Docs
Brewing guides & reference material
Process 7
- All-Grain Brew Day — End-to-End Walkthrough How a brew day actually runs on the two rigs behind this journal — a BrewZilla 65L in Wellington and a Grainfather G30 in Auckland. Chronological, with the numbers we actually use and the places experience has changed them.
- Cleaning & Sanitation Clean then sanitise — the two-step discipline that decides whether a batch turns out clean or infected. The chemicals, contact times, the 80 °C rule, and per-stage routines.
- Brewing Water Basics What the minerals in your water actually do, how to tune the sulfate-to-chloride balance for a style, and how to hit mash pH — worked from the Waiwhetu aquifer water the Hutt Valley and Wellington brew on, including the Petone and Dowse artesian taps.
- Kegging & Carbonation The other half of packaging — force carbonation, serving pressure, low-oxygen closed transfer, and carbonation targets by style. Pairs with the bottling section of the brew-day walkthrough.
- Yeast Handling — Pitch, Recycle, Repitch How much dry yeast to pitch (and why liquid calculators mislead), when to rehydrate vs sprinkle, how to store packs, and how to harvest and repitch a strain to save money without losing quality.
- Pressure Fermentation & Closed Transfer Fermenting under CO₂ pressure with a spunding valve — suppressing esters, fermenting warmer, carbonating naturally, and transferring to keg with no oxygen. An advanced workflow for pressure-capable fermenters.
- Wild, Sour & Barrel-Aged Beer What the mixed-culture and barrel entries in this journal are actually doing — a club solera I fill once a year, a 130 L foeder and a 57 L barrel from Wild Workshop, a 225 L saison barrique, and the house cultures that tie them together. Plus the principles behind all of it.
Measurement 1
Hops 1
Troubleshooting 2
- Bandaid, Medicinal & Plastic Off-Flavours Three different compounds share one descriptor, and they need three different fixes. How to tell chlorophenol from Brett from clove phenol, why hot fermentation is usually blamed when fusels are the real culprit, and the cheap tests that settle it.
- Butterscotch, Toffee & Hop Creep Why a beer that smells perfectly clean in the fermenter can turn buttery in the keg a fortnight later, how dry hops restart the whole cycle, and the twenty-minute test that settles it before you crash.