Green and Gold is a dry hopped barrel aged Golden Australian Wild Ale.

Well there is a first time for everything, this is the first time we have ever allowed aged beer to come in contact with fresh hops. We are not completely foreign to a touch of dry hopping, using it a decent amount in the Too Easy series, but until we had a batch of hops I was really happy with, I wanted to keep them away from aged beer.

Enter Freestyle hops. This farm in Nelson NZ has become synonymous with extra high quality punchy as hops that are supplied exclusively to some of the world's best breweries. We we kindly offered the ability to use them in our beers by our friends at Garage Project. Last year, we picked up 100kg of fresh Motueka to use across the board in our beers and upon opening the first bag, it was clear we had the hop for Gold.

We have a friend in Seattle who is quite fond of this process and so with some confidence (mixed with a sacrilegious feeling) we married a portion of a particularly automatic 10 month old Gold from barrel 1746 in October of last year and a small dose of the Freestyle Motueka just before bottling.

The results are pretty convincing and while it is not the most adventurous cuvee we have ever made, I think the clarity speaks to the quality of the raw materials more than the process alone. Its fabulously bright and brings out more fruit from the culture than normal. We love it.

The artwork on the bottle is a photo of the interior of this hectic piece of machinery that the team across the road at Silver Raven built. I have no idea what they use it for, but I know its meant to consolidate heat in some way. 

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We have 120 x 750ml bottles available for Collective members to purchase on a first come basis from 12pm (Sydney time) on Friday 7 May. There is a limit of 4 bottles per person.