New thoughts

I had awesome time up in Tauranga, Kawerau and Auckland over Christmas time.

I caught up with friends in Tauranga and then drove down to Kawerau to visit Mata brewery, where I will be contract brewing at next year.

In Auckland I went to Galbraith brew pub as it is a part of my routine when I visit Auckland.

It was pretty cool to see few new beer bars around Auckland as well.

Craft beer scene is getting bigger, but not only in Wellington and all over in New Zealand.
I hope this will encourage more people to start home brewing.




Recently, I received the prize from NHC.

This is 30kg sack of Pilsner Malt.

My gold medal winning wheat ale was chosen as runner up prize in Hybrid Beer section.

30kg malt is actually a lot. What shall I brew? I guess brew wheat beer?
However I was not keen for buying more malt as I got quite much now.

I came up with an idea while I was at Mata brewery thinking how I can brew good beer cheaper. Yes. It sounds like cheating, but imagine you can brew a great pale ale by spending $10 less for your 20L batch. Wouldn't that be great?
The counter argument for brewing good pale ale with pilsner malt is that, the malt won't give good body to the beer. It is true, but what if we can avoid this issue with pilsner malt?
When homebrewers want to achieve more flavour and body in their beer, they often raise the mash temperture to around 69℃ and put in more caramel malt.
I wanted to achieve this by having 70℃ mash temp and using only pilsner malt with out caramel malt.

When I was brewing Imperial Stout last time I got advice from few brewers saying that I had too much caramel malt in the grain recipe. Their point was that if you boil the beer for 90 minutes there will be enough caramelisation in the wort instead of using that much caramel malt.

Using this idea I thought I can brew good pale ale with pilsner malt only, high mash temperture and long boil. (could be even more than 90min)

I will come back to this after I brewed this beer.