Finding a leak in your Brewkeg Leaks are one of those pesky things and can cause all sorts of issues so it is better to get these sorted sooner rather than later. The great thing about Brewkeg™ system is the lid design is pretty simple so finding a leak is reasonably straight forward. Follow the steps below to find the source of a leak and if you can’t get it fixed up let us know and we can get it sorted.   If your keg is empty, fill it up with water so that you don’t use a lot of CO2 getting it up to pressure. You should also make sure all your seals etc are clean prior to testing as o ..read more

TAKING S.G. SAMPLES AND CALCULATING ALCOHOL %'S In order to calculate the alcohol content of a brew, you need to take two samples: The Specific Gravity (SG) of the initial wort/must on Day 0 when it is This measurement is also known as the Original Gravity (OG). The Specific Gravity (SG) of the final beverage after fermentation and when cold (preferably after clarification). This measurement is also known as the Final Gravity (FG). From these two measurements we can calculate the alcohol %. The higher the initial SG, the higher the alcohol % will be and the lower the final SG, the higher th ..read more

Now that the Omicron strain of COVID-19 is in our community, and Government restrictions are in force, we have put together a game plan for our team and the business for the coming weeks.   Because we are a small team, we have no way of working split shifts in our Hawkes Bay warehouse to minimise the risk of infection, or to minimise the whole team having to self-isolate at home as a close contact of someone who is infected. So, if one staff member tests positive with COVID-19 in the coming weeks, we would likely need to shut the business down while they self-isolate from anywhere between ..read more

Pressure fermentation enables beer to be fermented faster and more consistently, and it increases beer quality. It’s not new to brewing but it is fairly new to homebrewing and it’s key to the brewing success you’ll get with a WilliamsWarn® system.   How is it different to traditional home brewing? That’s typically done in a container with an airlock for the first ferment and then the flat beer is transferred into bottles with a measured amount of sugar so that when the bottle is capped, the fermented sugar will produce enough CO2 to carbonate the beer in the bottle.   Pressure fermen ..read more

Harald Walt started brewing with a WilliamsWarn Brewkeg10 in early November 2017, only a few days after we officially launched our range in Australia.  Ok, it’s not really a ballad but this is his story… Once upon a time in near Tettnang Home brewing in my native country of Germany was not something people thought about for two reasons: first, it’s Germany! Good beer was always available in abundance and at a low cost. Second, home brewing was not legal in Germany until the mid-80s – so there’s no tradition in home brewing. Personally, I was always interested in how beer is brew ..read more

I have always enjoyed a beer. From pinching a few of the old man’s Rheinecks and Reschs Pilsner’ to the odd “twist off” in my short lived University days, beer has played a varying role in my life to date; With tales that I am sure many of you can relate too, we will however leave those for another day ….. at the risk of exposing some remnants of my past that are best left as such! These days, especially the last twelve weeks I have learnt more about beer and what it means to be a brewer than I ever thought I would, and I am learning a heap more every day. It is actually bloody interesting and ..read more

Ok, I only have two songs about hops however I am fairly certain that if you get through listening to both of these you won’t be begging for more. We start with the hop-pickin’ classic – Hopping Down in Kent by The Albion Band, released in 1977. And who can forget the classic My Lovely Hops by Mary Ann Haynes from 1975. But I digress. I didn’t really want to give you seven songs about hops, I’m not sure there are seven – however I do think you all need to listen to Mary Ann Haynes classic before we move on. In Part 1 of this series on hops I wrote of the three main roles of ..read more

Yeah, I know, hops aren’t creatures. Yeast are more like creatures. But hops provide such character to a beer, there are so many varieties and so many ways to impart bitterness or flavour into a beer that I always just think of them as little creatures. Maybe it’s just me. Hops are derived from a plant – the technical name is Humulus lupulus (that’s as technical as this article gets) – which climb vertically upwards as high as 20 feet producing bines (to help them climb) and cones (the flowers from which we get our magic sauce for beer) In this article, I want to introduce you to hops: a littl ..read more

One of the many wonderful things about craft beer is its ability to reinvent. With almost unlimited ingredients, beer has an almost unlimited ability to change. India Pale Ale is the most popular craft beer style today with most breweries having one if not two, three or more versions. Loaded with hoppy goodness, IPA’s are renowned for their flavour packed punch. Many IPAs are defined by intense flavours of grapefruit and citrus, thanks to the diverse fruity character of hops, but adding actual fruit to an IPA is a relatively new process we endorse. Since the first IPA was brewed in the 1800’s ..read more

It was Easter 2017 when a team from WilliamsWarn travelled across the USA and Canada attending the Craft Brewers Conference in Washington DC, visiting our good friends and co-collaborators The Two Cowboys in Canmore, Alberta and learning a lot about the craft beer scene in North America, meeting and speaking with many industry experts. I used to travel to the USA frequently and in that time, I experienced the development of the craft beer scene first hand from 1996 to 2008. I enjoyed many of the beers from many of the breweries across the USA. My personal favourites during this time ..read more