We had our first ever tasting with a home brewer in Auckland, NZ called Jason Highet and it was awesome. Jason loves beer, he recently visited Europe and checked out the many breweries of Bruges, Amsterdam, Prague, Salzburg, and Munich others with a vengeance. And, he’s been making his very own Highëtbräu beer in his garage since 2010.
Jason took a while to get into it. He visited a friend in the States who had a pretty sweet home brew set-up, and the beers that he made were really nice. Jason talked about getting into it for a long time, but did nothing. His girlfriend bought him a kit, but he didn’t do anything with it for around six months. He ended up going on holiday in Australia and there was a club where amateur brewers could come in and learn, get help, play on equipment and buy brewing stuff. He spent a day in the club which is where he got the kick-start he needed.
He started out making beer using cans of pre-hopped and pre-flavoured malt extract that you added brewing sugar to and fermented with a very easy-to-ferment strain of yeast. Not unlike making a cake from a cake mix. He’s since progressed to ‘extract brewing’, where his beer is made with plain unflavoured malt extract, but boiled up with hops and speciality malts and other ingredients to get the particular beer style he’s aiming for. This is then fermented with a strain of yeast appropriate for the style. Jason says he’s hoping to move on to doing partial-mash home-brew soon, where the beer is partially made with liquid malt extract, and partially made with crushed grains. (This is cheaper, but trickier and takes longer.)
Making beer takes a bit of time, you have to get all the stuff you need for making beer, you have to allow it to ferment, check it, wash all the bottles, sterilise the bottles, and in Jason’s case, design the labels (he’s made a gallery for them here). Despite all the time it takes to make the beer and do all the prep, it’s extremely economical. He has a $35 NZD limit on how much he spends on making a 20 litre batch. That equates to around $1.50 NZD per 750ml bottle.
Even though he tries to keep to a pretty tight budget Jason’s focus is on quality, not quantity. His beer is always all-malt (no cheap sugars that cause hangovers) and uses a fresh yeast that is appropriate for the beer style. Some solid tips from Jason to make your dollars go further:
- Use local (New Zealand) hops rather than imported hops
- Choose hops and speciality grains that can be used multiple beer styles, so I can buy in bulk and share them across the beers that I’m making.
- Check out the homebrew section in your supermarket. (Jason visits up to three!) Supermarkets have a tiny range of products compared to a home-brew shop, but are generally cheaper.
Home brew keeps for a few months too so you don’t need to drink it all at once and pass out in a pool of your own vomit. Jason says his beer generally keeps for nine months to a year – it depends on the style of beer. Darker, hoppier, and higher alcohol beers usually keep for longer; but it remember also depends on how it’s stored and the type of yeast in the beer. I think I need to start making beer.
According to Jason the best times to brew are when temperatures are constant, he brews in Autumn and Spring – he could get all tricky with blankets and the like, but why make things difficult? He does around four batches a season, that’s 80 litres of beer. The other thing to take into the account is the unknown. No matter how good Jason does the math, he doesn’t really know how the beer is going to turn out. Living on the edge.
In terms of success rates – of the roughly 25 batches he’s made, he’s been happy with most, really happy with a few, and only had two batches that were undrinkable. Jason is meticulous with my cleaning and sanitizing, so it’s got the point now where if he’s unhappy with something, it’s usually because he’s messed up the recipe, or don’t actually like the style of beer made, rather than a problem with the brewing process. He says it can be quite hard to judge how successful a beer is sometimes too – he has to test each style on people that actually like that particular style of beer. Jason recently did all the beer for a friend’s wedding, and by choosing a couple of simple-to-brew, easy-to-drink beer recipes was able to please most of the guests.
If you want to piss Jason off tell him you made 15% beer while at uni and it tasted like petrol, then refuse to drink his beer because home brew tastes like shit. Jason is in it for the love of the beer, and ensures alcohol levels are appropriate for that style of beer. He refers to it as craft brew, not home brew.
We asked Jason about what music he listens to while crafting, he replied:
I usually listen to music when I’m beer making, as does involve a lot of boring monotonous tasks (like cleaning, filling and capping bottles) but I don’t have a specific beer making album. I generally listen to a mix of easy-listening soul, funk, reggae, dub, jazz, downbeat, old school hip-hop and Brazilian music while I’m making beer. I think this suits me more for beer making more than say, the angry metal I listen to in my day-job as a software developer, as I’m gently moulding the beer into existence, not doing battle with it.
And there you have it.
Unless you know Jason you will not get to drink these beers because of laws in NZ banning you for selling home brew – it can only be made for your own consumption or you go all in for commercial production.
If you’re looking for a few more tips Jason recommends the blog on the Beersmith website as a good place to start. Lots of homebrew blogs tend to come on strong and peter out, possibly as the attentions of the homebrewer turns to other things. There are also heaps of Beer Apps for your smartphone which can help you out with tricky calculations.
Most of the beers we tasted were from his Autumn batch, made for summer drinking.
Feijoabier
This beer tasted more like a proper ‘flat’ cider to me than a beer. Jason couldn’t tell us why this was the case, he expected more bubbles himself, perhaps the fact that this was on the dry rather than sweet side explains it – who understands science anyways. Anyways totally thirst quenching and refreshing, not too sweet with the smell and taste of sweet tropical feijoas. He put 2kg off their tree into the batch, (just the pulp, no skins mind). His girlfriend doesn’t like beer so much, but she likes feijoas so he made this for her. She hasn’t tried this yet, but she’s going to like it.
Dos Highetos
The budget Mexican-styled label on this is gold. It looks like your average burrito piss, it even tastes kind of like it but it’ better because Jason made it. Technically this is actually an extremely pale late, as it uses ale yeast, but it’s very light and looks lagerish. This is an easy drinker, and slightly sweet (like a Sol or Corona) with a little tanginess. This is meant to be served with a bit of lemon. We had ours straight up. BAM!
Highetgaarden
Highëtbräu’s flagship beer. This is a custom blended wheat beer 50/50 malted barley to wheat and is made without spices – some of your fancier wheat beers will have these added – think Hoegaarden. It smelled like a Hoegaarden (floral) and tastes like beer (quite a lot like a Macs Gold actually). It’s refreshing and thirst quenching, what more do you need? He made this for drinking. Objective achieved. Crisper than the other beers we’d tasted so far.
Ambier Bier
This beer is made in the style of Indian Pale Ales (IPAs) they are pretty much all the rage with lots of boutique breweries showcasing these beauties (Brew Dog The Kernel, etc). Nice smelling hot popcorn and burnt toffee (burnt caramel corn even?) and a nice crisp bitter finish thanks to the hops. This was the Highet’s least favourite beer of the tasting. I loved it. Once we smelled real dried hops, they looked and smelled a bit like weed.
Darkbier
This beer was really interesting, a coffee and oatmeal Stout. Stout is basically a really, really dark ale and made from hops, malt, water and yeast. The toasted malts are what give the beer it’s colouring. This beer was designed by Highet for breakfast. Who doesn’t like a good strong coffee and a hot bowl of porridge to get you going in the morning? It had a nice bit of froth on the top and the oatmeal imparted a touch of creaminess. This was Jason’s favourite beer, he recommends drinking this beer in the morning. And, if you’re feeling a little spicy in the evening you could even add a shot of Frangelico. Fancy!
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