From Fresh, The West Australian, Jan 01

New year brings new beers, and three of them are particularly noteworthy. One is a champion WA home brew translated into a commercial drop. One is a craft beer of startling colour and content. And the third is something of a breakthrough for the health-conscious – a lager with zero carbohydrates: not low-carb, but NO-carb.

Home-brewer Asher Mitchell of Victoria Park earned the Champion Brewer and Beer of Show (All-Grain) awards at the annual State Amateur Brewing Competition with his 3.4 per cent English Mild, which also won the low-alcohol category.

One of the judges was Feral head brewer Brendan Varis, and he undertook to brew Mr Mitchell’s full-mash recipe. Asher’s Mild Child is now served on tap at the Swan Valley brewery-bar-restaurant.

“This mild ale had already won a gold medal at the Perth Royal Beer show in the reduced alcohol category,” Mr Varis said. “It was so full of flavour we wondered whether it was really only 3.4 per cent, so we sent it for analysis to confirm it.”

According to Mr Mitchell, the best thing about winning the top amateur prize was the chance to see his beer produced on a commercial scale and to spend the day in the brewery at Feral helping it happen.

“The hands-on brewing experience was all I was hoping for and more - from being able to bounce brewing ideas off a pro to seeing what works for me at home work on a much larger scale,” he said. “Brendan Varis went to great lengths to source the same ingredients as I’d used.”

Asher’s Mild Child has a good dose of English pale chocolate malt as well as roasted malt, putting it at the darker end of colour spectrum. This is probably why the English pub favourite style is a rarity in Australia. But Mr Mitchell said: “Once you get past its dark appearance you’ll discover a subtly flavoured, clean, dry quaffable beer that’s actually really suited to our climate.”

It pours with a rich, tight, creamy, light tan head with the tantalising malty aroma of old-fashioned local pubs. The ale is bang on specification: very dark brown, almost cola-coloured, mainly toasty flavours with hints of coffee and bitter chocolate and a dry, roasty finish all on an eminently smooth, medium-bodied palate.

Duckstein at Saracen Estate has plunged into the season with a framboise. Brewer Paul Gasmier calls it a Margaret River hybrid of the Belgium classic raspberry fruit beer. It couldn’t fail, really: Duckstein Framboise (4.9 per cent) is not only based on WA’s summer favourite wheat beer style, but the bright colour and what Mr Gasmier calls rose and raspberry fragrance with a hint of blackcurrant just cries out for sunshine drinking.

“On a grain base of more than 50 per cent wheat, we used a specialty Belgium wheat beer yeast. We added over 100kg of raspberries in the last two days of ferment to dry out the sweetness. The beer was then matured like an ale,” Mr Gasmier said.

Adding the fruit added three hours to the brewing day for Mr Gasmier and assistant Shannon Grigg. “But the beer has been so successfully received we have already done a second brew,” the head brewer said.

On tasting, raspberry tang up front leads into a dry, medium-length finish.

Duckstein Framboise is on tap and sold in 5-litre takeaway mini-kegs. The two brewers have also done a limited edition champagne-bottle run of the Framboise and substituted it for champagne at last night’s celebrations.

An independent craft brewery on Queensland’s Gold Coast claims to have produced Australia’s first no-carb beer. Six-packs and cartons of the “full-flavoured, full-strength lager” - completely bereft of carbohydrates and only 88 calories per bottle - will be available in the eastern States this month and nationally soon after.

The lager is called Bighead, not only because Burleigh Brewing Company is proud of the achievement but because it’s from Burleigh Heads, originally dubbed “burly head” - meaning big head - by surveyor James Warner in 1840.

The Burleigh team, led by brewer and co-founder Brennan Fielding, spent the past year researching, developing, testing and refining the no-carb recipe, which has also been tested by an independent laboratory to Australia and New Zealand Food Standards.

“Adding the no-carb element involved even more attention to times and temperatures – and plenty of patience,” Burleigh CEO Peta Fielding said. “There are a lot of low-carb beers on the Australian market, but only one no-carb - and that’s Bighead Beer. We’ve exceeded everyone’s expectations . . . we don’t know why this hasn’t been done before.”

QUICK ONES

Clancy’s Fish Pub in Fremantle has introduced a dedicated international tap, starting with Austria’s Trumer Pils. The mainly local summer draught line-up: Fishers Summer Ale (kolsch brewed by Clancy’s crew at Mash); Bootleg Wils Pils; Coopers Sparkling Ale; Feral Hophog IPA and White; Gage Roads Wahoo, Pils and oak-aged Saison; Last Drop Wheat; Little Creatures Pale Ale and Rogers’ Beer; Mash Mex and Black; Matso’s Man-Go and Ginger Beer; Nail Ale (keg conditioned); Stowford Press cider; Trumer Pils.

Nail Stout, the unfiltered oatmeal stout gaining Australia-wide acclaim, has joined Nail Ale on tap at The Norfolk Hotel, Fremantle. It’s the first pub to serve both yeast-conditioned brews at once.

For sociable gatherings I’ve resolved to head for bars which have on tap one or more of the following: Bootleg Settler’s pale ale and Wils Pils; Coopers Sparkling, Pale and Mild ales; Feral Hophog IPA and White; Gage Roads IPA, Saison and London Best; Little Creatures Bright, Pale and Rogers’ ales; Trumer Pils; Matilda Bay Fat Yak and or Alpha pale ales; Nail Ale and oatmeal Stout; Sail and Anchor IPA and ESB (from the handpump); Hoegaarden wheat beer.

By Vic Crossland