The team at Young Henrys have collaborated with brewers, bands, a radio station, a magazine, TedxSydney, a historical society and even the very suburb they reside in. So it was something of an inevitability that they would eventually find inspiration from the very beverage that's kept them fuelled along the whole journey: coffee. And for this assignment, their co-conspirators are the coffee kings from Toby's Estate who added their extensive expertise, alongside a relatively little-known substance called cáscara. Cáscara, apparently, means 'husk' and it's this which has given the OkTobyfest beer something a bit different. You see, there's more to coffee than just the bean because when processing coffee to extract the bean the outer skin gets pulped, forming the by-product of cáscara. And when this outer 'cherry' pulp is dried, it gives off some very sweet flavours which in several countries is used to make a tea. By adding some of the dried cáscara to a bock recipe, plus a batch of coffee beans that had been specifically selected and processed for use in the beer, the two brewing companies have created an unusually pleasing tipple. At first it's got the whack of bitterness you'd expect of anything with a good dose of coffee in it, but that gives way pretty quickly to a sweetness that grows and grows on you. With claims to being a coffee, tea and a beer all at the same time, OkTobyfest could put us on the path to finding a truly perfect blend. NO
Published October 13, 2013 2013-10-13 00:00:00
