My Old Man by Mac DeMarco plays in the background as Topher Boehm adjusts his seat to catch the last rays of the afternoon sunshine. Tucked away in Sydney’s Marrickville among the warehouses, repair shops, and vast industrial spaces is his brewery, Wildflower Brewing & Blending. Marrickville is known locally for its thriving brewing scene—it’s also home to the likes of Batch Brewing Company and Sauce Brewing Co. Yet Wildflower, located in a former metal foundry, is tucked discreetly away from the noise of the local taproom crawls.

Inside, stacked tall against its walls, are former oak wine barrels donated by several New South Wales wineries. The space is compact, there’s no brewing system, and there aren’t rows of cylindroconical, stainless steel brewing tanks taking up valuable real-estate. It’s evident from the moment you enter that Wildflower is unlike many other breweries.

Topher tells me that his initial vision of a home for Wildflower was supposed to be on a farm, not here in Sydney’s inner-west. But with some pushback from the local council, the decision was made to be based here instead. "Which is good,” he says, “because if we tried to do it all from scratch [grow our own hops and grain] then it would take us an incredible amount of time.”

Despite this apparent setback, it hasn’t changed Wildflower’s meticulous focus on one very specific ingredient—it’s yeast.

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Originally from Dallas, Texas, Topher moved to Australia in 2009 to study astrophysics. Alongside his studies, he began to dabble in homebrewing, eventually picking up a part-time brewing position for a little extra cash: first at Sydney's Flat Rock Brew Cafe and then at his now neighbouring Batch Brewing in 2013. This close relationship between Wildflower and Batch has continued; this is where Topher makes wort—the unfermented base of his beer. “You can’t do this in isolation,” he says of his itinerant brewing.

While learning his craft, Topher began to think more deeply about the origins of beer, in particular, its yeast. With his existing knowledge of mixed-culture fermentation gained in Europe and the US, soon he found himself deep in exploration of the “lost art” of making beer with native strains of yeast.

To further learn about wild yeasts and their fermentation characteristics, Topher made the decision to spend the next few years on the road. “I was doing both research for astronomy and working out of different breweries while thinking about a business plan,” he tells me.

He spent time at Brasserie Thiriez in Esquelbecq, France, before spending a week in his native Texas interning at Jester King—itself brewing some of the most highly sought after yeast-focussed beer—who Topher describes as “mentors, close friends and collaborators.” In 2015, he spent some time working for London’s Partizan Brewing. Eventually, this nomadic phase came to its end, and Topher returned to Sydney to open Wildflower Brewing & Blending with his brother-in-law, Chris Allen in early 2017.

"[Topher] was traipsing around Europe brewing beer and getting crazy ideas in his head,” Chris says, recalling their initial conversation about opening Wildflower. “I remember the night he called; he was telling me about these breweries he'd visited. I could hear the excitement in his voice, and then he asked if I wanted to start a brewery. I said, ‘Yeah!’ Who wouldn't want to start a brewery?"

It was at Brasserie Thiriez—amid the hustle and bustle of brewery life—Topher learned the value in taking a pause. Respecting the delicate balance between work and life would eventually become key to how he would manage his own brewery.

"Every day for lunch, we'd sit down and eat together,” Topher says of his time in France. It was working here that he gained an enthusiasm for local styles such a biére de garde and saison. “It was always an hour. We would talk about the beer and then go back to work, re-energised."

"Sometimes with beer, the borderlines get fuzzy," he continues. “People’s personalities can become their work. But the brewery wasn’t Daniel and Marielle Thiriez’s whole life. He makes beer for a living, and they own a brewery. But they are interesting people outside of it. I wanted that."

““We are trying to make something that is sophisticated and enjoyable. I want it to be so subtle that those two things can be the same.”
”

— Topher Boehm

Like Wildflower, London’s Partizan Brewing also has a reputation for making delicate beers with a strong focus on their fermentation characteristics—as well as having a deep respect for their work/life balance. Founder Andy Smith saw something of a spark in Topher during his time there.

“[He] seemed like a person interested in beer and brewing and not the echo chamber of social media and current brewing trends,” Andy says, “It was clear that Topher’s ambition would take him a long way.”

