THE BEER ESSENTIALS:
A swift half, nah – what’s in your glass is the perfect mix of art and science.
What’s in your glass is the perfect mix of art and science.
WATER, YEAST, malt and hops. Can these four humble ingredients really keep a person interested for 30 long years?
‘‘Yes, of course, because there are endless possible permutations,’’ says New Zealand’s top female brewer, Tracy Banner. ‘‘In fact, you could spend a lifetime exploring the potential combinations of those four things’’.
Banner has made a pretty good start. She began her beery career in England way back in 1983.
Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister at the time, but while politics had sunk to a septic nadir, pop music had reached an apex of inspired silliness. Turn on your radio, and you might be asked if you really wanted to hurt Culture Club (Answer: Yes) or overhear Michael Jackson denying he’d ever had sexual relations with Billie Jean. Prince was already partying like it was 1999. And due to insufficient exercise and an overindulgence in saturated fat, poor old Bonnie Tyler was experiencing a painful cardiac event known as a Total Eclipse of the Heart.
Banner, meanwhile, was in a lab not far from her home city of Liverpool, analysing malts at the famous Greenalls Brewery. ‘‘Those early years in the lab made me the brewer I am today,’’ she says as she hands me a very welcome ale. ‘‘I learned all about malt and hops and bitterness and alcohol and pH and so on. It gave me a deep understanding of the components of good beer.’’
Yes, yes – I know what they are: yeast, malt, hops and water. But it still seems a very limited palette of possible flavours, doesn’t it? Which is why I’ve come to the Sprig and Fern pub Banner runs with husband Ken, a converted Nelson villa named Best Bar in New Zealand at the 2012 Hospitality NZ Awards.
What better place to sample a few brews to see just how much variation is possible? And what better tour guide than Banner: bar owner, beer boffin, fellow adopted Nelsonian?
This woman has done more than most to help usher in the much-trumpeted ‘‘craft beer revolution’’. Soon after emigrating here in 1994, she became head brewer at Nelson’s original Mac’s Brewery, back when it was a pioneering independent, and later did time in Dunedin as the first female head brewer for Speight’s.
Beside running her own pub, Banner’s now sole owner of Nelson’s thriving Sprig and Fern brewery, which supplies nine affiliated craft beer taverns around the country. ‘‘Put me in a kitchen and I’d struggle, but I love everything about making beer,’’ she says as she hands me a glass of Porter. With an undertow of coffee and chocolate and a rich mahogany colour, it’s a dark ale that aspires to the status of drinkable velvet.
‘‘Making beer is the perfect mix of art and science. For instance, we recently made an anniversary ale, Brewer’s Pearl, to celebrate 30 years of me working in this industry. I was thinking about it so much, I could taste that beer in my mouth six months ago! I could taste the smokiness, the fullness of the malt, the weight of alcohol, so I worked backwards from that flavour I imagined, and you can now buy that beer in our bar.’’
Indeed, you can. I had one of those, too. Rich and smoky with undercurrents of honey, it tastes as though someone has used fine ale to extinguish a burning beehive then caught the run-off in a glass.
Malt, hops, water and yeast. Surely these ingredients are available everywhere, so why settle in Nelson? ‘‘Because this is the perfect latitude for growing barley and hops,’’ Banner tells me. ‘‘And our ground water is among the purest in the world.’’
Fair enough. And of course, New Zealanders are devilishly thirsty, drinking around 75 litres of beer per capita every year.
Speaking of which, my glass seems to be empty. Something else? It would be rude not to. I try a half of Tasman Reserve Lager, a fine punchy brew with a touch of passionfruit and citrus. I could drink it all day. Some have, I’m sure. It probably did them no favours in the long run.
I order something else, a Doppelbock this time. My palate now working overtime, I discerned that it was made from water, yeast, malt and hops. It had a rich biscuity aroma, a fruity malt flavour and, at 8 per cent, a serious wallop of alcohol. Such a harmonious union of humble ingredients had seldom wet my whistle. As I raised the glass to my grateful lips, I gave thanks for the prodigious talents of Tracy Banner, honed over three decades in the game. Then I gave thanks that it was just a short stroll home.