeah, NZ IPA has almost become like the next wave after to the NZ Pilsen it's become almost recognised as a style. You don't have an Aussie IPA for example, you're not recognised. Well, it's actually funny because with NZ Pilsner, for me, that would be the most iconic kind of modern New Zealand style. Yet it's not present. You know, i go and judge at the World Bear Cup and there's no New Zealand Pilsner section, but there is an Italian Pilsner. You know, so it's like, hang on a minute. It was our baby.
00:53:40
Speaker
was It was Richard Emerson's baby, really. and um But yeah, I think... um I think as the New Zealand hops industry has progressed and probably as more people more um players have come onto the scene, it's meant that the quality has increased across the board. That's it, you know, because now it's ah know there's that gentle competition, I guess, between between um the the growers, which again, it means that it's that whole rising tide lifts all ships sort of thing, you know, it means that the quality has become more and more important. And the outcome for that is that brewers get to pick from awesome stuff. And straight away, instead of probably adding a hop in as part of a hop bill with the hops from other countries, the um the quality is such that you can completely design recipe around the best of the best, the best riwaka, the best motuweke, the best rakau, you know, and I think that's a big part of it. It's definitely, brew is no quality, and when they're getting good hops, that's when your brain starts, you know, you open that bag, you smell it, and you start combining hops and start thinking, and all of a sudden, you've just got this amazing recipe. And it's, I don't know maybe there's a tiny backlash against what's happening in the States at the moment. I don't really know. But you know, I think some people are starting to look elsewhere for for um their ingredients. um You know, it's all pretty, pretty, yeah we're all pretty transparent here with how everything happens. The quality is awesome. You know, what we do here is just 100% focus on quality. And that's for me, that was always what I did as a brewer. So they'll be working for a place that it's just 100%.
00:55:10
Speaker
If we don't care about yield, we don't care about efficiency, yeah we care about one thing and that's quality and that's, you can't can't beat that, you know, if that's what you want, you know, and and that then it goes and makes good pilsners and good IPAs as a byproduct of being good quality, I think. um But yeah, the drinkers, NZ IPAs are, you know,
00:55:27
Speaker
are pretty lean and clean traditionally you know they don't have much caramel malt they're pretty you know sort of a light pretty sort of dry um and i think i'll hop suit that style you know it's um they can be sort of toned down and and made super bright crisp and drinkable with a dryer ipa and then they could be fully juiced up and uh and really sort of converted through bio transformation or through how you're using your hops with a big, massive, juicy haze. Hazes can get real fat and chunky. Yeah, they can. Aromatically and texturally. That's right. and Particularly as we we you know explore all these other sort of um chemistry elements with with how thiols are developing with certain varieties that are really going to punch those out. You know, we'll have some hops that will purposefully leave super late to to try and maximize those sort of
00:56:15
Speaker
almost like funky, super fruity. Yeah, exactly. But that's good. It means we've, we're doing stuff like Nelson Bliss, which is where we'll effectively mechanically stress some super late hops. And then we get to harvest them, you know, and they the most crazy aroma is so unlike normal, you know, sort of even late Nelson Sovin, and they get blended in with some early Nelson Sovin. and we make this bliss lot which has obviously got all those lovely bright characteristics that come from early, you know, Sauvignon Blancs and sort of light sort of grapefruit peel and just a little bit of sweet citrus right the way through to tropical, dank, heavy and you bring those together and you get the best of both worlds, you know, and in the past you might have only got one window and that was it and it was your, you know, characteristic sort of grassy Sauvignon Blanc-y gooseberry but now we can play with everything and we can play with the terroir as well, you know, and some hops I think terroir has a bit more of an impact.
00:57:11
Speaker
But um it's um it's cool to able to do that. You know, it really opens so many doors. Yeah, let's see it's good. It's really good. And what about your take you've got a number of hot products as well, advanced hot products and things like that. I mean, how do you were you using them much as a brewer and find any you particularly loved using them in a certain why I still think there's still a lot of learning out there from beers I've had based around them like you're gonna go oh I don't know if they're quite now what they should maybe they could just use pellets there like that yeah and I mean yeah that's a great point I'd started using a few you know that were coming out obviously I'd say the last three or four years since I've not been brewing there's been a massive sort of increase in terms of what's been produced but yeah had some pretty pretty good results with some of them
00:57:56
Speaker
so easy to overuse that's what i'll say like in some of the the hot products you can just tell that they're a hot product they've got this i'm so hard to describe yeah i call it almost like the same the aroma that they use to make natural gas smell which is obviously a sulfur compound it just has a tiny little like element of that and it's ah i've got to guess we've got a pretty sensitive nose so when i do try beer and even when i was using some of the the um hop oils and things in recipes when I was at Fork and Brewer, it was always riding the line between getting enough of the product in to make it have aroma impact, but not make it smell like ah an advanced yeah product. And that's a texturing as well. Can they sort of change the texture as well? It does. think a
00:58:41
Speaker
doesn't have that maybe staying natural or you know yeah depth of texture you might get from pellets, for example. yeah I think, yeah. And I think, though, you can the flip side as you can use it. Some of the products you can use beneficially for that.
