We are excited to announce that we will be releasing ST HENRY 2018 this Saturday May 12th at 1pm AEST at the brewery and our online store here.
ST HENRY is an Australian Wild Ale refermented with apricots. It is named for Chris and his wife's second son and released around Henry’s birthday. The Saint Henry II was a Holy Roman Emperor during the 11th century.
In 2018, the beer was made from 3 barrels of golden mixed fermentation, barrel aged beer. 1725 (10 month old barrel of Gold), 1729 (a 10 month old barrel of Mother) and 1709 (a 1 year old barrel of Gold). On January 15, 2018, 1725 and 1709 were racked onto 230kg of fresh, tree ripened Trevatt apricots from Thornbrook Orchard in Orange, NSW that we had painstakingly split and removed the seeds from. After speaking to Paula and her family about the project for some time before, we were proud to source this fruit directly and be able to receive the apricots fully ripe and ready to go into beer.
The two barrels and beer were left in contact together for 10 weeks allow for near-complete fermentation by cultures both off of the skins of the apricots as well as those still alive in the beer at racking to fruit. On 1 March, we blended in 1729 based on needed structure. This is our preferred method to fruit referments. Overshoot the fruit rate initially, and blend to taste after the referment. It was packaged on the same day and allowed to go through a tertiary fermentation for carbonation and conditioning for 10 weeks. At bottling it was 5.0% ABV and 1.1 P (1.004 SG).
Like all our beers, ST HENRY is best enjoyed when decanted off a settled natural yeast sediment at cellar temperatures (10-12°C).
This beer, along with our other fruit re-ferment beers this year, was packaged in 375ml quarter-magnum bottles. There will be a 4 bottles per person limit to purchase online and at the cellar door. We will make around 400 bottles available online while the remaining 700 will be sold at the brewery. We have plenty of bottles so there is no rush to be at the brewery when we open. Outside of special events, we do not expect to distribute this beer outside of the cellar door and online.
We are incredibly happy with how this beer is tasting and its expressions of seasonality, collaboration and family.
-topher
