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Welcome to our first Pinter staff diary. Luckily for us, working for Pinter means we get the opportunity to brew our own at home! Don’t worry, it’s not a case of us getting sick of beer because we work with it every day - if anything, working for Pinter only increases our love of beer and brewing!
Hi, my name is Alex - I’m the Director of Technology and Data at Pinter and I’ve been here for 2 and a half years. A little about me; I live in West London and I love beer and tech & data (often at the same time - #ThirstyThursday FTW)! Before I worked at Pinter I was working in the corporate world - I bought a Pinter 1 in 2021 and was enjoying brewing and tapping my own beer at home so much that all I wanted to do was be a part of the Pinter project. A few months (and some LinkedIn outreach) later, I joined the team and have loved it ever since.
I recently brewed Sunlit lager - since the introduction of the Spark yeast, I was keen to give it a go after tasting some samples at Pinter HQ. Here’s how it went…
Brewing
Definitely part of the fun in my book! The Pinter I’m using here is called Dorian Grey and is always ready for the line of duty. I get brewing as normal and set up the Pinter on the app with Recommended times. We noticed recently that Sunlit has often been getting higher ratings when brewed with Minimum times (an expectation gap maybe), but I’m always a Recommended brewer when I’ve got the time - I wanted to see the full potential of Spark yeast. I like to give a bit of extra shaking when the Brewing Dock is on - you can never be too careful with mixing - I actually invert the Pinter and dock a number of times before leaving it to brew.
All went well with the brewing stage. There was no foaming through the Carbonation Dial this time, but I heard plenty of noise coming through it. On to the next step…
Conditioning
I skipped Cold Crashing here - some may say that’s sacrilege with a lager, but I wanted to see if Spark could do the job of producing a crystal clear beer without it - (I also felt that a 15 day Conditioning period would probably do the job 🤫). Spoiler: the finished product was crystal clear.
As a true Pinter fan, I actually bought a little beer fridge where I can drop our fridge temperature to 2C, and I’ve got a thermometer inside to help make sure all is well with conditioning.
Tapping & Tasting
Finally, the moment of truth arrived. As I poured my first glass of Sunlit, I was definitely impressed with the colour and clarity - this was the first time my pint had looked truly 'professional'!
On tasting, I could see that the Spark yeast had done its job really well, giving the beer a clean, refreshing taste that surpassed my expectations. As I continued to drink, I appreciated the subtle but crisp flavours that came to the front.
A well-defined profile that easily stood toe to toe with any craft lager I've ever tried - on draft in my own home!