NEW HIKA PALE ALE

Posted on Nov 7, 2016 in News

HIKA PALE ALE

What’s the inspiration behind our new beer I hear you ask?

The name, HIKA (Polynesian) name meaning ‘a daughter’ quite fitting as we see every

one of our beers as an extension of the MBC family and New Zealand is of course part of

Polynesia.

We’ve also got a love for all things New Zealand at the minute, partly due to our success with

other New Zealand varieties (Wakatu) and partly because of the availability of the hops

themselves which are still pretty scarce at times. The country itself is also awesome!

We’ve found New Zealand hops to be very versatile in both our lagers and pale ales. They

have a beautiful balance about them, with enough punch for the pale ales but not too much

for the lagers.

We chose 3 varieties new to Maule Brewing Co. to dry hop with, we thought these would

work well with Hika, including Rakau, Motueka and Nelson Sauvin.

We think this blend of hops gives our beer the perfect stone fruit palate and peachy nose.

There’s also hints of more sour fruits like unripe gooseberries and rhubarb.

It’s our most heavily hopped pale ale so far. We didn’t set out to create a hop bomb and we

didn’t get one either. But I think what we did get is a lovely balance of sweet malt body and

clean bitterness after fermentation with our US-05 ale yeast. There’s enough bitterness

there though for lovers of hoppier beers. This one weighs in @ 43.4 IBU’s.

It goes without saying that we didn’t filter or fine this pale ale to retain the maximum

amount of mouth feel, flavour and aroma. So expect a light straw coloured haze, our

usual white head and lacing of your glass, at 4.7% on keg you can probably have more

than one!

Be sure to let us know what you think……..

Cheers,

MBC