Beer Otway Estate Wild Hop Organic Ale

One of the more unusual of this year's crop of hop harvest beers, this saw the Otway Estate brewers track down a field of wild hops on the edge of the Otway Ranges that had once been used to supply the long-defunct Ballarat Brewery. Having filled their truck with Canterbury Goldings, they threw everything - hop flowers and vines - into the mash tun and continued adding more hops right through the process in a beer with a traditional English Special Bitter malt backbone. Brewer Luke Scott says it has "earthy, spicy" hop characters, a "touch of nectary sweetness - peach and apricot - and fresh green hop flower characteristics coming through". It's keg only with the first one outside the brewery being tapped at Josie Bones' Hop Harvest Dinner on May 4.