They're not afraid to play around with unusual ingredients at Temple. Since opening their brewery in December 2011, a few years after starting out "gypsy" brewing at breweries around Victoria, they've released a Soba Ale, made with buckwheat, the Scarlet Sour, featuring hibiscus and cranberries, and now a ginger beer. This might not seem so unusual, given the mini-explosion of interest in ginger beers in the past couple of years, yet it's a breed apart from the others on the market. For a start, there's more than ginger root in the beer. There are ginger flowers as well as lemongrass and kaffir lime. The result is an aroma that's seriously lively - herbal, floral, spicy and not unlike walking into a teahouse in Thailand. It leaves you expecting something similar in the mouth, yet the feisty bite found in some other Aussie ginger beers isn't a factor here. Instead, the effects of the non-traditional ingredients is subtle, with the beer very much that: a beer. At a deliberately mid-strength 3.5 per cent, it's actually reminiscent of an English summer ale, albeit one that would have the locals baffled down the Dog & Duck.
Published February 23, 2013 2013-02-23 00:00:00