New Summer Brews

Its been a hectic past 6 weeks at the brewery in the lead up to the silly season in Xmas & New Year. Production of our core range beers was at the limit of the brewery's capacity, but we somehow found a way to manage tank space and have enough bottles, cap, labels etc on hand to package when required. Its possibly the worse time of the year to be introducing new brews into the lineup, let alone brewing them, but we don't do things in halves here.

A incorrect yeast shipment (their mistake, not ours) and an inability to let the yeast go to waste, saw us produce a style of beer we have always been wanting to produce, and American IPA. We chased down some of the last remaining Mosaic hops in the country, as well as some Amarillo and loaded up on the hop bill to produce Motor Mouth, a west coat style IPA. The beer is a homage to Head Brewer Wills' father Robert, or more commonly known as Motor, who is chief delivery man, parking officer and "meet & greet" at the brewery. For those that don't know Motor, he is regularly heard before he is seen, preferrring to be listened to rather than listen. More info on the beer here. The beer is now being rationed out across Tassie & Sydney, unfortunately as a limited release, theres not a whole lot to go around.

At the same time, we've just put into conditioning tank a much lighter summer style of beer, a farmhouse saison, to produce a Summer Berry Grisette.

A grisette is a Belgian style ale which was originally brewed in the Hainaut province to be the beer of the miners in the area, just as Saison was the beer of the farmers. It was lighter than Saison and frequently contained wheat as well as barley malt. The name is derived from the French word for "gray," referring to both the drab factory frocks worn by the young women (the grisettes) who doled out pints as the men exited from the mines, and also the color of the cobblestone rock being mined. 

It was mostly regarded as a working class beer of the "miner's or factory workers" in the region much like saison was considered a "farmers" beer in the north. Grisette's were typically "low-alcohol, light bodied, saison-like golden ales of no great distinction" according to Phil Markowski in his Farmhouse Ales book.

We've drawn upon the amazing access to fresh, seasonal produce nearby the brewery to add to the beer to which we've added a truckload of raspberries and blackberries, which throw off an amazing pink hue and phenomenal fruit aroma. Expect a high level of carbonation to further accentuate those fresh notes and at only 3.5% ABV, we think we've produced a superb summer beer, perfect for sipping on. We expect the first taste of this to be at Festivale in Launceston over the weekend of February 12th, 13th & 14th.