Thirsty Crow Brewery Visit

By Joel Baines

A
collection of brewers set off early Saturday August 18 to the Thirsty Crow
Brewery in the fast passed, cosmopolitan city known as Wagga Wagga.

 We arrived
in anticipation of a great day to come heading straight for the bar devising
our own drinking order strategies where we were all introduced to Craig Wealands – the head brewer at Thirsty Crow.  

With
expectations a little unknown in our level of involvement of the brew day, we
were delighted when Craig put all of us straight to work carrying the grain
from the milling room to the brewery floor.

 The beer
scheduled for this brew day was a Vanilla Milk Stout, with lactose and Madagascan
vanilla added to the recipe this 2012 Silver Medalist at the Australian
International Beer awards is the signature beer at the Thirsty Crow. 

 Before we
knew it Craig was giving out instructions on the operation of the brewing
equipment and the mash-tun was filling up with water. Each of us took turns
pouring in a bag of grain, carefully stirring the mash with a highly technical
yet sophisticated canoe paddle. Once the grain was stirred in and temperature
set for recirculation we moved on to making a small batch of beer using a
typical home brewer’s setup.

Joel emptying a bag of grain

Recipe
calculated, grain milled and taking advantage of the breweries hot liquor tank,
mash-in number two was completed in a converted 50L keg. An 80 minute mash was
scheduled for this recipe giving Tom ‘Dicko’ Dixon plenty of time to nearly
blow up the brewery in his version of ‘clean out the fermenter with a billion
litres of water’.

With the
mash complete, a flick of a few valves and switches was all that was needed to
begin the sparging process. As the boil kettle began to fill, the sweet aroma
was flowing into the brew pub – along with the locals.

Chris and
the great staff at the Thirsty Crow Brewery put on an amazing spread for dinner
and continued bringing us craft beers from the local area and around Australia
throughout the night.

 A
memorable tasting of the evening was the Hawaiian Lava pizza, with “ULTRA HOT,
DO NOT ORDER!” in the description – you would think we would have listened!

 The final
stages of the brewing process involved pumping the wort through an industrial
sized glycol plate chiller and onto the 500L fermenter. For the small batch we
used an immersion chiller and cold water.

 All in all
an amazing day at the Thirsty Crow with all of us learning something new and
enjoying the wonderful hospitality of Chris and his staff.

A range of beers on offer during the trip

More photos can be viewed on our Flickr account.