Ka Pai, Stewart Brewing
Added: Sunday, October 1st 2017
| Style | IPA | ABV 5.2% |
Stewart Brewing Ka Pai (5.2%)
Salutations to Steve Stewart and his team at the Loanhead brewery for their outstanding success in the Scottish Beer Awards in September: the brewery won three medals and Steve was named Master Brewer of the Year, richly deserved.
Steve believes in putting something back into the community. He produces his own beers but also has a smaller plant called the Craft Beer Kitchen that’s used by students at Heriot-Watt University’s brewing and distilling course to fashion their own beers.
Steve is a graduate of Heriot-Watt who worked for Bass in Britain, where he learned all aspects of brewing and retailing. But it was when he worked for a time at the Harpoon Brewery in Boston, Massachusetts, that he was fired with the ambition to start his own brewery. Back home, with his wife Jo and her father, he opened a 10-barrel plant in 2004 just outside Edinburgh.
Within 10 years they had to move to a bigger site at Loanhead where a Bavarian-built kit can produce both ale and lager.
As well as such traditional Scottish beers as Heavy and Export, Stewart produces a series of beers based on international styles – one of the awards in the Scottish competition was for sour beer.
Stewart brews two interpretations of IPA. Pentland is firmly in the Scottish style with a solid malt backbone. Kai Pai on the other hand mirrors the modern American and Australian styles and Steve describes it as a “South Pacific hop bomb” with hops from both Australia and New Zealand, including Green Bullet, Pacifica and Wakatu. The grains are extra pale and wheat malts that underscore a massive hit of passion fruit, lychee and mandarin fruit along with spicy hop notes.
Buy from the brewery shop: 26a Dryden Road, Bilston Glen Industrial Estate, Loanhead, EH20 9LZ, 0131 440 2442 or online: £2.00 for a 330ml bottle, 6 for £11.90, 12 for £23.60 and 24 for £40.
