NEWS

To celebrate the hop harvest, Rocks Brewing Co has teamed up with Hop Products Australia to incorporate fresh hop flowers into a new limited edition Wet Hop Ale.

The aim of the limited edition brew is to showcase the incredible flavours and nuances that the use of fresh – or wet – hops can bring to a beer. As such, the classic beer style guidelines went out the window, with the team happy to abandon conventions. According to Head Brewer Scott Morgan, brewing with the fresh flowers (also known as hop cones) was a little bit like a dream come true.

“The wet hops smelled amazing straight out of the bag,” he says. “But out of the tank the aroma and flavour is, well, nothing short of amazing.”

Owen Johnson, from Hop Products Australia, concurs that brewing with fresh, or wet, hops is a singularly exciting experience for brewers – especially when it comes to using exclusive Australian varietals.

“At harvest time we love to get involved with brewers making wet-hopped beers,” he says. “Anything to help make hops the hero in beer is great.”

Weighing in somewhere between 5.0% and 6.0% ABV (alcohol by volume), and featuring Ella and Galaxy hop varieties, the brew blurs the lines between an IRA (India Red Ale) and an ABA (American Brown Ale). The Rocks Brewing team of Scott Morgan and Ben Landsberry, were aiming to create a beer that features a solid malt profile and flavour, as well as being extremely hoppy.

The beer is the latest member of Rocks Brewing Co’s Conviction Series, and is currently fermenting in the company’s state-of-the-art brewing facility in Alexandria. Incidentally, the working name for the brew was Holy Diver – in honour of the Black Sabbath song by Ronnie James Dio – due to Hard Rock Monday and Wet Hop Brew Day happily coinciding.

As Rocks Brewing Co gears up to launch the beer to market, Morgan is very happy with the progress the brew is making in the tanks.

“The hop notes at the moment are heavy and lush,” he says. “We are doing all we can to retain the flavour and aroma throughout the rest of the brewing to make sure our thirsty fans share in this hop-plosion.”

The beer will be available on tap at quality craft beer venues in the Sydney area very soon.

By Scotty Morgan.

Well it’s been a crazy, often scary year with a whole shebang load of things going on for Rocks Brewing.

Late in 2012, after a visit to the US, we started working on our brewery installation project. We were introduced to IDD by our mate Barry Broughton (Franke Blefa kegs fame) and started the process of looking at the revolutionary new HEBS system Jeff had designed. We were lucky enough to inspect the first prototype system built for Tin Man Brewing in Indiana, and it sealed the deal for us.

January rolled around, beer sales were on the up, we had to go to three different breweries to get our beer contract brewed – the new brewery was looking better and better all the time.

April came around, and enough was enough. With beer in four plants for the month, Mark (the MD) placed the order for the HEBS unit. The unit will make up to one and a half million litres of beer with the current number of tanks, pushing to three million with more tanks added.

July arrived and you guessed it, beer sales were on the up and we were at five plants and still waiting desperately for our brewery to ship.

September, I took off to the US to inspect our equipment prior to shipping and to brew a collaboration brew with Chris Anderson at Coachella Valley Brewing. Coachella have the same brew house, so it was part collaboration brew and part ‘lets see how this sucker works’ trip. And work the brew house did. We made a 10.0% Imperial IPA with fresh wet hops flown down direct from Washington State. The hops had their own plane seat. We got 95% efficiency from the brewery (that’s massively impressive, a normal system would push to give 75%) and the beer – from Chris’s reports – turned out killer. Some of the beer will be oak aged, waiting for our next visit.

October, well lots of men with work boots, cranes, and what not started the putting the building together for the brewery. The brewery, incidentally named Connie, also arrived.

Here we are in November, waiting for the brew house to be installed and knocked together. This part of the process begins on 9 December, with Frank from IDD coming out to supervise works. The brewery will be fired up by mid-late January, and I am very excited... Oh, and we still have beer in four breweries this month, so thanks to those brewers helping to make our beer!

By Scotty Morgan

I was lucky enough to brew Corriolis DIPA with Chris Anderson at Coachella Brewing Co in between checking out our new brew house – incidentally the very first collaboration brew for Rocks Brewing Co.

Coachella is made famous for its music festival, its stark desert environment, and now its first class brewery. Chris makes stunning beers. As a trained chef he has a great grasp on flavours, particularly with the use of spices, herbs and fruits – all obtained locally.

Coachella Valley Brewing Co has the same brew house we have, an IDD 20 hectolitre Mash Filter system. Chris is the sort of brewer that pushes things to the limits. Jeff the brewery supplier said not to go over 1200 pounds (approximately 600 kilograms) of malt, so he went with 1350 pounds. Wet hops were not recommended, so we went with them, of course.

The brewery exceeded both Chris and my expectations – we got more extract than anticipated. In non-brewer speak that is more sugar from the grain. We got 95% extract when we expected 93%. In a standard brewery we would get approximately 75% with all that malt – so the result was pretty darn good.

We chucked in 40 pounds (approximately 20 kilograms) of wet hops from Washington State. The hops were picked the night before the brew and flown in, on their own seat, to Coachella. The aroma of the hops was amazing, fresh and zingy. That smell was made all the more intense when we put them into the hop back and ran the hot wort through them.

At the end of the day we ended up with a huge beer. It will ferment out to about 10.0% ABV and some will be barrel-aged. This brew is one of many that Chris and I plan to do, with an expected trip back to the US next April, so we look forward to tasting the beer and making a few more. Chris is also working on a trip down to Sydney for a few weeks late next year too… Looks like we have plenty of years of huge beers ahead of us.