Australia Weather News

Yearning for a cool drink, Joh Timmers popped a piece of hail into his drink after a thunderstorm at Wivenhoe Dam recently. But he soon noticed an odd taste.

"I could taste the smoke in it … we tried another and it was the same, it was subtle, but you could taste it," he told ABC Radio Brisbane.

"The hail didn't look any different to other hail and it wasn't discoloured at all."

Mr Timmers said he had seen the storm rolling in through a smoke haze from fires burning in the region.

"You could see there was smoke up there and the taste was definitely bush smoke — it wasn't acrid or anything like that," he said.

The science of smoke and hail

Bureau of Meteorology senior forecaster Lauren Pattie said different elements combined to create smoke in hail.

"To create hailstones, you need a particle in the centre of it and it's called a hail nucleus — it can be anything that's in the atmosphere," she said.

"Where there's a lot of smoke around the particle, then the smoke particle encourages hail to form, especially if there's a lot of particles in the air."

Ms Pattie said it could also occur when air bubbles were inside hail.

"When the hail grows in size, we can get air bubbles in the hail depending on the storm, and those air pockets will pick up whatever is in the atmosphere," she said.

"With the case of haze and smoke in the air, it can trap the smoke particle in the hail and when it melts or you eat it, the air pocket will open and the smoke particle will release.

"The smoke particles are micro-sized particles, and I imagine it would taste like eating ash from a campfire — it probably doesn't taste that great."

Getting into grapes

Sommelier Aleks Balodis said wineries could see effects from the smoke haze up and down the east coast.

"In the Australian wine industry, smoke can often get into the grapes and manifest in a bottle of wine," he said.

"It's called smoke taint — like cork taint, but with smoke."

He said the Australian Wine Research Institute had extensive research into the factors that affect smoke taint in vineyards.

"If there is smoke near a vineyard for longer than 30 minutes, it can sit on the grape skin itself and permeate into the flesh of the grape and bind itself to the sugars," Mr Balodis said.

"You don't notice it when you pick the grape, but when it starts to ferment, the phenols leach back out of the wine and you're left after fermentation with this wine that can sometimes smell like burnt rubber."

Depending on the level of smoke grapes were exposed to, the smoke could give wine an "earthy characteristic", Mr Balodis said.

"The smoke taint can overlay on the earthy characteristic — everyone's tastes are different, so it's up to you to deduce."