Wildflower Winter

Marrickville / Sydney // Australia

6.5% ABV

Winter is a seasonal ale brewed with homemade shoyu kasu and foraged saffron milkcap mushrooms.  

Meesh's tasting notes - The nose is lifted, leading with candied orange and cola spice. There is a burnt butter richness there too, and sweet bready malt reminiscent of freshly baked sourdough. The palate is delicate, with a fresh acid line. Citrus follows through here, adding a liveliness to the richer umami notes. An undeniable shoyu tang on the finish.

It was brewed in April 2023 mashing regenerative organic heritage Schooner barley and regenerative organic Beaufort soft red wheat grown by the Greenwood family in Coleambally, NSW, malted by Voyager Craft Malt in Whitton, NSW in their wooden ex-Foudre mashtun over a bed of wheat stalks of the same crop as was malted for the recipe.

This shoyu commenced production in October of 2021 using roasted organic Rosella soft wheat from Woodstock Farm & Flour and organic soy beans grown by the Greenwood Family in Coleambally, NSW. The beans were steamed in the combi oven at Poly and inoculated back at Wildflower using tane-koji spores purchased directly from Akita Konno, a century old producer of such cultures in the Akita Prefecture of Japan. Following a fermentation schedule taught by Marika Groen of Malica Ferments in an online shoyu class taken in July 2021, the koji was nursed through its fermentation for 48 hours through various temperature and humidity ranges for sufficient penetration of the spores into the grains.

These koji-fermented beans and wheat berries were then mashed in a saltwater brine using South Australian Olsson's Sea Salt into a moromi in an oak barrel with the head removed and was stirred twice daily for the next month, then once daily for the next three months and periodically for the next eight months.

In late October 2022, this shoyu moromi was pressed using a hydropress separating the clear soy sauce from the well broken down soybean and wheat solids. The sauce was bottled and used on the menu at Poly over the subsequent year and a half. A portion of the solids were cool-roasted and dried before being pulverised and used as a seasoning at both Poly and Ester restaurants, especially tasty on a hasselback potato.