Meet the Makers: Brandon Nash of Brothers Beer
Getting to know Brandon Nash
Brothers Beer in Ōrākei Bay Village is a fresh take on the classic Brothers experience, with 18 beers on tap and a huge range of the finest bottled beers to drink, or take home to enjoy. Behind the beers is brew-master Brandon Nash who we had the pleasure of getting to know.
Originally Southern California born and bred, but more recently a San Francisco-ian, Brandon was shoulder tapped by the good people at Brothers Beer to bring his unique skills to this side of the world in 2018. The San Fran Bay Area is renowned for its craft brewery scene, with its parent state having over 1,100 craft breweries, so coming to little old New Zealand was a unique opportunity for Brandon.
It’s always interesting to find out where it all began…. So, how did you get into brewing beer?
I’m originally from Southern California and moved to San Francisco for college at the age of 18. You wouldn’t believe it, but I actually studied a Bachelor of Arts in Classical Trombone performance.
Anyway, while I was living in San Fran, my roommate and I bought a little 20L brewing kit. We would brew beers every weekend out of our kitchen - this was in the late 2000s. We always said; the fun part is making it, but the icing on the cake is the beer at the end.
In 2010 a friend of mine had an opening in North Bay San Fran at Marin Brewing Company, so as a budding brewer I thought there wasn’t much to lose, so I applied and got a foot in the door. I worked there for 2 years honing my craft and getting immersed into the world of craft beer.
From there, I worked at another brewery which saw me commuting 40mins there, and 40mins back every day. So I decided to go for a job at a larger brewery called Speakeasy in San Fran. Within 6 months of working at Speakeasy I was propelled into a brewing role and stayed with them for a few years. Funnily enough, while I was there, the bro’s of Brothers Beer (Ant and Andy) were in town checking out the scene. We chatted about hops and brewing… and not long after they invited me to join them in New Zealand for 10 days to experiment in their City Works Depot brewery.
From there they came to San Fran 2016 - left Speakeasy. Worked at another couple of breweries in the bay area. In 2018 Brothers Beer asked me if I’d be interested in relocating to New Zealand to be the head brewer for Brothers Beer. After a fair bit of consideration and discussion with my partner we decided to go for it, and in 2019 I moved to New Zealand.
What’s your purpose when it comes to brewing great beer? How did you become so passionate about it?
I’ve always been a creative type. I like creating things and using my hands - whether it's making beer, the perfect cup of coffee or cooking.
The thing I most love about it is the process of learning as you go along. You get to figure out what works and what doesn’t work - learning from your mistakes. Then taking those learnings into the next project. Always growing, one way or another.
With brewing beer there’s so many different variables to play with, like ingredients, techniques, styles and different ABVs. At the end of the day the possibilities are endless, not just in what you use but how you use it, whether it’s changing up the hops, malts or temperatures.
There’s a thing called brewers intuition. Knowing when you need to be doing this or that, or when to stop doing something. Honestly, it works out 99% of the time.
In your opinion, what’s the best beer you’ve brewed for Brothers Beer to date?
We just brewed a Chocolate Stout for winter, Velvet Love Potion. It’s the first time we’ve brewed a chocolate stout, it was a really fun process working with vanilla and cocoa suppliers, and it turned out awesome. 6.9% on the dot. It’s creamy, smooth, and gets roasted from the malts and cocoa nibs themselves.
I love a good IPA. A dry, crispy, West Coast style IPA is my personal favourite. That’s what I like to brew and nobody really seems to object.
The most popular beer on tap is probably Hazesteria, and as a bonus - Brothers Beer Ōrākei has an off license, so you can get your cans and riggers filled to enjoy at home.
“We always said; the fun part is making it, but the icing on the cake is the beer at the end”.
Have you got any special releases on tap at the moment we should know about?
I was back in the states for the past month visiting my family, and two of the guys manning the brewery are from Italy. So while I was gone they made a Hazy IPA, aptly named ‘Italian Job’. It’s available now so I recommend giving it a try!
We’ve also been doing low carb beer and no alcohol. Both of these are an IPA style, so very hoppy in flavour. The non-alcoholic beer, Fill Yer Boots, is 0.5% and the no carb is really dry - it’s called 105 as there is only 105 calories in a can (4.5%).
When it comes to beer matches with food from Juke Joint, what are your go-to combos?
It’s pretty fair to say craft beer and American BBQ go hand in hand. It’s a classic pairing in the US, and it just seems to make sense. Low & Slow cooking and craft beer brewing both require a lot of work and are beautiful crafts to get to the finished product.
You can’t go wrong with rubbed, smoked and pulled meats and a pilsner as a classic pairing. A juice bomb hazy beer goes well with spice, so I love our Mantecore Hazy with our Fire Dragon Hot Fried Chicken tenderloins. Yum!
We do this event called Meat vs Malt, where basically our group Executive chef and myself come up with food and beer pairings. We will be doing this at OBV hopefully late 2022 or early 2023. So watch out for tickets - it’s a really fun event!
Tell us a bit about your most frequented spots at OBV?
When I’m not visiting Brothers Beer Ōrākei to check in on how things are going, my guilty OBV pleasure is anything from Moustache.
To be fair, when I’m in Ōrākei I always try to visit Farro as they always have good stuff and I enjoy having a look at Kings Plant Barn.