NOTES FROM THE BREWER

There are many reasons to love beer, and the sensorial qualities are an obvious starting point. Take for example that perfect union of sweet malt and bitter hop: a match as they say, ‘made in heaven’ (sorry, I couldn’t resist). Conceptually beer is also a product that has a lot of earthy ‘honest’ qualities. There is a particular wholesomeness to the dusty, lightly sweet aroma of malted barley and the fragrance and oily texture of freshly picked hops. Crafting a drink using raw ingredients, particularly those that can be grown and harvested yourself, is deeply satisfying. Whilst we buy in the malt and most of the hops for our beer from New Zealand producers, we also grow a small amount of hops onsite for our house beer, and I’ve played with malting barley over the years too. The brewing process itself inspires the imagination of anyone who ever read the book, or watched the films of Charlie and the Chocolate factory. There’s billowing steam, a nest of pipework, and the magical transformation of a vat of starchy grain to sugary sweet porridge (the mash). Eventually after several cycles of extreme temperature change and many hours of checks and measurement, the naturally earthy materials transform into a glass of sparkling goodness.

When I first started brewing in the late 1990’s, my mother-in-law-to-be, bought me an old copy of a home brewing book she’d found at a car boot sale. I remember leafing through the pages and being captivated by a picture of a pint of mild, backlit by the sun coming through the partly open door of an English country pub. The beer was dark ruby in colour, with a thick cap of creamy foam. In my imagination I stepped through the page, sat at the rickety wooden table, and enjoyed the smooth taste of a cool pint of ale. A key component of my fascination with that book was the discovery of recipes for beers of different types, localities and time periods. Brewing is the closest I have come to owning a time machine or having the option of teleportation. Imagine for a moment you have been transported to London of the late 1700’s. You’re walking down a cobbled alleyway, tri-corner hat perched at a jaunty angle, the sounds of the horse drawn carriages on the main thoroughfare fading behind you. You reach a small public house, and step into the darkened interior for a tankard of porter. It’s brought to your table in an earthenware jug and you pour yourself a measure and take a sip. What’s it taste like?

With some research and a bit of work it’s possible to brew and recreate beers from many different times and places. This brings me to the main purpose of this section. Heaven’s brewery has always been about researching a subject (be it welding a mash tun, or brewing Georgian era porter), implementing that research, and eventually producing a functional end result. I’d therefore like to share some of that process with you. Specifically, the thought processes underpinning each of our beers: the context for the style, rationale for our interpretation, and some of the practicalities of brewing the beer and marketing it.

Unfortunately I’m not a historian of beer or brewing. Much of what I have written here concerning the history of various beer styles is paraphrased from the research and writings of luminaries such as Ronald Pattinson, Martin Cornell, or Randy Mosher. Both Ron and Martin maintain very active blogs (referenced below) and have a swath of publications between them. I highly recommend anyone interested in the subject to investigate their works, some of which are cited in the sections that follow.

MARUA MILD

An Introduction to the Style

On the label we describe Marua Mild as:

The first beer we brewed regularly at the brewery, and our take on a traditional style, Marua mild is an easy drinking, dark amber beer intended for sociable supping. Gladfield malts, NZ hops, Marua rain water and yeast: a taste of our little valley packed with flavour.

You will see that we reference ‘mild ale’ as a style. Although there are exceptions, a prevalent image of mild today is a dark amber to almost black beer, of low alcoholic strength (sub 4% ABV), slightly sweet and malty, with a whisper of hops. Over the last 50 years or so, mild has been viewed in many quarters as a bit ‘old hat’: a drink metaphorically skulking in the shadow of trendier styles, the tipple of old codgers, or a beer fulfilling the niche of cheap lager today: knocked out for mass consumption. This narrative doesn’t do justice to the great diversity of mild over the last several hundred years, its tremendous popularity throughout this period, and it’s continued success in localities where mild is regularly brewed for people who enjoy eminently easy-drinking and sociable beer.

