Wildflower Waratah 2019 Wild Ale

Country: Australia

Brewery: Wildflower Brewing & Blending

Style: Ale

Format: 750ml Bottle

ABV: 5.5%

Waratah is our annual 100% NSW ingredient beer. Wholly native yeast (the culture for Waratah '19 was from foraged off hop flowers), Voyager Malt (Whitton, NSW) and Ryefield hops (Bemboka, NSW). A collaboration between the hop farmers, grain farmers, maltsters and two breweries committed to agricultural beer, Batch Brewing Company and ourselves. Our release of the beer in 2017 year marked the first commercial release of a beer made entirely of NSW ingredients, the 2019 vintage marks the third.

In a pretty neat little thing, the yeast culture we pitched and employed to commence and wholly conduct this fermentation was foraged from a neighbouring hop bine than the ones which went to bitter the wort in the kettle. This was the first time we have been able to source yeast for a fermentation from one of the raw ingredients for Waratah. I love the simplicity and clarity of this process and I look forward to doing it more.