We are excited to announce that we will be releasing St Phoebe 2018 this Friday August 3rd at 2pm AEST at our cellar door and online store here.
St Phoebe is an Australian Wild Ale refermented with raspberries. It is named for Chris and his wife's first daughter. Saint Phoebe was a 1st century deaconess from modern day Greece.
In 2018, the beer was made from 3 barrels of golden mixed fermentation, barrel aged beer. 1762 (9 month old barrel of our Pilsner wort fermented with our NSW culture), 1734 (a 9 month old barrel of Gold) and 1766 (a 4 month old barrel of Gold). On January 25, 2018, 1734 and 1766 were racked onto 160kg of frozen raspberries from late in 2017 originating from Coffs Harbour, NSW. Anecdotally, this is also where Chris is from.
The two barrels and beer were then blended into the tank (see photo above) with the raspberries and left in contact together for 20 weeks to allow for near-complete fermentation. On 13 June, we blended in 1762 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 8 weeks. At bottling it was 5.0% ABV and 1.9 P (1.008 SG).
Like all our beers, St Phoebe 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 300 bottles available online while the remaining 600 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.
-topher
