Your favourite drop with a hint of hiphop
IF beer makes you happy, why not keep beer happy too by playing music to it? Garage Project (the Society of Beer Advocates’ 2017 brewery of the year) in Wellington is taking part in a university study on the impact of soundwaves on fermentation.
It involves submerging speakers in the brew or attaching them to the sides of stainless steel tanks to play music and various sounds to see whether it speeds up fermentation or imparts better flavours and aromas.
In Garage Project’s first experiment orchestral music was played while a Viennese lager was fermenting. They called it Resonance. Garage Project founder Pete Gillespie reckons it fermented better and displayed more hop aroma. The second, an IPA called Dark Resonance, was subjected to death, doom and black metal for 11 days.
Wellington’s Fork and Brewer restaurant and bar has also tried ultrasonic noise, just for fun, on a Low Noise pale ale and found there was less yeast wastage and that the perceived bitterness in the beer was increased.
Auckland and Otago universities have been awarded $1 million for the threeyear project. Auckland University scientist Dr Andrew Jeffs is part of it. He studies the role of underwater sound on the behaviour of crustaceans and fish and says the brewing results could help improve the manufacture of many things, including medicines and cleaning products.
Some winemakers play music to their wines while they ferment. Several Austrian winemakers play sonatas, polkas and symphonies and call their wine sonor. One claims the wines are fruitier and mature earlier and have less residual sugar because the vibrations move the yeast particles around allowing them to convert more sugar into alcohol.
Every time I was in Emerson’s old brewery in Wickliffe St, there was music playing — and a decent drop kept coming out of there . . .
However, one European scientist scoffs: ‘‘Yeasts don’t really care if AC/DC, Madonna or Mozart is played to them.’’
New brewery
After the 2010 earthquake ‘‘munted’’ Lion’s brewery in Christchurch, the company shifted its Canterbury production to Auckland and Dunedin, with a major makeover of the Speight’s plant in the South.
It is now returning to Christchurch with a ‘‘green’’ solarpowered microbrewery and cafe. As well as beer, it will produce cider, nonalcoholic and probiotic drinks and fermented foods from its own garden irrigated from a rainwater tank.
It is called the Fermentist. Perhaps it should have been the Ferminator (‘‘I’ll be back’’).