St Thomas is an Australian Wild Ale refermented with cherries. While the beer is named for Chris and his wife’s first son, the Saint Thomas Aquinas was an immensely influential 13th-century philosopher and theologian. In 2020, it was made from amber mixed fermentation, barrel-aged beer and 800kg of tree-ripened, whole fresh Morello sour cherries from Thornbrook Orchard in Orange, NSW.

This year’s edition of our annual cherry beer sees a synthesis of processes from 2018 and 2019 whereby the fruit was partially destemmed as well as allowed to carbonic macerate before being blended with beer. In 2020 (well the end of 2019 really) we were all set again to pick a portion of the cherries without stems but once again nature had a different idea. The cherries for St Thomas 2020 were picked on 22 December 2019, during the bushfires in the Blue Mountains.

In the end we blended 10 barrels of aged Amber to make St Thomas 2020, 1715 (9 month old Amber), 1716 (9 month old Amber), 1801 (17 month old Amber), 1831 (23 month old Amber), 1755 (11 month old Amber), 1733 (19 month old Amber), 1727 (3 month old Amber), 1704 (18 month old Amber), 1775 (23 month old Amber) and 1812 (23 month old Amber).

At release. St Thomas 2020 opens with aromas of rich cherry liqueur, bright after dinner mint and soft chocolate notes. Palate is on point. Loaded with bright sweet cherry fruit flavours across it, the Amber base beer gives profound complexity with dark chocolate, sweet spice, more red (currant) fruits and nuttiness. The harmony is wonderful, creating a simultaneously clean cherry forward beer while also a deeply complex and evolving drink.

The base beer is brewed entirely with New South Wales cereals: Single Origin (S.O.) Riverina NSW grown Schooner Munich malt, Binya NSW grown S.O. LaTrobe Vienna malt and Riverina NSW grown chocolate malt from Voyager Craft Malt. It is made with filtered Sydney water and Saaz (CZ) hops. Finally, it was fermented with our house culture: brewers yeast, foraged wild yeast and naturally occurring souring bacteria native to New South Wales. It was bottled on 20 May 2020 and naturally conditioned through refermentation for 11 weeks. At bottling it was 6.7% ABV, 18 IBU and 2.5°P (FG = 1.010 SG). – Wildflower