In the next few weeks we will be launching a new Pilsner and we are very excited about it. When Mike Nielson launched Panhead a couple of years ago he told me that he included a Pilsner in his line up of mainly hop forward pale ales as that was the sort of beer he liked to drink after a day brewing. I know what he means, its exactly the sort of beer we feel like drinking at the end of the day. Our pilsner will be firmly in the NZ Pilsner style including a healthy NZ late and dry hop character made up of Motueka, Super Alpha, NZ Cascade, and Pacific Jade hops. From the tank it tastes vibrantly fruity with a big herbal citrus punch.

We also have some hop forward pale ale about to come on line out of the brewery. We finally brewed our Barley Brown collaboration Beach Hoist , a 6.5%abv NZ Hopped ‘Oregon Style’ IPA. The beer took the IPA recipe style that Tyler Brown uses for his incredible American IPA’s and supplanted NZ hops in for American ones. The result is riot of bright citrus, and ripe tropical fruit layered over NZ Pilsner, Munich, and Australian caramel and wheat malts.

Also we have produced our first full production batch of Fieldway APA. We had a few challenges to overcome before brewing a full 2800L in a day. This mainly centred around how to have enough cold liquor (cooling water) on hand to chill the boiling wort down to fermentation temperature at the end of the boil. A bit of ingenuity and we got there. It was a good feeling to see the brewery do its thing at full speed and our efficiency increased as well which was a nice surprise.

We also reverted back to the pilot brewery to knock out a beer for The Pacific Beer Expo. Gose is an old German style of beer combing wheat malt, lactic acidity, salt and coriander seeds. The style is increasingly being brewed in America, NZ and the UK but almost always with non traditional adjuncts. It’s rare as hens teeth to find a Gose that isn’t fruited or spiced in some genius fashion. We had a lot of fun brewing our Gose which has been named Become the Ocean.  Look out for it at the Pacific Beer Expo.

Oh! And we won some medals at the BGNZ Awards, Silver for Fieldway, Super Alpha and Baby Grand and Bronze for Rivage Brux. A great result.

Next on the horizon we have the rest of the core range to brew, a couple of Belgians and the canning line to move in and commission. Cheers!