00:58:53
Speaker
um Like we we produce so ah a product in advanced liquid dry hot product called Subzero Hop Keef, which is all produced on site here using no solvents, which is really cool. It's just ah using really, really, really cold temperatures, which is is really awesome. um And that's we found that when we are dosing that into no and low alcohol beers, you do actually get an increase in in texture and mouthfeel and structure. um But it's um but saying that I think hops like Nelson's Sovin are awesome as well for those low and no because they also give the structure. so i don't know if it's something that's part of new zealand the New Zealand hop itself. um But yeah, they're great. I mean, they're so good. they They're really awesome supplementary. The stuff that we produce here works so well with we still recommend T90s. I don't think you can get away with with um emulating that character no matter what what advanced hop product you use.
00:59:45
Speaker
So it's um but if you can get that sort of a combination right of T90s in a dry hop and ah and a liquid product, it can do awesome some things, you know, but it's um be the ones I've used in the past.
00:59:57
Speaker
Would I use some of them again? No. Yeah, maybe one or two um that I had some good results with some of the beta beta sort of acid based products, um particularly for longevity of aroma in package. But that's something we find with the hop keep as well. Like when that's used.
01:00:13
Speaker
ah even in the bottles themselves. I've had a bottle in my fridge at home since November 2024. So just just when I started with that with Freestyle. So it's half full, I've never purged it, just chuck out in the fridge, get a dropper, put some in the soda water when I when i want a hot water. I was about to ask how you're using it. Or I might buy, you know, so there might be a certain lower cost beer on special that needs a little bit of preparation, which I've definitely done before, all in the name of science, obviously, you know. um Yeah, so that I'll open that bottle every time in the fridge.
01:00:44
Speaker
And my partner, Joey, she'll be in the lounge. And she'll be like, have you opened that bottle of hot keep? And I'm like, yes, I have. So that's you know that says that's incredible. just it' some And you get that you get that in the in the finished beer. you know And you'll definitely know if you've had had a um the beer with hot keep in it because it just it just smells different. you know so yeah so But there's a lot lot
Craft beer media and storytelling
01:01:03
Speaker
of room to improve. you know We're playing around with lots of different stuff. just released one called Cold Pressed Hop Juice, which is also it's the key for including some essential oil from fresh hops. So we've taken a fresh hop extraction and just again, we work with Garage Project a lot in terms of our um all our trial brewing and and and sort of sensory development with hop varieties and everything in between. So yeah, they do a bit of work for us here and we've got this really cool product. So that's it. We it's really good. but We have um a research collective that is part of um with our customers, our contract customers. So any of these new products that we develop out they go give us feedback. So we're getting getting feedback in the market as well, as opposed to just working with a couple of brewers and and, um and you know, trusting that that's how that always going to work. These these new sort of um hot products. So that's It's exciting. love it. I mean, Dave Dunbar, he trained as a biochemist and he really takes that scientific approach to to um to this this whole sort of business. And that to me just yeah gets me excited, which is pretty weird. But and I'm not brewing anymore. So now I can get excited about the science of hops instead of ah running around a brewery all day. But it's um's super cool. Loving it. Well, talking about running around, our next stop after Nelson is down to Westport to be our mate Luke at Shortshaw.
01:02:19
Speaker
And when I was doing research for the questions for this chat today, came across, you mentioned earlier, the NZ Craft Beer TV series you did with Luke Nicholas. And you called into Westport. You did. The old brew, the West Coast brewing that was there. mean, that would have been, what, 15 years ago? Maybe not 15. Yeah, 15. So while ago. Yes. So that was when Dave Kurth was there brewing.
