We hop into the detail on what makes Welcome to the Nectaron® Experience such a banger to brew with Head Brewer Nick Calder-Scholes.

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Q: There's nothing new about "fresh is best" - but what does this mean particularly for hops?

A: Hops are the flavour power-house in IPAs. True, with this release we’ve pushed hard on the yeast to provide an integrating ester profile, but it is still the hops that do the heavy lifting here. Inside the middle of the humble labourer that is the hop cone is all the delicate, flavour-packed oils and resins that makes these beautiful little cones so damn good in beer – it’s the nookie all us brewers are chasing – these degrade over time and, without going to into it, they oxidise, age, and become less potent. And it's the really soft, nuanced, delicate characters that degrade the fastest. So the quicker you can get them into a (more) stable solution, like beer, the better. 

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Q: Why is it so important to work with quality hop growers?

A: Like you, the trusty drinker, who put your trust in us to make quality product, we push the same onto our suppliers. The growers are the ones in touch with their land, they know it better than anyone, and with all our feedback they can grow hops in a way that ebb and flow with changes in the market. Picking hops has to happen at the right time, within the right window, for a certain quality to hit its peak. Picking the hop off the bine early, middle, or late in the harvest can have dramatic effects in terms of flavour, aroma, and brewhouse performance. And these nuances vary from hop variety to variety. It’s so important to have quality growers we can work with who can anticipate and deliver on this.

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Q: Why New Zealand hops?

A: Everything is better in New Zealand, is it not? Beside being from the land of plenty, Nelson NZ has an excellent climate for growing hops - good sunshine hours, mean soil, and soft mineral water with moderate-to-low wind, heavy frost in the winter, and farmers with an innovative mindset  - the meanest combo for choice hops. 

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Q: What excites you about working with Nectaron® in particular?

A: Nectaron® is the newest commercial thing out of the coveted NZ Hop Growers Bract Program – where all the newest stuff gets trialled by the world’s best brewers before agreeing to move into a commercial variety of hop – and it’s awesome to brew with a product that’s been refined by the world’s best. Being able to take an insanely fresh version of this hop and push it to the limit with our new Clean Fusion dry hopping technique has been awesome and I can't wait for everyone to try it. We’re all really stoked with it down here at the brewery.

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Q: There is a lot of chat about the hops in this beer for good reason, but what about the yeast?

A: In this brew we are showcasing our new house yeast. We’ve been playing around with a few things in the pilot program and we’ve found something that blew us all away. We just knew we had to prop it up and get it ready for this brew – super fresh hops with this really expressive yeast  - what a combo! A big sherbety-citrus ester profile integrates really well with the tropical bomb that is Nectaron®.

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Chur brother! 

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