In 2023, Sunday Road released their first wet-hopped IPA. Since Ryefield Hops do their organic farming a mere 400km from Kirawee, the brewery team were able to drive there and bring back freshly-picked hops to throw into the brew – and were more than pleased with the result.
This year, they deemed it worthwhile to make the ten-hour round trip to Bemboka again, once more returning with a load of organic Victoria hop cones: bine to brewhouse in less than 24 hours.
Vintage Harvest IPA 2024 is an old school American IPA. Pouring a deep honey colour, it carries a syrupy malt sweetness that stands up to the bitterness of the Victoria hops (which are known for their high alpha acids). There’s pawpaw, toffee and bitter mango, a side of dankness and the bite of citrus pith.
This short video from Sunday Road will immerse you in the process of making this beer, while sparing you the ten hours of driving. If you drink the beer while you’re watching, the bitterness will hang around on your palate longer than the duration of the video… but still for less for ten hours.
We’ve written about Sunseeker Red IPA before – right back near when Sunday Road first opened, in fact – but the dang thing keeps on evolving. The malt bill now features Specialty Weyermann CaraRed and CaraAroma along with malted oats for a lovely mouthfeel. Sunseeker is now triple-dry hopped,* and the hop bill shifts with each iteration; while Amarillo and Galaxy have stuck around throughout, the third hop variety has bounced from Cascade to Citra to Falconer’s Flight to Superdelic and is currently back at Cascade. What a ride.
When I first tried this beer in 2020, I said: “Close your eyes and you could almost imagine it’s a dark fruit cake with caramel sauce – citrus zest and dried berries, caramel and grapefruit toffee. It’s complex without being overwhelming; just the thing for a sweet tooth and a warm chest.”
Honestly… much of that still applies to the current batch. The dark fruitcake is there, perhaps with more spice. The sauce is there, but it’s more of a burnt toffee now. The citrus note contains a scraping of bitter pith (I swear I’m not getting this mixed up with the previous beer), and the Cascade rounds off the fruity edges with a hit of resin.
It’s less sweet than I remember, a bit darker and more bitter, but it’s still got a big frothy off-white head and is just as full in the mouth. And it’s still surprisingly easy to drink for what it is.
Mick Wüst
*Were people triple dry-hopping non-hazy beers four years ago? I don’t think they were.
Published April 23, 2024 2024-04-23 00:00:00
