Cityscape Summer 2020

trends right now. Which we are
personally very thankful for
because they are both delicious!
Sour beers often include fruits,
herbs and spices and are really tart
and fresh (some liken them more to
ciders than beers). Hazy IPAs or
New England IPAs are really
aromatic, fruity and juicy beers that
look a bit like fruit smoothies. They
are much softer and more
approachable than the traditional
West Coast IPA due to a scaling
down of the hop bitterness. How
willing are consumers to try these
new beer styles, or is it still IPA all
the way? Our biggest sellers are
still the classic styles like pale ales,
pilsners and IPAs. But consumers
are certainly the ones driving the
movement towards interesting new
beer styles. Breweries are
essentially very reactive; we watch
what is moving well in our own
taprooms or craft bars and take our
lead from that. What is a typical
week for you? As a brewery,
probably about 30 percent new
product development, trialling,
costing etc, and 70 percent making
sure we have a good supply of keg
and packaged stock of our ‘core
range’ styles. As mentioned before,
we are starting to see this balance
out more and more as we take the
focus off packaged and core range
stock and try to create more new
brews to keep things fresh and
interesting for our customers.
What do you enjoy most about
the work? There is huge variation
in the day-to-day, given the size of
our brewery team. Everybody
helps out over all sides of the
business so no two days are the
same. There is also huge variation
in styles of beer we make, which
also keeps things fresh. One day
we might be picking fruit for our
new sour; another day we might be
making a hazy IPA with interesting
new hops; another we might be
putting an imperial stout into
barrels for ageing. Are there any
perks? Access to tasty beer and
pizza is a pretty good perk!
brewmoon.co.nz
There are five basic flavours that we
detect on our tongue: salt, sweet,
bitter, sour and umami (savoury).
Not all of them, however, have been
using the same PR firm! Sweetness
has had it all over the opposition
and for good reason, because at an
evolutionary level, sweetness tells
us we are on to something packed
full of energy – exactly the food you
need when running away from lions
on the Savanna, less important
when sitting on the sofa!
Sour taste, on the other hand,
sends us an important signal that
we are about to swallow some acid.
Sounds bad when you say it like
that, but it can indicate that we are
getting some essential nutrients
such as ascorbic acid, otherwise
known as vitamin C. Recently,
however, sour has got a new PR
team and they are using fermented
beverages such as kombucha and
beer to win back lovers of tart.
Sour beers are not new but their
popularity has increased
dramatically thanks to the crafty
boutique brewers looking for an
angle that differentiates them from
the mainstream multinationals.
There are two common ways to
make sour beer. One uses yeasts
such as Brettanomyces (Brett to its
best friends!), which naturally
produce acids during fermentation.
Sour the new sweet
Sour beers are the new thing this summer and
perfect for a hot day, says Ralph Bungard.
You might be familiar with beer
styles such as Lambic and Saison
that rely on Brett-like yeasts. The
second uses bacteria, the same
types used to make yoghurt, such
as Lactobacillus for example.
In the business of brewing, using
bacteria is called “kettle souring”
(for reasons I won’t bore you with),
and it is the method most favoured
by brewers because it’s quick and
it’s easy to control the tartness.
The main kettle-soured styles
about town are the Berliner and the
Gose (pronounced “goes-uh” as in
Rosa). Often you will find them
with a fruit addition, which is quite
traditional, the fruit flavours
working so well with the acidic
punch of the underlying beer.
At Three Boys, we have a Gose in
its pure unadulterated form – tart
and slightly salty with a lovely
bready, herbal character, and the
same beer with a dash of
passionfruit pulp. Both are
gorgeous, award-winning beauties!
Sour can be a bit of a leap but take
your time and I’m sure you will be
rewarded.
Sour beers are great thirstquenchers
and are well worth
searching out on a hot day. How
about this Kiwi summer we make
“sour as” our new “sweet as, bro”?
threeboysbrewery.co.nz
47 CITYSCAPE.CO.NZ Summer 20