Another Balter Mouth Holiday collab, another opportunity for Scotty Hargrave to take a trip on the company dollar. This time he skipped across to New Zealand and met up with Garage Project co-founder and head brewer Pete Gillespie, who I’m 80 percent sure is just Gerard Butler in a not very good disguise.
Together, Scotty and Pete went hop hunting. The pair visited Freestyle Hops and its sister farm Nelson Lakes Hops, which Pete says is “probably the most beautiful hop farm in the entire world,” and which channels its intense climate into intensely flavoured hops. They selected new variety Peacharine, as well as some punchy Motueka and Riwaka hops, and a few months later threw all of these into…
…a lager. What an age we live in!
They labelled the resulting beer “NZ Pilsner”, though it’s clear they’d both put it in the category of West Coast pilsner, with hops aplenty and drinkability by the boatload. Pungent stonefruit and lime stank rise from a beautiful head of foam; the hops in this beer are supported by pale malt made from the “Rolls Royce” of barley from the high altitude Royalburn Station, and this protein-rich malt makes for bangin’ froth. In the mouth, the formidable hop character tidies up into sherbetty citrus and peachy wine spritzer* - flavoursome yet super downable.
If you’re interested, Balter put together a mini-documentary in three parts to capture Scotty and Pete’s jaunt, in which Pete does some Riwaka bashing, Scotty throws all of his powers of pronunciation into the word “terroir”, and the two of them literally skip through hop fields holding hands. And that’s just episode one.
Mick Wüst
* I almost said “West Coast Cooler” since that’s what I remember my mum and sister drinking back in the day, but I figured that name might get tangled up with West Coast pilsner. Though now I’m just wondering if Balter’s next collab will be West Coast Cooler Pilsner…
Published August 27, 2024 2024-08-27 00:00:00
