Hello friends in Seattle! I am quite pleased to share that this coming Saturday March 7th, Very Unique Batch #3 will be available in bottle at 10.30am from the The Masonry Queen Anne and available on tap from open at Fremont. We made this beer exclusively for The Masonry and as a result it will not be available outside their bar in Seattle.
We made this collaborative beer with our friend Matt when he came to Australia last year to hang and cook at our place. Amongst many longnecks of Coopers Sparkling Ales, we decided to cook up a beer with wine grapes in it for their anniversary. So we drove out to Orange, NSW and together picked a whole bunch of Black Muscat grapes (the same ones that we used for St Florence 2019: Black Muscat) that we threw into a stainless steel tank back at the brewery and started a carbonic maceration to allow the yeast resident on the skins of the grapes to begin the fermentation. After 3 weeks, we blended into the tank a selection of mature, barrel-aged Gold (our house Australian Wild Ale) for an extended maceration and refermentaion.
This base fruit refermentation would eventually be blended with a little more aged Gold in order to make St Florence 2019: Black Muscat. However, Very Unique is one of a kind. It was instead blended with a very small portion of a wild ale we had around at the time that was both fermented by and with the skins from a 3 week skin-contact wine made by close friends of ours in Gippsland. This wine is a co-ferment of Vermentino, Fiano and Moscato Giallo and the skins were sent cold to us directly after their maceration had completed at the vineyard. We threw fresh wort onto the skins and allowed the yeast on them from the making of the wine kick off the beer fermentation. The aromas of this beer are insane of orange blossom, orange peel and ginger spice which add a more playful, attractive aroma to the rose water, turkish delight aromas coming from the Black Muscat refermentation. These complex, appealing aromas flow onto a very delicate, subtle palate. The artwork for the label was done by a friend of Matt's (@hellojaska) and depicts wattle blossoms replacing the berries on a whole bunch (cluster) of wine grapes.
We bottled Very Unique on 10 July 2019 and allowed it to referment and naturally condition in bottle for over 7 months before release. It is 7.0% ABV and 0.5°P (1.002 SG). Like all our beers, Very Unique is best enjoyed when decanted off a settled natural yeast sediment at cellar temperatures (10-12°C).
