If you told me in 2008, which to my knowledge was the year that I first drank this style of beer, that I’d be writing about how to brew it in 2018, I would have asked you one question: “How did you get here from the future? Have the Eagles won a Super Bowl yet? No, right?” But if I asked you a second question, it would have been, “Why would I do that?” My early experiences with this style were unimpressive. I don’t know whether it’s because the style itself didn’t do much for me, or if it was that they were traveling for too long to have any prayer of being good, or something else, but they struck me as flabby, boring, and not worth the time to drink, much less brew.
Sometimes things just work out, though. Australian sparkling ales needed a little something to brighten them up, and along it came: fun, funky, “Down Under” hops. With some creative hopping, these are worth your time. We’ll walk a fine line here which includes warm mashing and fermentation, atypical hops, and even a salts addition – but trust the recipe and trust the process, and you’ll get something fun, I promise.
STYLE
The commercial examples on which the style is based are driven by good old Coopers: the jet-lagged pale ales that I sampled back in 2008. The style itself, when we review it, doesn’t sound too bad, so let’s not assume that the versions we can get shipped in are representative. Somewhat contradictorily, the style is both “light and drinkable” (it is, at less than 5% ABV and pale in color) but also with a “large flavor dimension” (fair warning, I’m not 100 percent sure what that means, but we’ll assume that it means you’re OK with some malt and hops flavor). In terms of malt, the guidelines reference using Australian 2-row, but if you believe what you read the Coopers recipe was, for quite a long time, based on an English Pale Ale malt, so there’s some room for interpretation. As for hops, they recommend the traditional Pride of Ringwood and its cousins, but we’re going to ignore that in favor of something more interesting. However, we will be sticking with the herbal character and minimizing floral flavors.