Stone & Wood Limited Release Jasper

With the huge, self-inflicted obstacle that was Australia's insatiable desire for Pacific Ale just about cleared thanks to the opening of brewery number two, the brewers at the original Stone & Wood site in Byron Bay have a little more time to play around. Play around or, perhaps more accurately, "sit around in The Rails and talk about beer". Apparently it was one such evening that inspired this twist on Jasper, the red ale that is the third beer in their year round range. Rather poetically, we're told: "the cane fields of the Northern Rivers had been ablaze, lightly blanketing the hills in a soft sheet of smoke and with the September winds starting to pick up, signalling the start of spring and the end of the cane harvest we decided to bring out a beer to coincide with the changing of the seasonsâ?¦" So the brewers gathered some local paperbark and set about smoking some malt, added some traditional German smoked malt and worked it into the original Jasper recipe. There it adds a "distinct smoldering character" to the beer's sweeter malts and soft, spicy bitterness and is doing so on taps around the country this Spring.

Published September 3, 2014 2014-09-03 00:00:00