Beerfarm’s Save the Harvest Strawberry Sour has made an annual appearance since the 2018 strawberry needle crisis. In 2021, it's the Metricup brewery's first hotly-anticipated limited release for the year, an reiteration complete with a couple of tweaks that are, in part, due to a particularly trying year for Australian fruit farmers.
Save the Harvest is now a beer brewed around the rejected and unwanted strawberries from Australian strawberry growers, with the goal of not only producing a quality fruited sour, but also supporting and building awareness around the many challenges involved in growing fruit in Australia. Given the events of 2020, the pressures around labour shortages, and export/border issues are particularly devastating.
The team at Beerfarm have utilised more two tonnes of rejected strawberries here, adding them to their trusty Berliner weisse base. A touch of lime and mint (more than last year) also appear, a fruity, herbaceous combo that yields a delicately acidic fruited sour with a clean yeast profile, a beautiful pink hue, and some underlying flavours and aromas of mint. Plus, as you may have anticipated, a stack of fresh sweet-sour strawberry character.
Five million tonnes of agricultural food waste ends up in landfill every year in Australia. With every initiative like Save the Harvest, we can hope the burden and difficulties of farming in Australia can be offset incrementally; a beer that not only tastes good, but can make you feel good too.
Jono Outred
Published January 22, 2021 2021-01-22 00:00:00
