Back home

We're back home after our week in NZ. Great trip. Not looking forward to being back at work!

Today's journey involved driving to Picton, catching the ferry across the Cook Strait and getting ourselves to the airport. As you can see, the weather on the Strait was perfect, with amazing sunshine and views.

South Island

Heading home today following a couple of days in Marlborough.

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Seaside afternoon

The weather started out bad so we headed to a fantastic kid-friendly pub. Afterwards we took a drive around the coast and the sun came out at Eastborne so we were able to add another leg to our NZ playgrounds tour.

Tomorrow morning we cross Cook Strait for a couple of days around Marlborough.

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Martinborough then Wellington

Saw a winery this morning and played in a playground in Martinborough. Now we're in Wellington, staying with Hannah, Des, Finn & Beckett tonight.

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Fun in Greytown

We've had an odd day. Up very early, kids slightly ill and missed out on seeing any wineries. But it's been nice anyway.

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Baking with hefeweizen yeast

Wheat beers such as hefeweizen, weissbier and wit are all light beers made from a mix of malted barley and wheat. In southern Germany the typical hefeweizen is fermented with a non-flocculating yeast, and it is not filtered before bottling. This gives the beer a yeasty, bread like flavor accompanied by aromas reminiscent of banan, cloves (we’ve encountered that combo before), coriander and citrus. I’ve just begun to read up on brewing and my first batch of a partial mash hefeweizen is bubling along. As I pitched the liquid hefeweizen yeast into the wort I decided to keep a tiny amount for baking. If hefeweizen beer is reminiscent of bread, why not use the yeast for making bread? In particular I was curious whether some of the aroma top notes characterizing hefeweizen beer would stand out in bread made using the same yeast.

Hefeweizen is my favourite style of beer, and I've brewed with this specific White Labs yeast. Baking with it isn't something I'd ever considered but I'm sure the results would be amazing. Sounds wonderful!