Wildflower Hive: Post Brood #5 Wild Ale 750ml Wildflower Brewing & Blending

A collaboration with our friends, and honey superstars Tim and Emma from Malfory’s Gold honey, Hive: Post Brood is a barrel aged golden Australian Wild Ale refermented with natural formed Warré hive post-brood wild comb from the Blue Mountains and Central Tablelands of NSW. The Malfroy’s Post Brood Polyflora is unlike any honey I have ever tasted and indeed a unique product. The beer is our aged Gold refermented and macerated on the left over comb, untreated or heated… just natural, after Tim’s milling and gravity straining of the post brood comb. He doesn’t spin or press the comb, just lets time do its thing. But what happens is that there is still a bit of honey clinging to the waxy comb (along with all the other good propolis, bee bread and pollen). So in September 2020, after much chatting, Tim sent some of that ‘honeywax’ he calls it (the left over comb mixed with honey & others), to us and we employed our hearty yeasts to clean off the comb and ferment any extra goodness on the comb. Old school mead was made this way too, by the comb washings, not from honey dilution. I can give no analogue for the flavours this honeywax (and all the still active microflora) has imparted on our beer. This is an inherently special thing to be a part of though, almost certainly a first, and I am very thankful to Tim for trusting me with this rare gift of nature.

After the floral, lighter #4, this batch of honeywax from Tim and Emma featured more Blue Mountains post brood material, which provides the deeper, more strong flavours. The mix returns to the more spice-pine-driven fragrances of hives 1, 2, and 3.

This Hive offering is large and powerful. Highly fragrant with dominant honey, resin, and sweet, spicy floral notes. Orange citrus and deep woody aromas delightfully lift the nose. The initial spiciness is washed away in a flood of warm honey and beeswax, and the palate is broad and heavy. A flowery citrus flavour is brought to the back of the palate by cleansing acidity.

After the beer has finished fermenting, each bottle is dipped in the same wax, which may contain a small amount of propolis residue that appears as black specks in the golden-yellow (and incredibly scented, BTW) beeswax.

Hive: Post Brood Blend #5 is best savoured when decanted off a settled natural yeast sediment at cellar temperatures (10-12°C), much like all of our beers.