Save the drama for your mama

So Christchurch has had close to 6000 quakes since February 2011, but I wonder if they’ve ever experienced a disaster like we had on our last batch of home brew. We have been having trouble with our efficiency and we decided we needed further modifications to the brew kit to sort it out. We...

The Grandfather of homebrewing

It has been just over one year since my Grandad passed away and last weekend the family got together for a bbq and a beer in his memory. I had recently made the discovery that Grandad had been an avid homebrewer in his time, though the recollections of his success seem to be pretty...

Bourbon, Beer, BBQ

Bourbon, beer and barbecue. Individually these are all great things to spend a Sunday afternoon indulging in, but bring them all together and you have an inaugural collaborative event put on by Sam Snead and Nigel Kelly of House of Whiskey and Luke Nicholas of Epic Beer. The event consisted of plenty of samples...

Black Santa: an oatmeal stout

The time off over Christmas and New Year’s gave us some extra time to get to know our brew kit so we had to take advantage of it. On our first brew day we discovered our burners may have been mounted a bit high, so to avoid flames lapping out everywhere and melting all...

A taste of Sierra

I imagine if you’re like me, your Christmas/New Year’s break has provided ample opportunity to over-indulge in great beer as well as some not-so-great beer; as provided by uncles and aunties that you only ever see once a year, and very little time hanging around your computer reading or posting blogs. We were fortunate...

On the first day of Xmas…

… one of my favourite brewers gave to me an absolutely fantastic bottle of beer. That brewer being Epic and the beer being the new Epicurean Coffee & Fig Imperial Oatmeal Stout. I had been following this beer rather closely from the moment I heard about it. Coffee, figs and then coconut; all these...

The Sierra Endeavour

A flash of inspiration the week before bottling gave us a name for our first batch of all-grain home brew, a beer based on Sierra Nevada Pale Ale. We named it the ‘Sierra Endeva’, and it seemed very appropriate for our first foray into this brewing method. Approaching bottling day, we figured it would...

Dragon Chaser

I used to be a simple guy that would rate beer on a two star system, consisting of thumbs up or thumbs down, self explanatory really, but now I’m a little more complicated. Not overly so however. These days I tend to use a 5 star rating system where 1 star would be “No...

‘Crafty’ fill your own’s in Herne Bay

Just a quick shout out for one of my local bottlos that I only recently discovered; Herne Bay Cellars. I would like to be able to say I just happened across this little gem as I was trolling the streets of my neighbourhood, but the truth is I don’t make it up on to...