Our next Pilot Batch Brewer heading up the brew deck for the next 3 months.
Our Pilot Batch beers are experimental brews created by our team of brewers, with occasional help from collaborators within our community, all at our Pilot Brewery in Byron Bay.
These small batch brews are special, limited and, once gone, may never return. The Pilot Batch brewery is a space for our brewers to get creative – an opportunity to trial weird and wonderful things, turning the brewery into an experimental playground to get a little fruity.
Every three months, one of our brewers takes up the helm in our Byron brewery, running the day-to-day operations. During this time, they have the chance to brew their favourite beers and run the Pilot Batch program.
Meet our latest Pilot Batch brewer, Jeremy…
GIVE US A BIT OF BACKGROUND ABOUT YOURSELF…
I’m from the Goldy of all places, one of the few lucky people to be born and raised there! I used to work in the Environmental Consulting industry but jumped ship to brewing about 3 years ago. The biggest draw for me to brewing was how friendly and supportive the industry is, not to mention all that good beer!
I have been home brewing for well over 10 years now, which helped me get up to speed brewing on a commercial scale immensely. Fair to say my homebrewing has improved a heap in the last few years as well!
WHAT ARE YOUR FAVOURITE STYLES OF BEER AND WHY?
The answer to that question probably changes every other week, but I’ll always appreciate any beer that’s put together well and does what it says on the label. In a saying that though, sours will always catch my eye…
It’s also great seeing all of the raw ingredient suppliers (malt, hops, yeast & adjuncts) going through their craft boom equivalent, so there’s always new and exciting combinations and techniques to try out.
WHAT WILL YOU BE BREWING DURING YOUR TIME HERE IN BYRON?
Lots of beer during silly season! Hopefully a lot of summer quenchers that fly through the tasting room.
For my 3 month stint beer, we’ve just brewed an ice cream styled IPA, massive amounts of oats and lactose, and then adding some mango, macadamia and toasted coconut in ferment – thinking something along the lines of a Weis bar, will be on tap in early January.
ANY BEERS YOU’RE REALLY EXCITED ABOUT BREWING AND WHY?
Anything that’s technically challenging on brew day is always interesting. Big hoppy beers always put a strain on the brew kit.
Any NPD (New Product Development) beers are awesome too, as we haven’t done them before you’ve got to think on your feet a bit sometimes to make it all work.
WHAT DO YOU LIKE ABOUT USING THE PILOT BATCH BREWERY TO EXPERIMENT?
Working with the rest of the NPD (New Product Development) crew to make all those great ideas come to life. It’s also interesting working out the challenges that come with scale – we can pretty easily tip buckets of fruit or whatever into the smaller 600L tanks, but if it’s going to become a Counter Culture or core range beer we need to manage the reliable scaling to 20,000+ litres, so things like pumping from drum etc come into play.
