The Mt Macedon Hotel is one of the growing number of places bringing great beer to people outside Australia's craft beer heartlands. It's a beautiful pub in the Victorian countryside that has a quite staggering array of beer on tap and in bottles. One of its earliest supporters when it was changing to better beer was nearby Holgate Brewhouse and now they've got together to make a beer in the brewery's experimental baby Tank 9 (pictured).
According to brewer Nic: "Like kids in a candy shop [the Holgate brewers will] sit at the bar wanting to taste all the magnificent beers on offer. Being local and with a shared sweet tooth for all things beer it really was only a matter of time before we got together and made a beer."
Thus, inspired the zingy fruity flavours of Starburst and Chupa Chups, they set out to make a fresh, well balanced fruit IPA. In a traditional sense, it started out by using a mix of New World fruity and tropical hops, including Citra, Galaxy, Ella, Amarillo, before things got decidedly fruity: 3kg of pineapple went into the boil, then 9kg of oranges into to the hop back before 10kg of strawberries were chopped and added directly to the tank along with a whole bunch more hops.
Nic tells us that "like a fruit punch, the aroma abounds with strawberries, pineapple, mango, and citrus. Across the palate, the fruitiness dominates again, leaving a clean orange zest bitter finish." Who needs Starburst, hey?
Published December 17, 2015 2015-12-17 00:00:00
