St Abigail 2021 will be available online and for take-away/collection from 12pm (Sydney time) on Friday 1 October 2021.
St Abigail is an Australian Wild Ale made with peaches. It is named for Chris and Emily’s second daughter. Saint Abigail was a medieval healer and beekeeper from County Clare, Ireland. In 2021, St Abigail was made by blending barrel aged golden mixed culture fermentation ale with 746kg of fresh, whole, tree ripened white peaches from Thornbrook Orchard in Nashdale, NSW.
Like St Thomas and St Henry this year, St Abigail 2021 is solely bottled in 750ml and a handful of 1.5 litre magnums, no 375ml bottles. To read a bit more about that decision see this blog post.
Oh Abigail, sweet thing, she has just turned two. Em and Chris' youngest. Biggest eyes you have ever seen and a copycat of anything her older siblings do. Also quite a caring little soul... she looks after her various dolls and stuffed toys unlike any kid I've seen, borderline odd though how she tucks them into her overalls and coats to keep them warm etc.... outrageously cute. Oh, right, her beer! This is the second year of really jumping into white peaches. 2021 was a much wetter year than 2020 and in the fruit we see more fleshy flavours as opposed to the austere, candy-like intensity of the drier fruit. This is a serious beer though, it has really impressed us through its bottle conditioning. We were very restrained at blending and the result is a fantastically perfumed beer, completely moreish, a really exceptional meld of fruit and the base Gold beer. Once again, 750ml... Benny has done another watercolour for this one and I really think the beverages are benefiting from the format change.
At release this beer displays huge perfumed, complex nose dominated by white peach. There’s fresh peaches and cream, vanilla peach custard with a morsel of spice and mint. Biscuity oak. The ripe fruit characters are irresistible. The palate shows remarkable control. The fruit is all finesse and elegance. More lively and vibrant than the nose, peach flesh and fuzz at the core. The acidity is in full support drawing the palate along and highlighting the subtlety of the fruit.
The base beer is brewed entirely with certified organic cereals from Chris and Sam Greenwood's farm in Coleambally NSW. Organic raw Red wheat with 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: brewers yeast, foraged wild yeast and naturally occurring souring bacteria native to New South Wales. It was bottled on 15 July 2021 and naturally conditioned through refermentation for 11 weeks. At bottling it was 5.6% ABV, 25 IBU and 2.4°P (FG = 1.010 SG).
We will have 300 x 750ml bottles and 4 x 1.5 litre magnums available online and 120 bottles at cellar door. We will also be offering a handful of cases to our lovely stockists across Australia you can find here.
Like all our beers, St Abigail 2021 is best enjoyed when decanted off a settled natural yeast sediment at cellar temperatures (10-12°C).
