411: Matt Warner of Parrotdog Takes a Counterintuitive Approach to Hops in Classic, Bright, and Hazy IPA

Parrotdog has been a craft-brewing mainstay in New Zealand for nearly 15 years, and with national distribution and a production brewery and taproom steps from the beach and Wellington’s airport, they reach a broad audience of consumers across a range of styles. While their core line features everything from a classic C-malt IPA to pils with “vivid passion fruit and white-wine notes,” they also constantly iterate and experiment on the brewery’s five-barrel pilot with everything from fresh-hop lagers to saturated hazy IPAs.

This week, cofounder and brewing director Matt Warner joins the podcast to talk hops (of course) and how they employ both domestic and Pacific Northwest varieties across a range of styles. Along the way, he discusses:

• growing from a contract brand to a small brewery to a regional production brewery
• scaling from homebrew recipes to commercial batches in the early days
• designing “zingy” New Zealand pils that snaps across and cleans the palate
• rebalancing blends of Riwaka and Nelson Sauvin yearly to adapt to crop-year differences
• how Motueka changes over the picking window with a bit of “ginger crunch” character
• instability in Motueka after pelletizing
• using hops to build bigger mouthfeel in otherwise dry beer
• new Bract Program experimental hops that show promise

And more.

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