The country’s best craft brewers are getting behind this uniquely Australian wheat beer and it’s unlike any you’ve tried before.
Ask any beer fan what their favourite part of the craft beer culture is and they’ll tell you it’s the variety. In recent years the craft boom has seen a wave of new breweries and unique creations hit the shelves to create a kaleidoscopic range of choices. Pale ales, IPAs, XPAs, stouts, sours, cream ales, lagers, bocks, porters, pilsners – the list of contemporary beer styles goes on and on. Combine that with how many craft breweries there are and one thing’s for sure, if you’re a crafty fan you’re never going to run out of new beers to try.
But if you ask us, there’s one thing that’s been missing from the craft beer section for a little too long. While we might have a booming craft beer scene here in Australia, with world-class brewers making some of the best beer in the world, we’ve never had a craft beer style to call our own. We love our beer and yet all of our craft beers are local interpretations of international styles – until now.
Get the drum roll going and roll out the red carpet, we're mighty pleased to introduce you to Aussie Wheat Ale – a brand new beer style that is proudly and uniquely Australian. You might’ve seen wheat beers in the past but you’ve never seen anything like the Aussie Wheat Ale. This is a completely new creation that takes the best Australian wheat and turns it into a deliciously refreshing Aussie brew.
The development of the style has got the Australian craft beer scene buzzing. It’s not every day we see a major development like this and all around the country, from Pirate Life in Adelaide to Mountain Goat in Melbourne and even Green Beacon in Brisbane, brewers have been busy tinkering with their take on the Aussie Wheat Ale. And in doing so they’ve been forging a whole new category of beer.
One of the biggest champions of the new style is master brewer Phil Sexton, who knows a thing or two about making innovative new beers. As the godfather of craft beer in Australia, Phil’s had a hand in creating too many iconic beers to name. But it was back in 1986 as the founder of Matilda Bay that he kickstarted craft beer in Australia with the creation of the now iconic Redback.
Redback is a wheat beer made in the traditional German hefeweizen style (with a few small tweaks). And now, over 30 years later, Phil has come back to the idea of wheat beers with a whole new perspective – he and the Matilda Bay crew have created one of the first Aussie Wheat Ales to hit the shelves.
“There’s a little bit of baggage with traditional wheat beers. Some people think of wheat beer as heavy and that doesn't necessarily fit our Australian lifestyle and climate,” says Phil. “So it’s about bringing the last 30 years of experience in the craft beer business to the table. Wheat beer is one of the most fantastic styles of the world – particularly if it doesn't hang its hat too much on old school yeast.”
Phil points out yeast because it’s crucial to the development of the Aussie Wheat Ale style. Traditional European and American wheat ales use what’s called a farmhouse style of yeast that leaves behind a distinctive clove-like, almost medicinal taste. That flavour can be deliciously interesting, but not everybody is on board with it. So rethinking yeast became the first step in creating the Aussie Wheat Ale style, which is instead brewed with a neutral, clean-fermenting yeast that Phil says, “really lets the wheat talk.” It’s what makes the Aussie style unlike any of the wheat beers that you might’ve tried in the past.
At the heart Aussie Wheat Ale is – you guessed it – Aussie wheat, a resource that Phil is passionate about after spending his youth working in Western Australia’s central wheat belt. “Australia’s famous for its wheat – why the heck wouldn’t we be proud of it? We make really high quality wheat in Australia and that’s why I’m excited about this project. We can make a wonderful beer using Australian wheat, I know we can,” says Phil.
The focus on local Australian ingredients in the beer doesn't end with the wheat. “We really only wanted to use hops from this part of the world. We tried a few different ones but ended up sticking with Tasmanian aromatic hops to get a really spritzy finish,” explains Phil.
So what exactly does the combination of premium Australian wheat, Tasmanian hops, and clean-fermenting yeast in an Aussie Wheat Ale taste like? According to Phil, “It’s somewhere between a pacific ale style and a Redback.” Light in colour, slightly hazy in texture and with a burst of citrus, the Aussie Wheat Ale is an absolute cracker that’ll go down a treat on a warm afternoon, surrounded by mates. While traditional wheat beers tend to be a bit heavy – a real one-and-done style of beer – Aussie Wheat Ale is a much more approachable style.
You can see that approachability right across the Aussie Wheat Ale spectrum. For their interpretation, Adelaide’s Pirate Life Brewing created Sunlit, a luminous pale straw-coloured beer with the fluffiest of white heads and a zesty citrus finish. While over in Melbourne, Mountain Goat’s Aussie Wheat Beer features a smooth creamy body with an immensely crisp finale. And that’s just the beginning, in the coming months more and more brewers will be releasing their own version of the style – yes, we’ll keep you updated – proving the possibilities are endless for where the style can go.
When it comes to picturing his ideal setting for enjoying the beer, Phil knows his answer immediately. “Way back when I was studying, each year I’d take a summer job working in the wheat bins of Western Australia. We’d be working on silos in these little towns where there’s only one pub and everyone would head there after work. I’d want to drink an Aussie Wheat Ale at that pub on a hot day with all the wheat farmers from the region. While all of us are saying, ‘we’re drinking our beer now’.”