The photo of the ‘old codger’ below, in some respects, encapsulates the stereotype of the classic consumer of ‘mild ale’. This is actually a picture of my great grandfather, James Heaven, who was known to enjoy a pint or two. I would have loved to have had a chat with him over a beer. I’m sure he could have told a tale or two. In this respect his photo also captures some of the positive aspects of mild: a drink for social interaction, friendship, and conversation. It’s a friendly drop.

Mild Ale: A brief history

If you, like me, enjoy reading a bit about the background of the beer in your glass, the following notes about the history of mild ale may be of interest. If you'd rather just read about how we make the beer, scroll down a bit further.

A brief history of mild ale

MARUA MILD: BUILDING A BEER

My aim with brewing mild ale in contemporary rural New Zealand was to create a beer that would be appealing and easy drinking for people who weren’t into highly hopped very bitter beer. I wanted to brew something that wasn’t too alcoholic, that would take the place, to some degree, of kiwi draught but with an emphasis on high quality, fresh ingredients. Essentially I wanted to brew an approachable, sociable, easy going beer. Marua Mild is ‘mild ale’ in the truest sense of the style: a local beer intended to be drunk fresh from the brewery.

Malt:

A priority in constructing the recipe was high quality, fresh ingredients. For that reason I chose Gladfield ale malt. This provides a very pleasant, ‘warm’ toasty flavour that makes an ideal basis for a session beer. I’m keen on keeping beer recipes simple, so I just added a touch of dark crystal malt for some subtle added toffee notes, and a splash of dark chocolate malt for colour. Unlike mild ales of the last hundred years or so, I didn’t want to include sugar or other adjuncts. Sugar has a place in certain styles of beer, but Marua Mild was always intended as a modern beer with a nod to the past, not a recreation of a historical brew.

Hops:

For the hop additions, originally I chose Bramling Cross from the UK. This variety adds a very pleasant ‘English hedgerow’ type flavour by contributing a blackberry note. However as mentioned previously, the mantra for this beer is ‘fresh and local’. For this reason the commercial version is brewed with Pacific Jade, a New Zealand hop which provides some very agreeable herbal and black pepper notes. We also use Pacifica hops late in the boil, which add a touch of subtle marmalade flavour.

Yeast:

We hold a ‘yeast library’ at the brewery of over 30 different strains. I’ve collected these over the years from colleagues across the world, and from several yeast suppliers in the USA and UK.

Before starting the brewery, we ran trials to compare and contrast the strains in the collection with a view to finding a ‘house strain’ that would do most of the work in the brewery. This involved brewing 46 litre batches, splitting the wort into two separate fermenters, and then pitching a different yeast culture in each. The resulting beer, despite being brewed as one batch, tasted quite differently depending on the strain of yeast used. Ultimately we identified a good ‘top-cropping’ strain of yeast which is one that can be harvested from the top of the fermenting beer in a traditional manner. This strain came from a lab in the UK via a colleague in the USA who sent it to me on a small square of coffee filter paper. It’s an old Northern English strain that produces quite a ‘clean’ neutral flavour, but with enough character to compliment a low hopped beer like Marua Mild. We plan to use some of the different strains in our collection for future projects.

To get the yeast ready for pitching in a fresh batch of beer, we start with one of the ‘slants’ holding the strain stored in the fridge. This is a test tube with a solution of malt and agar that has been cooled and ‘set’ at an angle in the test tube, providing a larger surface area to grow and support the yeast. Using aseptic technique a small sample of the yeast is transferred to a second test tube holding 10ml of sterile wort (malt sugar solution). This is incubated and shaken periodically for 48 hours. The yeast multiplies in the solution and is then transferred to a small glass flask with a larger volume of wort. This flask is then put on a custom-built ‘stir plate’ and left in the incubator. A stir plate rotates magnets under the flask and a magnetic ‘stir bar’ is sanitised and placed in the flask. As the magnets rotate, the bar in the solution also rotates, keeping the yeast in suspension, drawing air into the sample (which helps the yeast to replicate) and expelling CO2 which can restrict yeast growth. After a number of iterations of ‘stepping up’ the yeast culture in this way, a sample is taken, diluted, and viewed under a microscope. Using a special slide called a haemocytometer I am able to count the cells in a diluted sample and check that the correct number of cells has been grown to pitch into the beer. At this stage we are brewing 900 litres of beer in a single ‘gyle’ (batch) so we need to grow quite a lot of yeast from the initial small sample!

