A beer has been fermented wholly using yeast foraged from local wattle flowers in a proud moment for its Dubbo makers.
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Called Wattle It Be, it's the first wild ale release from The Pilot Room, a small brewing operation of The Monkey Bar owners Tim and Cass Smith.
One single keg was produced, and, tapped at the bar on Friday night, it is available only until they keg runs out.
A bag of freshly-picked wattle flowers from a property on Obley Road about 10 kilometres from Dubbo was a brewing challenge Mr Smith took hold of in both hands.
The beer's production started in August last year at the same time as the city's outbreak of COVID-19 and second lockdown.
The Monkey Bar had once again been plunged into uncertainty, having to rely solely on takeaway trade.
In The Pilot Room, a pilot brewing system in the backroom of the bar installed in 2020, there was one fermenter empty and waiting to be filled.
Mr Smith, who started furthering his brewing knowledge with training in Sydney shortly after opening the bar four years ago, said the idea of a wild ale showcasing local yeast was something they'd wished to do for a while.
When the property owner arrived with the freshly-picked wattle flowers he got down to brewing.
The loose term for the product is a wild ale or farmhouse ale, which can historically be found being made all over Europe, Mr Smith said.
Before breweries were able to just go out and buy yeast that had been domesticated and bred specifically for brewing beer, they would leave the lids off their fermenters and capture the yeast in the atmosphere wherever they were to ferment it, he said.
I would describe this beer as very dry, with a peppery woodiness and honey-like malt flavour to it.
- Wattle It Be brewer Tim Smith
"I would describe this beer as very dry, with a peppery woodiness and honey-like malt flavour to it," he said.
"The coolest thing about the beer is that because of the very simple grains we used to make it, 90 per cent of what you are tasting in the schooner is the product of the yeast off the wattle itself."
Mr Smith said at the start he thought there was only about a 50 per cent chance of making a success of the endeavour.
"We'd never made something like this before and were dealing with a complete unknown with regard to the yeast living on the wattle flowers and whether it would play nicely and produce something that was drinkable," he said.
But he's encouraged by the response from their community since Friday night.
"The feedback has been great," he said.
"We're known for pouring some pretty wild beers here at the bar.
"Being able to produce something that takes those older traditions and then put a hyper local spin on it, people are excited to get around it."
Being able to produce something that takes those older traditions and then put a hyper local spin on it, people are excited to get around it.
- Wattle It Be brewer Tim Smith
Producing something "super different and completely local" was the thing the self-styled "Minister for Hydration" was most proud of with the release.
"When we started brewing out of The Pilot Room in 2020 our emphasis was on continuing to build the community that has come to love The Monkey Bar by doing something unique and different," Mr Smith said.
"Wattle It Be is the culmination of that as a result.
"Created not only by ourselves but with people who have come to love what we are doing and want to contribute to it in some way."
While the keg has been tapped, there's more projects on the way.
The second batch of the beer has already been brewed and is now fermenting using the same yeast as the first batch, Mr Smith says.
"For this batch, we will be adding mulberries picked from trees in South Dubbo to the beer," he said.
"As we continue with further batches, we will keep substituting in ingredients that we're sourcing from Dubbo, with each release being unique, but tied back to this first beer with the yeast we are using sourced from Obley Road."