NEW HIKA PALE ALE
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,
