Full Nelson - New Zealand Pilsner - Tasting Results/Review

It's actually been a little while since we blew through the keg of this one, however we had a couple of bottles from this batch sitting in our kegerator that we decided to enter along with our Mr Rice Guy Japanese Rice Lager into the 2024 NSW Homebrewing Competition.

Much to our delight, and to be honest, surprise, this beer placed second in the pale lager category!

We've attached our score sheet to the bottom of this post so you can see what the two judges had to say about this beer, but we'll give our take on it as well.

Appearance wise, since we've got a 100% pilsner malt bill, that presents us with a nice light straw coloured hue, which took a very long time but eventually did drop (mostly) clear. The picture below was taken before this had occurred though. Since we didn't add anything to our brewing water besides phosphoric acid to adjust our water pH levels, we figure the lack of calcium in particular lead to a fairly persistent haze.

There was small dry hop for the beer, which admittedly was just to use the relatively small amount (18g) of leftover hops from the boil. This could be improved/bolstered by increasing this to around 70-100g (for a ~23L batch).

We've never brewed with Nelson Sauvin hops before and we were blown away at how great they were as a single hop, so if you're looking for a single hop to use with great depth of flavour, it's well worth considering. We definitely picked up on the white wine grape flavours, which are subtle and combined with some of the other fruity flavours made for a really interesting flavour profile.

Novalager yeast has also proven itself to be a great yeast option - we use it along with W-34/70 almost exclusively, and the score this beer received in the brewing competition is testament to the quality of this yeast so don't be afraid to give it a try - you'll be pleasantly surprised at how great it is. Although one judge did detect some esters which are considered a fault for this style and suggested trying a different yeast. Maybe next time we will.

This beer was a nice reminder that sometimes less is more, and smash beers (single malt and single hop) are well worth trying out every now and then, especially when you pick the right hop to use like we have here.

If we were to make it again, we'd definitely increase the dry hop. There's no doubt Nelson Sauvin pairs well with other tropical flavour hops, so we'll use it in some upcoming pale ale's or IPA's, but we think we'll keep our NZ Pilsner using Nelson Sauvin exclusively - it's that good.

Anyway, that's our quick debrief on this beer - we'll include our BJCP scoresheets below on what the judges thought of this beer below;

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Mr Rice Guy - Japanese Rice Lager - Tasting Results/Review

We were pretty pleased with how this one turned out, and we actually decided to enter it into the 2024 NSW Homebrewing Competition where it claimed 3rd place in the pale lager category, which we're incredibly proud of, with a combined score of 73/100.

Starting with appearance, we've got a brilliantly clear, straw coloured beer that absolutely looks the part. There's a nice, tight white foam head that appears but admittedly lacks a little bit of staying power and dissipates fairly quickly - perhaps a byproduct of the rice?

There's a slightly grainy aroma, with a little bit of yeast character present as well, but very little hop aroma which isn't necessarily a requirement for this style of beer.

Flavour-wise and the bitterness has subsided a little bit over time - if we were to make it again we'd probably bump up the IBU's a little bit, possibly a bit more on the late hop side to get a little more aroma happening as well, though with the noble hops being used it may introduce some more grassy characteristics? Who knows. There's a slightly sweet characteristic from the rice, which is maybe a bit more prevalent than it should be, though the judges of the beer in the competition didn't state this, although interestingly one said it could use the additional of rice or corn as an adjunct (the recipe already had 30% rice in it). We'd probably drop the rice back by one packet/500g next time - the mash was incredibly thick with no recirculation because of the rice so reducing it may also help with this.

There's definitely no off-flavours and the W34-70 yeast did a brilliant job (as it always has done for us) at creating a great, clean, neutral flavour profile. We haven't used that many lager yeasts, but it's probably our favourite.

We've attached our score sheets from the competition below so you can get an unfiltered, more qualified opinion than ours on how this one turned out.

Although we don't necessarily agree with all of the feedback (eg. suggesting incorporating rice/corn into the grist when it's already there), we're very grateful to the judges for their time and effort - they're certainly more capable at critically analysing beer than we are, and we'll certainly heed their feedback where possible to try and improve our processes and beers.

Check out the links below to see the original recipe and brew day posts. The recipe post also contains a link directly to the Brewfather recipe.

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