Nick Gislason - Hanabi Lager

This episode features Nick Gislason the founder and brewer of Hanabi Lager, which he brews with his wife and partners in the Napa Valley. Nick works as a winemaker, yet his curiosity for brewing, especially “grain-forward lagers”, was never shelved and has grown into Hanabi Lager Co., a brewery that he designed and built in his spare time. You might learn more about fireworks than winemaking in this conversation. Our conversation covers Nick’s background, how his fascinations with Japanese fireworks and brewing as a teenager inspired the artwork for Hanabi, technical aspects of brewing Pilsner, the search for heirloom barley, and spore-traps for monitoring Powdery Mildew in vineyards.

Hanabi Lager
Walter Mahafee - Oregon State University Dept. of Botany and Plant Pathology
AL&L Crop Solutions Lab for PCR on Powdery Mildew Spores

This podcast is sponsored by Sentia. The Sentia hand-held wine analyzer is a portable device for measuring free sulfur dioxide and malic acid in your wine. Using existing technology developed by Universal Biosensors and applied in human health for over 10 years, you can now measure key analytes during your winemaking process in less than a minute.

Sentia has been developed for cellar personnel who don’t want to spend hours in a lab using traditional techniques or have to wait for results that are sent to an outside lab. In less time, you can test and make adjustments, then move on to the next task. Portability and speed of results are just some of the unique attributes of Sentia. No special skill is required, calibration is automatic, there are minimal or no reagents and it’s cost-effective. Sentia is distributed nationally so for more information or sales in your area, go to universalbiosensors.com/sentia or look for “Sentia wine analyzer” in your browser.

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Questions? Comments? Let me know what you think: jim@insidewinemaking.com

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141: Nick Gislason - Hanabi Lager

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