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Chris remembers standing in his laundry room when he and Topher first tried their beer. “It was interesting and different,” he says “not like anything I’d tried before.”

Topher opens a bottle of Wildflower’s Table Beer. This 3% ABV pale ale is bottled without ever seeing the inside of a barrel in order to preserve its freshness and aroma, but still showcasing the delicate, slightly funky quality of the brewery’s house yeast. It’s spritzy, approachable, and provides optimal refreshment. Our conversation veers towards the history of native fermented beverages in pre-colonial Australia but Topher stops himself. As a white person living in Australia, he’s mindful of the need to be respectful when talking about the pre-colonialism era.

To understand that what Wildflower is doing is not “new” he recommends I read First Taste: How Indigenous Australians Learned About Grog by social anthropologist Dr Maggie Brady. Topher’s aim is not to recreate beers from Australia’s past but to imbue a sense of the southeastern state of New South Wales into beers that are accessible to everyone.

“If Wildflower was about making beer from the past, it would fail. We don’t know how [those beers] tasted,” he says. “Many people talk about local beer as beer made in a local place, not as something made from that place.”

Wildflower’s self-described “house yeast” was cultivated from foraged wildflowers native to New South Wales such as wattle blossoms and banksia. This was then combined with a single strain of brewers’ yeast to create its house culture. Once Topher produces the wort at Batch, it makes the two-minute drive to Wildflower and undergoes primary fermentation in a stainless steel tank before—with the exception of the Table Beer—being transferred into barrels for slow maturation.

Topher even took the extra step of spraying his brewery with inoculated wort when Wildflower originally moved into the building, so as to ensure his yeast soaked into every crevice and pore. And once maturation is completed—dictated by Topher’s palate—he blends different barrels of various ages to achieve the desired flavour and structure he wants in each beer.

“Wildflower’s beers are born of a detailed understanding of the science of fermentation and brewing, but showcase a more ephemeral, creative flair alongside this,” Australian wine and drinks journalist, Mike Bennie tells me. “[Topher] has a focus on challenging perceptions of what is beer.”

Topher then takes me through some of the barrels he uses to make his blends. There’s the appropriately named duo of Gold and Amber; Good As Gold, a fifty-fifty blend of freshly fermented Gold with an equal portion from the barrels; and Solera, a spelt beer made from iterative, partial emptying and refilling of a large oak foudre. “Out of 200 barrels, only three to four are chosen for each blend,” he tells me.

Each batch of both Gold and Amber is blended and bottled around every four to six weeks. The wort for these blends are brewed about once a month; while in barrel they undergo what Topher describes as “complex, arduous fermentations.” He then collects the settled yeast after primary fermentation as the beer goes to the barrel and pitches it into a successive batch of Gold or Amber.

“Throughout my brewing career, there were few beers I could share with my wife, Bernadette. But, when we visited Jester King and were trying their saisons and other barrel-aged beer, she enjoyed them,” Topher recalls. “It was a pleasant surprise and a reminder that the flavours from these fermentations are not the treasure of the vanguard.”

Pouring me a glass of the copper-coloured Amber, my senses are awash with the aroma of baked chocolate cake, salted caramel, and cinnamon. The yeast comes to the fore in the finish, providing a subtly earthy aftertaste. It reminds of Christmas—or more accurately of speculaas, a Dutch spiced cookie usually served during the festive season. Topher makes one thing clear, however, Wildflower is not trying to make beer for all people or all seasons. “I’d be bad at that,” he says. “We are trying to make something that is sophisticated and enjoyable. I want it to be so subtle that those two things can be the same.”

Topher’s passion is palpable. Through Wildflower he’s not only challenging people’s perception of beer and the brewing community as a whole, but it is also diversifying the cultural landscape of drinks in Australia.

Finishing my glass of Amber, I ask Topher one last question, before my visit to Marrickville comes to its end: what would he like his brewery to look like in 10 years time?

“Beautiful and important,” he replies. “You know, maybe we’ll get there. And in the meantime, we'll just make it agreeable.”