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Recipe: Wildflower Organic Table Beer
Topher Boehm, cofounder and brewer at Wildflower in Marrickville, Australia, shares this recipe for their low-strength yet satisfying ale—an ideal framework for conveying a sense of place via local malt and a foraged house fermentation culture.
Photo: Courtesy Wildflower Brewing & Blending
Wildflower Brewing & Blending in suburban Sydney, Australia, is devoted to putting a sense of place into its beers, from the exclusive use of regenerative, organic heritage grains grown on a single farm to a house culture harvested from native wildflowers.
ALL-GRAIN
Batch size: 5 gallons (19 liters)
Brewhouse efficiency: 78%
OG: 1.027 (6.7°P)
FG: 1.004 (1°P)
IBUs: 38
ABV: 2.9%
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Wildflower Brewing & Blending in suburban Sydney, Australia, is devoted to putting a sense of place into its beers, from the exclusive use of regenerative, organic heritage grains grown on a single farm to a house culture harvested from native wildflowers.
ALL-GRAIN
Batch size: 5 gallons (19 liters)
Brewhouse efficiency: 78%
OG: 1.027 (6.7°P)
FG: 1.004 (1°P)
IBUs: 38
ABV: 2.9%
[PAYWALL]
MALT/GRAIN BILL
2.5 lb (1.1 kg) Voyager Pale Schooner
1.7 lb (771 g) Voyager Vienna Schooner
14 oz (397 g) Voyager Beaufort soft red wheat malt
HOPS SCHEDULE
0.3 oz (9 g) whole-cone Motueka at first wort [8 IBUs]
0.7 oz (20 g) whole-cone Motueka at 15 minutes [10 IBUs]
2.1 oz (60 g) whole-cone Motueka at whirlpool [20 IBUs]
YEAST
House mixed-culture (including Saccharomyces, Brettanomyces, and lactic bacteria)
DIRECTIONS
Mill the grains and mash at 151°F (66°C) for 90 minutes. Recirculate until the runnings are clear, then run off into the kettle. Sparge and top up as needed to get about 6 gallons (23 liters) of wort, depending on your evaporation rate. Boil for 60 minutes, adding hops according to the schedule. After the boil, do a whirlpool step: Stir or recirculate to create a vortex for about 5 minutes, add the whirlpool hops, and allow 10 minutes to steep. Chill to about 86°F (30°C), aerate the wort, and pitch the mixed culture. Ferment at ambient temperature for 10 days, or until fermentation is complete and gravity has stabilized. Crash and condition for 2–3 weeks, then package and carbonate to 2.9 volumes of CO2.
BREWER’S NOTES
Malt: All our malts come from Voyager Craft Malt in Whitton, New South Wales. The Greenwood family owns the maltings and grows the grains on their own farm.
Yeast: You could harvest some from our bottles, if you can get them, or use your own active mixed culture. Make sure the saison-adjacent Saccharomyces yeast are healthily awake before pitching—you want a good, clean fermentation as the base here. You could also pitch a monoculture, but it would lack the same complexity.
