Wildflower Field Work: Rosella Wheat will be available online and for tasting and take-away/collection at our cellar door from 12pm (Sydney time) on Friday 4 November.
The first of four trials we have been conducting internally for over two years which we are calling "Field Work", these beers are made by changing a single variable in our Gold recipe, either a single wheat varietal or single yeast source, to help us better identify and thus improve on this most beloved beer.
These are slight variations, but we've had to allow them to age for quite some time to really compare them with Gold. The outcomes of these will help me better understand what types of yeast, or more pertinently, which families of varietals of wheat we should be farming to improve Gold. They are fascinating and really should be drunk alongside a Gold blend to spot the differences.
This first release showcases the Rosella wheat varietal grown by @woodstock_farm supplied to us by our dear friends @woodstockflour. Rosella is a soft wheat purportedly developed for making biscuits which has a softly sweet nutty flavour about it. Those bakers amongst us will recognise this varietal as the preferred option for milling into flour for cakes, pastry, cookies and the like. I love it at home and use it for essentially everything.
This bottling is a blend of three 16 month old barrels from a single batch. Thus, this is not a blend like our Gold, as each barrel is of equal age and this should be taken into account if they are compared to one another as Field Work will likely display a little more oak.
At release it shows an engaging nose, herbal dark spices, lifted honeyed orange citrus, sweet stone fruits, soft buttery oak and lemon citrus. The palate is forward and compact with an earthy and grainy breadth and weight upfront. Spiced pineapple, apricot, pear and citrus combine with a strong spiced biscuit savouriness. Oak shows it’s hand on the finish.
The label art was once again done Bernadette, my superb wife, and is a sampling of swatches she was working with to match the colour of the wheat. Much like the beer, they are steps in the process.
The base beer is brewed entirely with certified organic cereals from Chris and Sam Greenwood's farm in Coleambally NSW and Woodstock Farm in Berrigan NSW. Organic raw soft Rosella wheat and organic Schooner barley malted to a pale roast by Voyager Craft Malt. It is made with filtered Sydney water and Motueka (NZ) and Saaz (CZ) hops. Finally, it was fermented with our house culture of microflora wholly foraged from native flowers in NSW. It was bottled on 27 July 2022 and naturally conditioned through refermentation for 14 weeks. At bottling it was 5% ABV and 1°P (FG = 1.004 SG).
Another small bottling with 80 bottles online and 100 at cellar door.
Enjoy.
