By Vic Crossland

When Gage Roads releases two ales next week – one completely new, the other a re-styled established favourite – it will signal a fresh, ambitious, commercial era for the Palmyra craft brewery. This is apparent not only in the invigorated labelling of Atomic Pale Ale and Sleeping Giant IPA (where the once dominant Gage Roads identity is confined to a small mention on the extra long bottlenecks) but by the brewery itself. It’s got a whole lot bigger.

   An extended tank “farm” crowds the inside, a copper mash tun twice the size of the original looms over the brewing platform which has a new “whirlpool” vessel, the bottling and labelling line has grown, the cool room has acquired extra conditioning tanks and four massive 110,000-1itre fermenters tower over the yard outside. Here the malt silo, which from the start has contained only WA pilsner malt, is joined by another to store special ale malt from Victoria.

   The brew team has almost trebled in number. The place is abuzz with activity as new personnel are trained and a three-shift, six-day system tackles a jump in demand from 50,000 cases of bottled beer a year to 25,000 cases a week. It’s all down to corporate involvement.

    “Before this new distribution model, our beers were winning gold medals but we were unable to get them to the customers,” brew manager Aaron Heary said. “But it’s still all hands-on. We still chuck hops into the kettle and brewers still climb inside to sweep out the tuns.”

      Mass-market pleasers such as Dry Dock Lager have allowed the team to focus on Gage Roads ales. The first move was sourcing ale malt – “The local pilsner malt wasn’t quite right,” Mr Heary said.

      “There was a feeling that our existing IPA, although very popular with our brewers, was a hybrid . . . trying to be both an IPA and a pale ale. We decided to create two products that would be true to each category.” 

   Atomic Pale Ale is designed for drinkers who “enjoy the fruit and hop character of a good ale, but without the extreme bitterness and higher alcohol content of an English IPA”.

  “This opened up the door for us to brew our English IPA as a bigger beer to impress the real craft brew enthusiasts.”

   If you buy by the case, Atomic’s retro Flash Gordon-type cartoon and Sleeping Giant’s graphic of an elephant trampling through the lettering should add interest.

THE BEERS

ATOMIC PALE ALE (4.7 PER CENT)

Citra, Ahtanum and Centennial hops define this as the US style golden ale Australians have adopted as their own. Added to the kettle, the hops deliver balancing bitterness and fruity hop character on the palate. Dry hopping during fermentation perks up the aroma with passion fruit and grapefruit notes. Four specialist malts, including cara, supply colour and somewhat sweet notes. For all this attention to detail, the ale is a tad short on depth, though it hits the target as a tasty session beer.

SLEEPING GIANT IPA (5.4 PER CENT)

Pouring coppery in colour like an English bitter from crystal malts, the re-styled India pale ale is pleasantly grassy with earthy background on the nose, due to dry-hopping. East Kent Goldings and NZ-grown English Fuggle hops are used and the explicit Cascade hops have been replaced by another US variety, Centennial. Peppery hints among the stone-fruit flavours up front, firm malt character in the middle and a piquant bitterness in the dry finish add up to a lovely rewarding drink. Try it with curry: hop spices pick up beautifully on coriander and chillies, which is how British troops in the eastern colonies would have experienced this tailor-made long-distance fresh ale in the 19^th century.

ALE TALE

CARLTON NATURAL (4.5 PER CENT)

Despite plummeting big-brand beer sales, the Australian appetite for “new” dry lagers is astonishing. Yet another has appeared in bottle shops, with all the familiar marketing clichés: Carlton Natural “hits the flavour and style bulls-eye for 25 to 35-year-old guys looking for easy drinking, crisp, dry flavour in a beer that is low-carb and brewed with natural ingredients”. Oh, and it’s “superior”. Plus, like Carlton Natural Blonde, the bottle is brown glass. This is good because it means the Pride of Ringwood, Hersbrucker and Saaz hops don’t need anti-UV treatment. Use of noble European hops shows good intention. The bottle’s stylish white and silvered labelling states an “enhanced process” is used in making the lager. It pours picture perfect with proud white head , smells clean, like a newly scrubbed  benchtop, and  tastes . . . well, wet as well as the advertised dry.

Written by Vic Crossland

From Fresh, The West Australian 14th October