Stone & Wood Garden Ale

I’ve never really been too interested in visiting Byron Bay. Quite a few people rave about it, but those people tend to be hippies. It’s been classified as one of those ‘might be nice to do one day’ ideas, but that one day hasn’t been very urgent on my list.

Stone & Wood Brewery may change all this. Operating out of the aforementioned city, they are responsible for the very popular and very refreshing Pacific Ale. This session beer is the Australian summer by the sea personified, a barely and wheat hybrid charged with tasty, tasty Galaxy hops.

On the back of this excellent ale, I grabbed a couple of bottles of their limited release Garden Ale; their tribute to the pre-hop styles of gruit flavoured beers. Whilst they haven’t given away the hops entirely, they’ve added juniper berries and Ella (formerly Stella) to give it a ‘garden’ flavour.

…our Garden Ale is brewed by adding juniper berries to the boiling wort from pale and crystal malts. Dry hopped with Ella and Summer, a couple of new world hop varieties from the Australian hop gardens, Garden Ale has an easy bitterness with a subtle ribbon of floral aroma and a spicy finish.

It’s 3.8% ABV and sold in 500 ml bottles.

The Setting

We drank this beer out of red wine glasses as we relaxed on our balcony in the dying heat of yet another humid and hot Sydney summers day.

The Verdict

It is a gorgeous deep gold colour with a very frothy off-white head made up of large bubbles. The first scent on the nose is a sweet caramel followed up by a light berry aroma.

It’s lightly carbonated, and light in the body with barely any hop flavours or bitterness to check the beer as it swishes past your tongue and down your throat. It is a hard beer to sit on a examine in any detail as it is just so refreshing and easy to drink. There is a hint of sweetness on the palate, but it is not very strong. The juniper berries can be detected as a light berry flavour and ‘chewiness’ to the beer. The aftertaste is a mere hint of spiciness and light bitterness with a quick, crisp finish.

If you like your beer bold, you are going to find this a little disappointing. It doesn’t have the crispness of a lager or the flavour kick of an ale. If, however, you are looking for a refreshing ale that is easy to drink and not laden with hops, then this is worth a go. I could definitely have more than a few if it came down to it.

8/10

Drink if you like…

If the thought of hop flavours filling your glass makes you pull one of those blerg faces, then you won’t mind this ale. It’s easy to drink, and not at all challenging to the palate whilst still adding a number of subtle, yet complex flavours to the mix.

Trivia

Juniper berries are not actually berries, but are instead seed cones of the female Juniper plant, and are the only spice to come from conifers. Both the Finnish and the Estonians brew a kind of ‘home brew’ style beer which uses juniper berries as a core ingredient (generally as a hop replacement). These beers, called Sahti in Finland and Koduolu in Estonia, are brewed in a manner reminiscent of traditional methods that are closer to the pre-industrialization methods of brewing than the practices of today. Sahti is often brewed using a step infusion mash that can take up to 6 hours. It is also traditionally sent to the fermenter straight from the mash tun (minus the boil) which gives it a shorter shelf life and sour flavours that come from bacteria activity.