Beer is made traditionally from malted grains, hops and water. We source our malted grain from all over the world in 25kg sacks. The grain is crushed through a mill to release the sugars and flavours, and is mixed with hot water in the mash tun where it soaks for a short time.
The liquid is then pumped out into a kettle where it is boiled and hops, most of which come from NZ, are added.
The liquid or wort is cooled down to 20 degrees from boiling through a heat exchanger and pumped to the fermenter. The hot water produced through the heat exchanger is recycled to another tank for cleaning purposes.
When the wort has reached the optimum temperature of 18-20 degrees, yeast is added which converts the sugar from the grain into alcohol and CO2.
Occasionally for some beers we add more hops in the fermenter (this is known as dry hopping).
After about two weeks in the fermenter, and when the brew has reached its optimum alcohol content, we further cool it to stop the yeast from creating more alcohol.
The beer is now transferred to conditioning tanks in a coolroom from where we can or keg it after a couple more weeks.