Richard Emerson - The Emerson Brewing - New Zealand

How you started brewing:

Beer is like cooking, perhaps the influence of many family members enjoying cooking has rubbed off onto me. However throw in the interest of science, art and the social interaction, beer becomes even more appealing! I started off homebrewing in mother’s kitchen in the late 1980’s until she wasn’t amused with the sticky mess. The next step was up grading the brewery from 20L to 120 Litres per batch and a more scientific approach to finding out the best yeast & recipe combinations. This was done from a friend’s large garage, I can never thank him enough for the generous use of the space. What fun we had!

Favourite beer you’ve brewed:

Duvel, by accident…I had brewed a wheat beer using a package of German dried yeast, the fermentation was very problematic and I struggled to get the beer to ferment out. I bottled all 120Litres of it, two months later I felt the beer wasn’t worth keeping so I dumped all but 3 dozen bottles as I needed the bottles to carry on with the R&D. The redundancy from my work in 1990 as a Lab Technican at the local food manufacturer lead me to pack up the Pilot Plant and move the 120 crates into my neighbour’s basement while I went off overseas in search of beer & working in breweries for a year. When I finally came back, Dad gives me this wonderful glass of beer with fluffy white head, golden sparkle, I tasted it and exclaimed that “you’ve given me Duvel?”…Dad replies “oh no, it’s one of your’s, here’s the batch number…” I just couldn’t believe it!

Favourite beer you haven’t brewed:

Duvel

Greatest beer achievement:

Wining the Champion Wheat Beer Trophy at Australian Beer Awards 1997 against all other the German wheat beers, and to repeat the same feat in 2009 with Weizenbock.

Favourite brewing website:

Realbeer.co.nz

How you see Australian Microbrewing industry:

The Australian craft brewing industry is now growing at far more adventurous pace than before and brewing more hoppy beers and Belgian styles.

Brewer/Brewery you most highly respect:

Sierra Nevada Brewery, this was my inspirational brewery when I started the brewing business.

Hint to home brewers.

Cleaniness, cleaniness. I also recommend a good yeast starter. Do experiment with a Wyeast smack pack.

 www.emersons.co.nz