2021 marks our third release of this beer. It's a pretty fun thing for us and something I am quite proud of, being able to work with the same fruit from literally the same trees for three years in a row. Bina and Tim at Yarralee are now friends of ours and know how this beer tastes. They know it has its own little following and have told me that they have received phone calls for plumcot purchases from other breweries as well as some direct customers (you know who you are!). This is something I have always envied a bit with wine, the ability to tell a story of seasons through the product... that is, in a wine that is sourced from the same fruit from the same vines year after year. As I do not have yet the means to own my own orchard or vineyard, Kernel Stone along with St Florence Semillon are to me the two most likely beers which have the closest connection to the specific sites that grow the fruit where we are able to use that same fruit year on year. There is just something about the way that Yarralee grows and cares for their fruit that produces their excellent flavours in our beer. So, to this year then. Well as you may know, the 2020-21 growing season was exceptionally wet, especially in Bathurst. Tim picked this fruit on 30 December 2020 and just eight days before they had received a massive 22mm dump with a total of 47.2mm in December alone, with November seeing a similar 44.8mm. This same period the year previous saw rainfall of 16.4mm and just 6mm for November 2019 and December 2019 respectively. In fact, December 2019 was the driest December on record. Just on the numbers alone its no surprise that the fruit was going to be different. For us, this meant larger fruit with more juice and easier ripening. Last year we saw a lot of really small, malformed stonefruits across the board while this year was the complete opposite. Much like wine in a dry year, we believe, this concentrates flavour and produces an intense expression. Take St Henry 2020 for example where the apricots were golf-ball sized compared to the tennis ball fruit this year. Henry '20 has this candied, preserved apricot character which cannot be replicated, while this year we see a softer, more plushy expression. As for the plumcots, last year we used words like red skins, oven roasted sugars and berry cobbler to talk about the flavour. Clearly some sweetness carrying through. Interestingly, fairy floss is mentioned across the two, which is cool. However, peering below at this year, we see a lot more primary flavours of the fresh fruits themselves. Kernel Stone 2021 is an Australian Wild Ale made with Spring Satin Plumcots from Yarralee Orchard outside Bathurst NSW. Plumcots are a cross between a plum and an apricot... these were developed in the US and I believe we call them pluots, which I know have been used in some beers about the place here and there. We received 120kg of plumcots on 31 December 2020 after they were picked the day before. As is normal for us, we allowed the fruit to slowly ripen under carbonic conditions for a few weeks before racking barrel 1911 of 14 month old Gold onto the fruit on 13 January 2021. There the fruit and beer sat, fermenting and macerating for 13 weeks (looking back it was 10 weeks in bottle in 2020 and 6 weeks in 2019). We bottled this beer in April 2021 and conditioned it in bottle for 11 weeks before release. It is 6.1% ABV. Kernel Stone 2021 has quite a perplexing palate. It moves quickly, evoking a huge variety of fruit memories. Watermelon, raspberry, blueberry, lifted strawberries and cream on the nose. High fairy floss notes. The palate is intense with flavours of grapefruit, raspberry and sherberty watermelon. Bright acidity, well carbonated, delicious. A really nice edition of this beer I am happy to share. The label for Kernel Stone is made from a photo I took of a beautiful old sandstone church (Hunter Baillie Memorial) near where I live in Annandale. The beer is named Kernel Stone because the pips in apricots are called kernels and in plums are called stones. I'm not sure what a plumcot centre would be called so we split the difference. ----- Each member will receive 1 x 750ml bottle of Kernel Stone as part of their membership. We have an additional 120 x 750ml bottles available for Collective members to purchase on a first come basis from 11am (Sydney time) on Friday 2 July. There is a limit of 4 bottles per member.
