Karl’s best home brew!

by Hayley Manning

WHEN A local home brew enthusiast took up the hobby 20 years ago, he never imagined his efforts would draw accolades in a prestigious Tasmanian competition.

Deloraine resident Karl Gammler, took out Best Beer in Show at the 2020 Tasmanian State Home Brew competition with a Mexican Cerveza.

The brew is a Corona style light bodied lager with a citrusy flavour extracted from the hops.

He also received a first place medal with his International Pale Lager, and scored high enough with another bottle to get silver.

get silver. But while Karl is delighted with his triumphs, he said it was a bit of a fluke he entered the competition at all this year, because he’d assumed it had been cancelled.

‘A mate of mine invited me to a pizza day at his place one Sunday, so I took all my best bottles of home brew for people to try.

‘The guests loved my delicious clone beers. But four days later I went into a brew shop in Launnie and was asked if I was going in the comp this year.

‘I explained I didn’t have any bottles left to enter after the pizza day and he said, “Well you’ve got about two weeks left!”

‘Usually when you know the date of the competition, you have two or three months to brew a few batches of something special.

‘The bottle that won, I ended up taking out of a keg. I didn’t even know if it was going to be carbonated enough.’

The competition was held in August at the Hobart Brewing Company, where a judging panel had the enviable task of sampling 101 entries from 32 brewers.

Place winners qualify to enter the national competition in Canberra this October.

Karl only started all grain brewing from scratch a few years ago. He won his first brewing award in 2018 with an India Pale Ale.

‘A lager is the hardest style to make because there is nothing to hide behind.

‘Any off flavours can be detected by the judges straight away, so I am even more proud of the fact that I won with a lager.’