Friday the Fresh Hops from New Zealand Hops were delivered to Steam Brewing Company, for the 12 Auckland Breweries who are part of the #freshhopnz14 mini festival. I’m told there are now 24 craft beer bars around Auckland participating. Launch day is 24th April.
Since I was in Christchurch for the weekend for the Great Kiwi Beer Festival I was unable to brew my Fresh Hop beer till today.
Due to the size of the brewhouse at Steam Brewing (10,000 litres), we worked out a way to brew a fresh hop beer on a smaller scale. We were brewing a batch of Epic Pale Ale and we diverted 1000 litres to the mixing tank (this tank is used for mixing soft drinks and juices at Steam Brewing).
This is me next to the 40kg of fresh Waimea hops.
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It was alot of Fresh Hops, 40kg is a large volume. We then pumped in nearly 1000 litres of Epic Pale Ale wort from the Whirlpool. (sorry no photos as it was just all steam)
We ran the mixing paddles.
We also recirculated the wort and hops.
It was a matter of making sure we got maximum contact.
At the same time I didn’t want the contact to be for too long as I want to retain the volatile aromas from the hops.
Once it was fully mixed we hooked up the wort grant, and started transferring to the yeast propagation tank. The propagation tank is 600 litres and was around the size I thought would be good for this special fresh hop beer.
The grant was used so we could minimize the amount of hops going into the fermenter. (it has a fine mesh basket, that the liquid wort can go through, but not the hop flowers).
Once we had filled the fermenter, we ran out the remaining liquid and a bunch of hops.
We have to leave the hops overnight so that the maximum amount of liquid from the hops could come out before digging out the spent hop flowers.
Fingers crossed this is going to taste good. It smelled amazing while brewing.
Now I just need a witty name for the beer….
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