Hop Rockin'

July 2, 2013, by Crafty Pint

Hop Rockin'

Anyone who has paid even the slightest attention to Boatrocker since the brewery’s first beer appeared will be well aware that its founder, Matt Houghton, is pretty fond of hops. The first beer, Alpha Queen, took its name from the alpha acids found in them, their gold medal-winning pilsner was called Hoppbier and the most recent new release following the opening of their own brewery is an IPA called Hop Bomb.

Admittedly, since starting to brew at their Braeside base in Melbourne’s southeast, Boatrocker has also brewed an Imperial Stout, a Belgian quad (coming very soon) and put a Berliner Weisse into Chardonnay barrels, but hops is where the story started. And hops is where it is heading again.

Later this winter, Boatrocker will take over a quarter acre site on a friend’s farm near Woodend and start their own experimental hop research program. Matt has got his hands on 100 rhizomes and plans to breed them with male plants from Centennial stock, with the hope being that over the coming years they’ll develop some interesting aroma and flavour varieties.

“The big issue facing us with the big hop back [we have at the brewery for adding hops late in the brewing process] is getting access to good quality hop flowers,” says Matt. “We want these plants to give us the ability to make some wet hop ales and to try our hand at breeding with the males. It’s not being done for money, but for access to hop flowers.

“The world of hops is moving away from bittering but still veering towards high alpha [the acids that lend beer its bitterness]. It’s the aromatic and flavour qualities that I’m after. If we end up with one per cent alpha but it smells stunning then that’s a winner.

“We’ll get rhizomes in the ground before the end of winter here and build the hop garden over the next month and a half. It will be a couple of years at least before we have anything we can use, and I’m well aware they might taste or smell horrible.”

The male plant is being kept at the brewery, well away from the farm, to prevent contamination, while the skills come from a number of sources. Matt’s brewer, Matt Inchley – formerly at 3 Ravens and Mornington Peninsula Brewery – has a background in horticulture, the two Matts have been reading up voraciously from resources such as the University of Vermont and Wye University, and the farmer has all the requisite equipment and materials to build the trellises.

“The reality is that to do it commercially would cost a shit load more money than we can put into it,” says Matt. “If we get something fantastic I’m happy to sell the plant to someone who can take it forward.”

As for the varieties they’ll be starting with, they’re drawn from all over the globe. From the UK, there are the likes of Goldings, Challenger and Fuggles, from the US Cascade, Chinook and Columbus, and from Europe the likes of Hersbrucker.

Aside from the hop program, the other new focus at the brewery is on its barrel / warm room. Along with the aforementioned Chardonnay barrels are a number of others ready to welcome beer into their bellies. There are whisky barrels from a New World distillery that will soon be home to an Imperial Stout. And there is an English style IPA that will sit in barrels for nine months in an attempt to recreate the barrel-ageing effect on those early beers from which the style originated.

Prior to those seeing the light of day, Boatrocker has a Belgian chocolate stout on the horizon plus a mini-tap takeover at the Tramway Hotel, for which the three core beers – Smash!, Alpha Queen and Hop Bomb – will line up next to a Winter Dark, which is a blend of an Imperial Stout with a hoppy Belgian golden ale. One thing’s for certain, having spent a few years finding and setting up their own brewery, Boatrocker is wasting little time making full use of it.

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