Water:

Beer contains approximately 90% water. The balance of salts and minerals in the water used for brewing is therefore really important to the resulting flavour. It’s a bit like adding salt or black pepper to your meal: different minerals will shape how the malt flavours, mouth feel, and bitterness of the hops are experienced. The balance and concentration of minerals such as gypsum and calcium chloride are as much a part of the recipe as are the malt and hops. We are very lucky at the brewery to be able to start with a very soft, low mineralised water which is rain water collected from the roof and then filtered. This water is essentially a ‘blank slate’ that allows us to ‘build’ a water profile using food grade minerals for each type of beer we produce.

The profile for Marua Mild includes calcium chloride which emphasises the roundness of the malt flavour. A smaller amount of calcium sulphate (gypsum) helps the yeast to flocculate (clump together) at the end of fermentation, and brings out a refreshing clean bitterness from the hops.

Designing the label:

I’ve had a passion for photography for many years, and so for the beer labels it made sense to take photographs of the animals and scenes around the brewery. For Marua mild I used a large format wooden field camera. This is loaded with a film holder that contains just two sheets (one on each side) of 5x4 inch film. The camera is focussed manually using bellows and the exposure is calculated using a hand held light meter. After exposing the black and white film, the latent image is developed in a light-proof tube in my kitchen sink, before being scanned into the computer.

Before taking the picture for Marua mild, I knew I wanted an image of the Marua valley on a misty morning. Fortunately I’d chosen a good spot well in advance. My mum happens to live just 10 minutes up the valley, so one early morning I drove up the hill to her house and climbed on the roof for the perfect view. The photo below shows the arrangement of the large format camera on it’s tripod and the spectacular view across the valley. The final result is on both the Marua mild label, and the main page of this website.

The final label design:

INDIAN RUNNER XPA

An Introduction to the Style

To be completely honest, before Jodi and I returned to New Zealand I hadn't heard of Extra Pale Ale (XPA) as a beer 'style'. It was only after sampling local brews that I realised what I'd been missing out on! XPA strikes a perfect balance between the hoppy, quenching bitterness of an Indian Pale Ale (IPA), and a more sessionable, light pale ale. Given Northland can often be warm and humid, XPA is perfectly designed for this climate: especially on a hot summer evening.

Pale ale of low-to-moderate alcohol but with plenty of hops is of course not a new concept. Martyn Cornell (2010) in his excellent book 'Amber Gold and Black' provides a clear overview of the emergence of 'Golden ales' in the latter half of the 20th century, and going further back, the 'Light Dinner' ales of the Victorian and Edwardian periods. Ron Pattinson (2014) has also published research into the category of ale historically marketed as 'AK', which judging by the recipes for this style, were also light, hoppy ales (See: The Homebrewer's Guide to Vintage Beer).

Almost everything I know about XPA is written on the back of the label (so clearly not a lot!). If you don't happen to have a bottle of Indian Runner to hand, we describe the beer in the following way:

At the end of the 19th century breweries started producing lighter, session strength India Pale Ales (IPA’s). These were known in brewing parlance as ‘running’ beer, intended to be drunk fresh.

'Running beer' was actually a term used for any beer style intended to be served soon after brewing, not just IPA. However I thought the concept worked well for a fresh, 'small IPA' paired with an image of our Indian Runner ducks. We also say on the label:

In more recent times, US brewers developed Extra Pale Ale (XPA), a style between Pale Ale and IPA in strength or flavour. In NZ and Oz, XPA is extra pale and hoppy: malt stripped back for enhanced hop character. Our XPA follows these traditions. Named after our Indian Runner ducks, this beer is a nod to the original ‘running’ IPA’s of the late Victorian age, but with a thoroughly contemporary character.

There's really not much to add to that. We decided to pair a light malt base (a bend of Gladfield pilsner and ale malts) with some bright, citrus hops from both the US and NZ. Combined with some quite 'hard' (mineralised) water to emphasise the crisp bitterness of the hops and our house yeast strain, we think we've succeeded in brewing a nice, clean, refreshing beer.