We are very excited to announce that Wildflower Ashes to Ashes 2023 will be available online and for take-away/collection from 12pm (AEST) on Friday 2 June 2023.
With a smoked malt character and one of our highest ABV beers to release (8.6%), Ashes to Ashes 2023 is perfectly timed for the cooler weather this time of year. We originally put the first blend of this beer together in late 2021 for Mountain Culture's Rauchbier Festival, a beer with three expressions of smoke. Honestly, it surprised me. We had made a smoked malt beer in the past (Foggy Morning) which was... divisive... and after five blends, we retired it from production as internally we felt it was just too aggressive. What we didn't expect was just how many people still ask for it... there are a lot of smoke-beer lovers out there and not many choices for them.
Anyway, when the team at MCBC... ok it was DJ... proposed this smoked beer fest, we thought we had a small advantage with a few years of working history with the ingredient and a direct line to Stu Whytcross' (Voyager Malt) tiny batch smoked malt. The beer ended up really nice, almost to my surprise, by layering the smoke from three different sources rather than getting all the flavour just from smoked malt.
Earlier this year on a blending day we literally found a few barrels of a very high ABV, extended boil batch of Amber we had intended to make into a Christmas beer in 2021 which had been ageing in ex-Foggy morning (smoked malt) barrels for well over 18 months. The beer took it's time fermenting down, thus the long maturation, and over that time had developed from an off balance sweet/sour palate to something drier yet full bodied, really quite well balanced.
With the findings of the 2021 bottling, we decided to bottle these four barrels together just after a short maceration with freshly toasted Hall's Creek Wattle seed. It's pretty lovely.
Meesh's tasting notes - Bursts out of the glass with rich campfire smoke, but on the second look a sweet chocolatey note emerges which is almost reminiscent of a cherry ripe. Layered and complex. Roasty wattle seed on the back palate is matched with singing acidity to create a balanced beverage.
Like all our beers, Ashes to Ashes 2023 is best enjoyed when decanted off a settled natural yeast sediment at cellar temperatures (10-12°C).
Please see the specific product page for bottle quantities and limits.
Enjoy.
