As their home city of Melbourne sweats through a heatwave, Hargreaves Hill have a beer that just might prove a hit as the mercury stays high. Tepache is a pineapple sour inspired by the popular spiced and fermented fruit drink that’s enjoyed by many in Mexico. First brewed for Bendigo On The Hop 2024, the beer returns for a wider release and to showcase the Pineapple Terpenes from Abstrax, ingredients which suppliers at Bintani bring into the country and which you can find out more about in this podcast here.
Alongside those terpenes, the sour was conditioned on pineapple flesh and rind before being blended with pineapple purée, habanero, cinnamon and cane sugar (aka piloncillo). Pineapple is one of those fruits that has many layers, where one bite might be textural and tart and the next ultra-soft and incredibly sweet. Tepache manages to capture that fruit in all its forms, with each sip seeming to provide a different tropical note. The cinnamon and habanero, meanwhile, don’t leap out of the glass and instead provide a building complexity, giving off the kind of heat and spice you might find in a homemade tincture made by a family matriarch.
Listen in people of Melbourne: Fill your glass with ice, crank the aircon (or your eight to nine fans if you don’t have one) and enjoy some Tepache.
Will Ziebell
Published January 31, 2025 2025-01-31 00:00:00
