Wicked Elf is a giant killer The author pauses behind his iPhone to capture the image of a freshly poured Wicked Elf before consuming its "compromise" of hops and malt. Picture: Peter Lalor. Wicked Elf Pale Ale The Little Brewing Company (5.4% alc vol) HOP heads have had their day. It's time for a compromise. Those of us who enjoy a bit of malt complexity in our beer need to reassert ourselves. Now, I don't want to spook the horses here so I've found a beer that I reckon brings the best of both worlds. Beer is, essentially, two competing elements at work - the toffee/biscuit sweetness locked in an eternal tug of war with the bittering qualities of the hop (the aromas the flowers provide are a decorative indulgence). Traditional British brewers tended to concentrate on the malt characters of their beers, but the modern craft industry has come storming out of the United States in a shower of hop buds. These new brews are always belligerently bitter and always find time to put a heavy bouquet under the drinker's ruddy nose. To some degree malt flavours have been left lagging a little. A couple of weeks back I came across a beer from a mob up in Port Macquarie that brings the best of both worlds to the table. The Little Brewing Company's Pale Ale has raced to the top of my favourite tipple charts quite by chance - an inattentive shopper I meant to buy the company's witbier but ended bringing home the PA. This, turned out to be a happy accident. Yes, the pale, with its Cascade hopping (almost ubiquitous in the craft category) is as American as it gets, but it's the malts that really make this one stand out. Brewer Warwick Little is using a blend of British and Australian malts to create some great flavours beneath the flowers. The Little Brewing mob is basically Warwick, his wife Kylie and one assistant. The pale ale won a gold medal at its first showing (the 2008 Sydney Royal Beer Competition) and the brewery has continued to win a range of awards ever since. Warwick comes from a long line of English brewers and publicans. Records of their involvement in the caper date back to the early 1700s. Originally a paramedic, he caught what Kylie calls the "fermentation bug" while studying winemaking in Wagga Wagga some years back. The move to Port Macquarie in 2006 to start the brewery turned out to be quite fortuitous. Tests of the town water reveal it is softer than Pilsen's - home of the famous and best pilsener beers. Naturally Little Brewing took advantage of this happy coincidence and its version of the Czech classic has won silver medals five years running at the Australian International Beer Awards. The brewery also holds an import licence for Belgian curacao peel, which beer nuts will know is the key spicing ingredient in that country's witbiers. You can use an extract or a medley of dried mandarin and orange peel, but the Little Brewing people say the real stuff is miles better. The brewery's beers are so popular it is struggling to keep up with demand (Dan Murphy's stocks the witbier and pale ale). New brewing equipment on its way from Canada will help ensure there is more of this marvellous beer for for everyone.