In the best traditions of the German reinheitsgebot code, Tuatara uses only natural ingredients, no chemicals, no additives. It’s strictly water, barley, hops, yeast and, in the case of the Hefe brew, wheat.
Sean Murrie from the Malthouse says “Carl goes the extra distance to get the ingredients from source. He uses centuries of continental brewing knowledge to make a consistently fantastic product.”
“I’m trying to make the classic European styles as close to their traditional definition as possible,” says Vasta, and you can quote him on that, he is very serious about the art of brewing.
Yeast
Even when Carl was learning the art of home brewing, well before Tuatara was even an inkling, he made sure he got the appropriate yeasts for brewing the European style beers he wanted to replicate by importing yeast viles from the source.
He still baulks at house yeast’s, which is what many mainstream breweries use - the same yeast for all beers - but now he gets them from a company in California because they come in bulk, leaving him more time for the brewing.
"With beer, it’s the contributions of different yeast’s that define different styles," he says.
"If you fermented a Leffe Blonde German wheat beer with a lager yeast you would almost get a Rheineck – put a wheat yeast in and suddenly you have a fantastic beer."
Water
Because the water that comes to the Tuatara Brewery is soft and pure, with low calcium and magnesium and no additives, the composition of the water can be altered to mimic that found in regions where different beer styles developed.
Before brewers understood the chemistry of water, certain parts of the world added darker malts to overcome alkaline waters but if the water was soft and had low salt or ion content they were able to brew beers without the darker, more acidic malts.
London Porter came about because London water was very alkaline. Burton on Trent had high sulphate in their water which led to the development of pale ales.
It’s doubtful we’d have the vast array of beer styles we have today, if science had been involved in beer brewing from the start.
Hops
Hops are a sensitive plant, of all the climate diversity in New Zealand they find the conditions in Nelson and Motueka the best, long sunshine hours, regular rainfall, not much wind, and a latitude of 41-42 ° south, the hops love it.
The world class hops that go into Tuatara beer are grown in Motueka especially for the boutique trade. Noble varieties such as Saaz and Goldings English, which are crucial for reproducing Tuataras classic beer styles, are also grown almost completely organically due to their pest and disease resistance.
Barley
Is the name of the grain from which malt is made from. New Zealand has a great climate for barley cultivation, and so long as the dairy industry doesn’t get too greedy, Tuatara will continue to buy their barley locally.
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