As a person who…
a) loves bold flavours and rarely drinks the same beer twice,
b) doesn’t brew beer, and
c) doesn’t have to sell thousands upon thousands of litres of beer
… I always enjoy hearing brewers talk about the importance of drinkability. It’s an incredibly important aspect of beer if you want to sell more than a couple of kegs of the stuff, and something the best brewers take very seriously.
Scotty Hargrave of Balter and Matt Brynildson of Firestone Walker are two such brewers – and it so happens that they too love bold flavours. They joined together to make a pale ale that captures vibrant hop character and supreme drinkability, while also exploring the ongoing evolution of the pale ale style.
The unassumingly-named Modern Pale Ale has the crispness of the Aussie XPA style, yet experiments with plenty of ingredients from outside of Australia: pale malts from Britain, specialty malts from Germany, and hops from America (Loral, Citra, Dynaboost Simcoe, Cryo Mosaic, HBC630) and New Zealand (Motueka). A tropical storm of sweet summer fruits – namely watermelon and pineapple – come together with a splash of deep resin, an almost savoury herbaceousness and a gentle earthy bitterness.
If you fit the a-b-c description at the top of this write-up, you could easily miss the sheer amount of expertise and attention to detail in this beer. If you pause to consider all that went into it, then give a little nod of appreciation in the direction of Balter, and another in the direction of Firestone Walker.*
Mick Wüst
* I guess you’ll need a compass for this. Sorry to make your life more complicated.
Published November 22, 2024 2024-11-22 00:00:00