01:02:42
Speaker
That was probably the most memorable beer of the trip actually came out of that brewery, which is a um his the parallel that he produced, which memory might have had some New Zealand cascade in it but um that was yeah that was really interesting so I'd literally started with epic and looks like we're gonna hire some camper vans in four weeks and gonna go and tour the South Island then hopefully the North Island and he said I've got a film crew together my mates got a um production company they're gonna part fund it um and you know we'll try and figure it out I'll pay you know he's like epic you know try and pay for some but um
01:03:14
Speaker
you end up being quite expensive particularly particularly the editing of the footage afterwards um so we've got we managed to get some south island episodes out and we've got some awesome bit of funding from the a um a grant from the brewers guild of new zealand as well which helped um and uh kind of it probably didn't pan out exactly as we'd originally planned it because we were just the the film crew who are awesome that was their very first time you know going on going away on their own sort of um adventure and massive learning learning curve for everyone. I still remember, you know, going through footage and I had to write all the scripts for the voiceovers. And I'm like, this is a bit different than brewing. But it was amazing. So, you know, from from being out of the New Zealand beer scene for a couple of years over in the UK to come back and effectively meet every brewer in New Zealand that was operating because we also did the North Island, but it's never got the funding to which is sad, really, never got the funding to edit the footage and put those episodes together. But it's just a really cool snapshot of what was happening, you know, you know, sort of decade and a half ago. And it was it was probably something that maybe wouldn't be possible again. Well, was going to say, but how's it leading to is there seems to be a bit less, you know, being media around. Certainly in Australia, you know, we're sort of Still flying the flag. We're sat recording our podcast with you. But, you know, obviously we were talking before and we came on today. There's a bit less of that New Zealand. Do you think that was of its time? Or do you reckon more blogs or more coverage might come back? I think in a way it was of its time. I think it's the shiny new things thing. With beer, it was something that sort of,
01:04:49
Speaker
came, seemed to come from nothing and grew into something quite quickly. um You know, you'd argue that, you know, probably a few years earlier with the coffee industry, there were people were heavily invested in in coffee and, you know, what what what method they're using and that kind of faded away a little bit as well. Probably a few less coffee blogs out there, but I don't know if it's just with got busier you know and i think as well we've got so many other options back then bruce like put their own social media or whatever covering it to an extent maybe yeah yeah and i think as well the new generations coming through um maybe tend to be more interested in something that lasts 30 seconds and as a real 30 seconds maybe three yeah exactly so the attention span as opposed to reading quite in depth because it was always quite in-depth analysis and um and there just hasn't been i don't think it translates as well as as a you know, a beer loving blogger in front of ah a screen by himself, you know, expect to be reading a script. It's probably not going to have the impact for for the younger people to ah to want to get engaged as much maybe. But it's some
01:05:48
Speaker
I think just people are engaging with beer in a different way, you know, it' at least some looking at the intricacies and more about just enjoying it as a sort of moment, you know, and and probably thinking about it a bit less, which is not necessarily a bad thing. um I think there are a few of us out there that do all the thinking for everyone else. So um so but it's um but no, it definitely was over a time. And I'm really I'm really stoked we did it because it's something there's never been anything that's captured New Zealand brewing like that and sort of since.
01:06:15
Speaker
and it's some super cool to look back. Every now and then i'll be like, good kids, do want to see something funny? And we'll watch something, and I'm like, wow, it's just it's it's the same but different, you know? and it's But it's still the same characters. See, kids, I was young once. Yeah, i know. you Black hair. I have black hair. But it was... um Yeah, of a time and I kind of wish we'd got the, had managed to get the whole thing to completion just as a little historical. If anyone's listening out there, there's got a bit of slash fun David Carr, I'm thinking of you. Yeah, true, exactly. Yeah.
01:06:45
Speaker
So we've got I think, I'm hoping that footage still exists somewhere in there and um with the production company, but the, um But now was special. It's really cool just to be able to connect with the brewers like we did. And I was still all of those breweries, you know, wrote pop in. It's just like I saw them 15 years ago. it's ah Continuing the conversation. So that's great. Really good. but Yeah, I'm hoping we get something like that back. And Michael Donaldson's really flying the flag here with Pursuit of Hoppiness in New Zealand. um And we've still got a few people that might do the odd blog here and there. Kieran Haslip-Moore. He's he's pretty um pretty active with his writing and things um with Southstar Brewing. He was ex-Northend. But yeah, we need more. I've probably got to write a bit more. sort I used to do a bit of writing. and In fact, there's an article in the Bursuit of Hoppiness I did about fresh oil. It's funny. Imagine that. um But it's just...
01:07:33
Speaker
Yeah, I think people haven't got as much time. so And that's part of it. So maybe another 10 years when the world's back to normal, there'll be a lot more v blogging and podcasting and and writing about beer again. So hopefully. he's hoping Great, Kelly. Thank you so much for joining us. Thanks. Well, cheers, James. always Always a pleasure. And thanks. Thanks for coming over.
01:07:50
Speaker
Not at all. Go smell some pops. Yeah. yeah Cheers, guys.
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Conclusion: Industry support and community engagement
01:08:45
Speaker
The Crafty Pint podcast is produced and edited by Matt Hoffman. You can get all your beer-related news and reviews on the Crafty Pint website, craftypint.com, and can stay up to date on future podcast episodes via our socials.
01:08:59
Speaker
We wouldn't be able to produce the podcast or the website, events or festivals we run without the support of the beer industry, whether that's suppliers, bars, breweries or bottle shops. If you'd like to support the show or partner with The Crafty Pine in other ways, please reach out to Craig via the details in the show notes.
01:09:15
Speaker
And if you're a beer lover who'd like to support what we do, you can join our exclusive club for beer lovers, The Crafty Cabal. Visit craftycabal.com for more. And until next time, drink good beer.