TPA - Tasmanian Pale Ale, a harvest brew brewed exclusively with fresh Tasmanian grown ingredients. A new cultivar of barley, Macquarie, was grown on a cousins property at CampbellTown in the 2011/12 season that exhibited excellent malting qualities, perfect for this harvest beer. The barley was malted by Tasmanian malting officiando Roger Ibbot and his team at Cascade Brewery, where we managed to snaffle a few hundred kegs of the precious malt *thanks guys.
Hops were sourced from the last family owned hop field in Tasmania, we're we collected 25kgs of fresh Super Pride hop flowers, threw them in the back of the van and rushed back to the brewery to brew with *the most aromatic journey ever taken. Super Pride is a variety of hop normally associated with commercial brewing as a high alpha bittering hop given its 14 - 16 % alpha acid content. We decided to dispel this perception and use a bucket loads of these fresh hops in the TPA, including rinsing the boiled brew over a bed of fresh hops in the Mash Tun, effectively acting as a substitute Hop-back.
The water for the brew, as with every beer produced at Van Dieman, was sourced from springs on the brewery property, purified and then brought up to a water profile similar to Burton-on-Trent in the UK, synonymous with producing high quality pale ales. We used a English ale yeast to compliment the primary ingredients and beer style.
Its A hazy golden coloured ale with a casual hop aroma as if the front lawn has just been mown. Mentions of lemon grass and apricot flavours can be discovered as it rolls across your palate, all the time delivering a refreshing and authentic crispness. Not much was made, even less was put into kegs, don’t wait around – it wont last.
We're delivering a few kegs out to the market this week, so it'll pop it head up at selected good beer venues shortly
