Wanting to do a Red IPA, I had a look around for some grain bill ideas. I came across John Palmer’s recipe and surprised by the huge amount of crystal malt – 1kg! One would expect the beer to be super cloying with that amount of crystal despite 60 IBUs, but surely John Palmer knows …
Blog Archive
Oct 25 2025
Vortex Redux II
Both League Vortex and my Vortex Redux were so good that when I kicked the last keg, I decided to brew another variation on the recipe. The main changes from the last version are: Mosaic hops instead of Cascade and a total of 340g of hops, Verdant IPA yeast instead of US-05 and a bigger …
Jun 28 2025
Vortex Redux
My last beer, the League Vortex was really good and disappeared quickly so I was going to do it again but last minute I decided to do a few modifications to beef it up a tad so this will be a slightly different beer – more grain, more hops, more colour. Last time around I …
Jan 02 2025
League Vortex
First brew since Marchfest! Slightly modified Vortex recipe in that I added some extra bittering hops (16g of Southern Cross @ 15mins) and moved the 12g Mosaic addition to join the 5 min addition. My reasoning for this is IBUs looked low on my brewing calculator and thought I would get more from the Mosaic …
Apr 06 2024
Marchfest Robust Porter
Brewed at Marchfest 2024. Mash temp ~ 70° Pitched 2 packets of dry yeast. When picked up fermenter next day, fermentation was already in full swing and fermenter under high pressure. Reduced pressure to 15psi. Unfortunately it lost all pressure by the time I checked it next day. 26th April – Kegged Came in much …
Feb 01 2024
Riwaka Resurgence II
Brewed 1st Feb strike water: 20L @ 75° mash start: 70° end mash: 68° sparge water: 12L Vol in kettle: 29L water additions added start of boil koppafloc @ 15 mins Gravity after mash: 12 Brix = 1.048 30 min boil (gas low again!! – gotta stop doing this!) no chill – transfer to gcube …
Oct 28 2023
MMN Juicy Hazy
MMN = Mosaic-Motueka-Necteron Brewed 28th Oct strike water: 20L @ 76° mash start: 69.5° end mash: 67° sparge water: 12L Vol in kettle: 27L No koppafloc! Better for hazy? Gravity after mash: 13.3 Brix = 1.054 25min hops stand (94° to 75°) chilled to 18° 24L in fermentor OG: 15.2 Brix = 1.062 Yeast rehydrated …
Sep 30 2023
Full Moon Pale Ale
Brewed 30th Sept (close enough to full moon!) strike water: 20L @ 76° mash start: 70° mid mash: 69° sparge water: 13.6L 25min hops stand (90° to 75°) chilled to 17.5° 28L in fermentor OG: 1.058 Boiled with gas running out! Took ages to get up to boil/hot break. But made it albeit more of …
Apr 02 2023
Fresh hops random Hazy
Dan from LOB gave me an unwanted Hazy grain bill, already milled. Then LOB were giving away fresh Nectaron hops so I got about 2.5kg of them and threw down this beer, brewed with kveik yeast. Brewed 18th Mar Strike temp: 77° Mash: start 72°, mid: 70.5°, end 68° OG: 12.2 Brix (before hops rinse) …
Mar 03 2023
Marchfest ’23 Porter
Based on the LOB adaptation of the ‘Nick Danger’ porter recipe (original by Denny Conn) which I previously brewed at Marchfest in 2019. This turned out to be a really nice porter when I made it before so I thought it was time to do it again. My main deviations from the LOB version are …
Feb 19 2023
Little Hazy
This is an attempt to brew a low ABV beer that tastes like a proper beer rather than a watered down version of a beer. My previous low ABV batch was a decent effort but a bit on the watery side despite being almost 4% ABV. Having tasted an Eddyline EddyLite which at only 2.5% …
Nov 05 2022
Session Pale Ale
Attempt at a lighter (by ABV) beer. Kept it in and served it from the Fermzilla. By some weird magic it didn’t require any CO2 for serving (after the original charge up to 15psi)! It held enough pressure to pour until the last drop. How did it maintain pressure? As it was a low gravity …
Oct 08 2022
Irish Red
I had a can of ‘Leprechaun’s Belle’ by Deep Creek and really liked it. Although it aims to be an ‘Irish Red’, I’d say it was much better than a typical Irish Red, more of a ‘craft beer’ take on the style. It’s a lot darker and more roasty so I reckon that it has …
Sep 11 2022
MotCrossTai IPA
I thought the malty base of my previous beer, Hops Harvest 2022, was so good that I kept the grain bill exactly the same and paired it up with a trio of hops pellets – Motueka, Southern Cross and Taiheke. Style Information Name: American IPA Recipe Type: All Grain Grains & Extracts Name Amount Notes …
May 29 2022
Whiskey 2022
strike water: 22L @ 73.5° mash start: 66° mid mash: 65.5° sparge water: 10L 30 L in fermentor (to the brim!) OG: 1.084 No boil – left in fridge to cool Fermented for 2 weeks (still had solid airlock activity in 2nd week) FG: 0.999 ABV: 11.35% Grains & Extracts Name Amount Notes Distillers Malt …
Mar 19 2022
Hops Harvest 2022
This years fresh hops stew brewed with a total of 1.8kg (1.1 C, 0.7 N) of hops picked the night before. Hops measures for recipe divided by 5 to get approx weight in dry hops. – Mash: start temp 68° (66.5° after 40mins), 1.5hrs – 32L in kettle @ 1.053 – Added final hops over …
Feb 20 2022
She’ll Be Right NZ Pilsner
Last minute thrown together recipe, hence the name. 20 Feb 2022 – Brew day Mashed higher than planned due to low battery in thermometer causing it to stick on 74° when measuring strike water temp, but was a few degrees higher. Ended up mashing at around 71° – too high???? Gravity after mash 1.052 – pretty …
Jan 05 2022
Summer Hazy
Style Information Name: NEIPA Recipe Type: All Grain Grains & Extracts Name Amount Notes Gladfield American Ale Malt 4 kg Flaked Oats 1 kg Wheat Malt 0.5 kg Caragold 0.3 kg Gladfield Sour Grapes 0.3 kg Hops Name Amount Alpha Acid % AAU Time Notes Freestyle 0.05 kg 9.9% 0.495 0 Willamette 0.05 kg 7.9% …
Nov 08 2021
The Bruce Session NZPA
Based on my recent beer Zythos Session APA but with a few tweaks: NZ hops blend (The Bruce) instead of US hops blend (Zythos) 0.5kg more malt – 1kg of Vienna instead of 0.7kg and 0.2kg of Sour Grapes malt German Vienna and Munich malt instead of NZ Medium crystal instead of light crystal malt …
Oct 01 2021
ZAPPA – A hazyish NZ/APA
Brewed this with Kveik yeast hotter than intended – got up to about 35°C! I had mistakenly left the temp probe OUTSIDE the frementation fridge and my hairdryer heat source was cranking up the temp for awhile before I noticed on first day of fermentation. I thought I had messed it up, but no, it …