A beer made from smoke-tainted grapes

The two men had been friends for several years, sharing a passion and enthusiasm for pushing the boundaries in their field, for thinking outside the box, and now they have joined forces to make Bright Side beers, using the tainted grapes from Martin's Ravensworth Wines.

"After the year the winemakers had it would have been heartbreaking for everyone if we couldn't do something with the grapes," Topher said.

"You have to look on the bright side, we didn't want to see all that harvest go to waste."

Boehm is a brewer and co-owner of Wildflower Brewing and Blending in Sydney, who focuses on making beers using native yeast that is foraged off flowers around New South Wales.

It's a process that is very like making sourdough bread from a mother. He'd previously used grapes, skins and flora from Martin's vineyard in Murrumbateman and this full range seemed like a natural progression, he says.

The Bright Side beers use Wildflower's Gold Australian Wild Ale as the base and it was mixed with grapes from five different wine varietals: shiraz, gamay, riesling, sangiovese and viognier.

They are sold in wine-bottle-sized bottles and retail for $20.

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Martin says he can taste the different grapes in each.

"There is a big difference between the viognier and the riesling, and the sangiovese and the shiraz," he said.

"But it's the beer that shines through."

But the big question is can you taste the smoke taint?

"We knew there were going to be smoke compounds in them, in some ways the last thing Topher wanted to do was to hide that, he really wanted these beers to show the season I went through," Martin said.

"But at the end of the day, you see a little smoke in the nature of the aromas but it's not at the forefront at all."

Boehm says while there is still more research they could do, it's the different processes of making beer and wine that seems to counter the presence of smoke.

"It's likely one of two reasons, or a combination of the two," he says. "Firstly, there's the simple fact that the beer is diluted, the beer is not 100 per cent juice, the wine grapes make about 20-30 per cent of the total volume of the beverage.

"The other possibility is that the microbial pathway, the actual step by step fermentation that happens when the grapes are introduced to beer, particularly wild beer, is a completely different fermentation pathway.

"To be honest we're not really sure, I have made beers with smoke affected grapes in the past and we didn't see the effects of the smoke at all in that beer."

Both Boehm and Martin agree that it will be interesting to see what happens to the beers if they are cellared as such, if the smoke taint will become more prevalent.

"If it was wine I would say the smoke-taint would become more noticeable, but because the compounds operate differently in beer it could go either way," says Martin.

Boehm says the beers "move" more than any other beer he's made. By that he means the flavours change, as you pour it, as you drink it.

"You go at the beverage thinking it's going to be smoky but it's not, and then when you drink it, depending on the varietal, you'll get rose flavours, or smoked citrus, or red brambly fruits on the nose.

"They are fascinating beers and it's been great working with Bryan to get them to market."

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