The Star: April 13, 2017

The Star 23
Our People
Brewer with the golden touch
Three Boys brewer Eli
Haines has just won
gold at the New World
Beer & Cider Awards
for his new brew,
West Coast Red IPA.
He spoke to Gabrielle
Stuart about what went
into a good brew
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Thursday April 13 2017
Eli Haines
How did you get into brewing?
Well, I left high school all
ready to go into forestry, because
I was interested in organic
chemistry and things like that,
and I already had an interest in
beer. I was entirely enrolled, just
needed to do the student loan
paperwork, which I was set to do
the next week. But then I met the
head brewer from Cassels & Sons
at the Woolston farmers’ market.
I got talking to him and he said
he was looking for someone, so I
decided to forego university and
take on an apprenticeship-type
role at Cassels.
What did your family think
of that?
My dad was less impressed, my
mum liked it a bit more. But they
both liked that I was going into
work in an apprenticeship-like
role, not just joining a circus or
something.
And what was the job like,
initially?
So my initial role was tidying
up and scraping labels off bottles,
that kind of thing. Then I moved
up to scrubbing tanks and doing
more of the hands on side of
brewing.
So wait – being allowed to
clean the tanks was a promotion?
This isn’t sounding very
glamorous.
That’s right – but the cleaning
is very important, because everywhere
the beer touches needs
to be kept sterile. I still do a lot
of cleaning of the tanks, so I’ve
just graduated to cleaning bigger
bottles, pretty much. That was
seven years ago now, so I worked
there for three years and did
qualifications on the side, and
then applied for a role at Three
Boys and took on a chief brewertype
role.
Could you explain to me in
layman’s terms the science of
brewing a good beer?
In terms of what makes a good
beer versus a bad one, the main
thing is hygiene and sterility,
only letting in one specific yeast,
rather than letting in a lot of
organisms. We take barley and
soak that in water, which releases
the enzymes which changes
starches into sugars. Then we
take the sugars out and sterilise
them by boiling, and that’s when
we add hops for bittering and
stability and flavour. We call
that brewer’s wort, it’s a syrup
with hops in it, essentially. We
then ferment that with a certain
yeast strain, which takes sugar
and converts it to alcohol, and at
that point you can start calling
it beer. Then we mature it and it
becomes clear and carbonated.
How long does it take?
To make the wort it takes
one full day of brewing, then it
ferments for about a week and
conditions for about two weeks.
So about three weeks in total. It’s
a lot faster than spirits or wine.
How do you develop your
recipes?
We have a little trial brew kit
which produces about 50 litres at
a time. So I’ll make a trial brew
and test it with the team here
and with my family and friends.
If it’s good I scale it up, and if it’s
bad we never talk about it again.
What are some of the brews
you haven’t taken to market?
There are quite a few where the
flavours work but we don’t think
it would sell. I did a trial brew
of an apple pie beer, which was
really good, but we couldn’t see it
selling particularly well.
That sounds delicious.
Well that’s good – I’ve got one
customer then. At the moment
I’m trialling a peaches and cream
IPA, so if that’s any good you’ll
see it in the shop. Usually the bad
ones don’t get too far. I’ll sometimes
come up with weird flavours
in my head and talk to my
boss about them, but he tends to
shut the worst ones down.
And tell me about your new
award-winning brew?
It’s a West Coast Red IPA. The
west coast of America is famed
for intense hops, so I sourced
a bunch of hops there, but also
used a lot of caramel type malts.
It’s a mix of sweet caramel
toffee with these really intense
American piney hops, with some
hints of citrus and passion. So it’s
a really strong blend of flavours
that balance well together.
People seem to be a lot more
adventurous now with their
beers.
It means we can be a bit
crazier with flavours and people
are more accepting of it. So it’s
PROUD: Eli Haines with
the West Coast Red IPA -
caramel type malts.
Above – The Three Boys
Brewery in Woolston.
PHOTOS; GEOFF SLOAN
always a good thing more people
are into beers, but on the other
hand I have had a lot of very
average home brew.
People have been brewing
beer for hundreds of years – do
you think those ancient beers
would taste the same?
They would probably be along
the same lines, because it has
always been malt and hops and
water for a long time now. But
some of them would be quite
strange because they didn’t have
a knowledge of microbiology like
we do now, so they were leaving
that really important flavour step
of the process completely up to
chance, just whatever microflora
was in the area at the time.
And tell me a bit about your
interests outside work?
I enjoy surfing, and I host a
radio show on RDU, Blue Mondays.
We play alternative stuff, so
I’m quite involved in the music
scene in Christchurch, always
looking for new music.
And when you go out
yourself, what beer would you
drink?
I really enjoying tasting other
beer and trying something new.
But sometimes you want the
comfort of drinking something
you know, so right now for me
that would be our Three Boys
lager, it’s a great beer.