Hive: Post Brood Blend #3 will be available online and for take-away/collection from 12pm (Sydney time) on Friday 5 November 2021.
Hive: Post Brood is an ongoing collaboration with our friends, and honey superstars Tim and Emma from Malfory's Gold honey. Hive: Post Brood is a barrel aged golden Australian Wild Ale refermented with natural formed Warré hive post-brood wild comb from the Blue Mountains and Central Tablelands of NSW. The Malfroy's Post Brood Polyflora is unlike any honey I have ever tasted and indeed a unique product. The beer is our aged Gold refermented and macerated on the left over comb, untreated or heated... just natural, after Tim’s milling and gravity straining of the post brood comb. He doesn’t spin or press the comb, just lets time do its thing. But what happens is that there is still a bit of honey clinging to the waxy comb (along with all the other good propolis, bee bread and pollen).
This third blend started in June 2021 (seven months after Blend #2) when Tim again sent some of that ‘honeywax’ he calls it (the left over comb mixed with honey & others) to us and we employed our hearty yeasts to clean off the comb and ferment any extra goodness on the comb. Old school mead was made this way too, by the comb washings, not from honey dilution. The beer and the 'honeywax' were left in contact with each other for one month before bottling. Hive was conditioned in bottle with Tim's honey as well for carbonation. I can give no analogue for the flavours this honeywax (and all the still active microflora) has imparted on our beer. This is an inherently special thing to be a part of though, almost certainly a first, and I am very thankful to Tim for trusting me with this rare gift of nature.
As always, this blend has big intensity of aromas. Honey, menthol and mint upfront alongside warm aromatic beeswax and citrus blossom. Palate is restrained, tempered acidity allows for the richness of the honey to shine. Subtle flavours of toasted wheat, citrus and mint add wonderful complexity to the honey backbone.
Each bottle is dipped in the same wax post-refermentation in this beer, there may be small residue still of propolis in the wax leaving black specks in the golden yellow (super aromatic BTW) beeswax.
If you are interested in what Post Brood means and why the character is so unique, you can read a great description here written by Tim.
