Our resident Byron brewer for November-January..
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 Sean Rynne, our resident brewer for November – January.
Give us a bit of background about yourself…
I started brewing with Stone & Wood two years ago now. I pretty much just fell into brewing right out of university where I studied biomedical science and was teaching piano on the side. Around this time I made a few terrible home brews, so I came to Stone & Wood very green and very keen to learn.
What are your favourite styles of beer and why?
This answer would probably change every week! I love all styles of beer, but at the moment have been really digging some more traditional styles like oud bruin and Flanders red. I also can’t go past a well-made lager!
What will you be brewing during your time here in Byron?
I’ve gone with my favourite style of the moment with an oud bruin: a mixed ferment brown ale with raspberries and oak chips added to the fermenter.
Any beers you’re really excited about brewing and why?
I’m super excited to brew some of the calibration beers we have coming up – it’s so cool to be able to take someone else’s concept and design a brew for them and bring it to life! Also, I really enjoy anything that’s technically challenging on brew day.
What do you like about using the Pilot Batch brewery to experiment?
The Pilot Brewery is right back to basics. With everything being super manual, it gives us the chance to use fun and different ingredients that just wouldn’t work or would be outrageously expensive at large scale.
