About a fortnight ago (a month ago now, it took some time to publish this. Why don't you sue me!?) Luke and I did a
show with Matt Houghton at Boatrocker Brewery.
Not knowing much about where Braeside
is (which is much closer to my house than I ever realised...) we
jumped on trains with our bikes and peddled on out to the industrial
area to where we figured the brewery site was.
The clue that we found was the boat
suspended over the roller door with the word 'boatrocker' painted on
it. Reasonably sure we'd found the place.
The first sight as you pass through the
door at the brewery is one that makes ridiculous geeks such as Luke
and myself suddenly vague and distracted.
Barrels. Just barrels as far as the eye
can see.
Now, maybe there were 35 or 40 barrels
but my vision was so focussed that it was certainly as far as my eyes
could see.
Matt gave us a little tour of the
brewery, which is smaller than I probably thought it would be, and
having noticed that we'd cycled out to the site he offered us some
glasses of water and some refreshing tank samples of berliner weiss
that will eventually go into chardonnay barrels and become their
Mitte.
Even though we'd ridden the bikes
basically no distance and really slowly, that berliner weiss really
hit the spot as a thirst quenching, low ABV winner. We dicsussed the
possibility of this being packaged without any of it's brettanomyces
or barrel treatment as a straight berliner weiss option for the
masses. It's a possibility at this stage, but not scheduled. That
would become a mandatory fridge option for me so damn fast.
My eyes strayed back to the wall of
barrels. Does that say “Flemish Red” on it? God damn, is that the
new batch of Ramjet sitting there, just soaking in the whiskey from
the New World Distillery barrels?
This was seriously poor etiquette,
given that I wasn't paying Matt the full attention he deserved on
account of being smitten by his barrel program so when he said “Do
you guys want to sample from the barrels?” I nearly got whiplash
from snapping my head back to look in his direction.
Like little kids in a candy store we
giddily watch Matt scale the ladder and carefully extract some
samples from a barrel into a pitcher for us to stand around and drink
like the entitled nothings we are. Matt lovingly replaces the nail to
the barrel and sanitises the areas that were disturbed.
Matt is undertaking an ambitious barrel
program, treating his already acclaimed Ramjet imperial stout and
Sterk and Donker Quad, as well as some new wild and Belgian style
ales. He's not doing anything by half. Most of the beers in barrels
have been in barrels for 12-18 months with some being held for up to
three years, so this is all relatively young beer that we're tasting.
The first sample we try is a saison
that's been in barrels for 5 months and already has the aroma of a
world class saison, matched with a flavour that is going to be lots
of fun.
Matt starts telling us about the newest
batch of Ramjet which is currently sitting in barrels and the reason
why it might not have exactly the same flavour profile as the
previously adored batch.
Matt gets his whiskey barrels from
Starward Whiskey, who are now New World Distillers (I might have part
of this wrong, but it's really not pertinent to this part of the
story) and he gets them from New World because he has a couple of
good contacts there that have helped him establish that relationship
to access barrels for aging.
These contacts 'sorted Matt out' on the
most recent lot of barrels and these ones came across with more
whiskey left in them than any of the previous lot, in fact when the
brewers properly drained the barrels they extracted about half a
litre of excess whiskey left behind.
Huge result for Matt and his staff.
Also a huge impact on the beer that would go in to these barrels.
Ramjet version 1 was a luxurious 10.2%
imperial stout. The same beer in these soaked barrels sit at around
15% ABV and is whiskifully massive. Those that know me are aware that
I have a huge dislike for most beers over 10 or 11 % because of the
omnipresent alcohol sweetness that is the backbone of most of these
kinds of beers.
Not so with this one though. The
alcohol is definitely noticeably high, but the character of the beer
is all in the malt bill. It's hugely enjoyable in it's 15% state.
Relax though, geeks. The next Ramjet won't be a 15% imperial stout.
Matt will be blending this version of the beer with an unbarreled
version to smooth out the packaged product which will be an
improvement across the board, no doubt.
I'm not going to go through each
individual beer that we sampled on the day but there were clearly
some standouts that are worth mentioning.
Firstly the barleywine is huge. On
paper that is. It's 14.2% (maybe not exactly that, but in that
vicinity) but it drinks way under that. English styled, malty as all
hell but drinking really smooth already. By the time this baby is
ready it's going to be extremely fun and a really great one to stash
away for rainy days of future years.
The most exciting one thought was a
p-lambic. Pseudo lambic, as it's accurately labelled given that it's
not made in the correct region of Belgium. What are you supposed to
call it? I don't know. P-lambic works for me. Anyway, this is the
most exciting one of the day. It's still really young, only about a
year in the barrel, but already the aroma smells exactly like a
Belgian lambics that we've come to adore. It's the most promising
Australian sour beer that I've tasted. It already tastes very good,
but there's plenty more development to come so this one is probably
now my most anticipated Australian beer.
Matt talked about some of the
intricacies of making wild beer and we realised yet again that we
were having some great conversation off mic.
We got ourselves in order and recorded
what's probably the best show we've had in the year that we've been
podcasting. You can listen to that episode directly here, or you can
subscribe from iTunes here.
Plugs, what a pro.
Check out that episode to get some
finer detail on what's going on at Boatrocker Brewery, there are some
really exciting things on the horizon for them.