It was on separate trips along the West Coast of the US that schoolmates Al Carragher and Brendan Varis hatched their plan for a brewery on the West Coast of Australia. It took a number of years for the plan to come together, during which Brendan project managed brewery installations and start-ups across Australia while Al worked in beer sales and identified the future site, but since opening its doors in Swan Valley in October 2002, Feral has gained a reputation for its beers that places it at the very pinnacle of the Australian brewing industry.
Al’s now in Melbourne running the Great Northern Hotel, the pub with the only two permanent Feral taps in the East, while Brendan and fellow brewer Will Irving are intent on taking Aussie-brewed beer to new places. Since buying out his partners a few years back, Brendan’s let his imagination run wild – literally – creating a number of sour beers, including one fermented with wild Swan Valley yeasts. His love of sour, funky styles is such that Feral will soon be home to a shed housing almost 200 barrels dedicated to their development.
He’s anything but a one-trick pony, however. In 2009, Feral was named Champion Exhibitor at the Australian International Beer Awards, also picking up top gongs for its Hop Hog US IPA, Razorback Barleywine and Feral White, a Belgian witbier that was the brewery’s first release and remains its bestseller to this day.
The brewery’s tucked in the corner of what’s little more than an oversized wooden shed they built themselves. It’s an unprepossessing home for such excellent beers, one that also houses a kitchen and bar pouring 16 Feral beers and local wines. Visit any time of year and you’re likely to find their award-winners lined up alongside anything from Boris, the Russian Imperial Stout, to a Farmhouse Ale, Double Witbier or Black IPA – plus of course the Funky Junky and Dark Funk.
Just a short trip from Perth, it’s a criminal offence for anyone touring the region to miss out. For anyone who can’t make the trip, it’s getting easier to find Feral beers elsewhere. In 2011, they became the first brewery invited to take over all 20 taps at The Local Taphouses while the full awesomeness of their Hop Hog was captured in 330ml bottles after they installed a bottling line onsite. Even UK drinkers are to get a taste after Brendan was invited to brew 100,000 litres of Runt, the 2010 AIBA Champion Ale, for the JD Wetherspoon chain’s nationwide Real Ale Festival. It’s one of many invites to travel overseas for the brewer – and as Australia starts to develop a reputation for craft beer, it couldn’t ask for a better representative.
Feral (WA) Beers
The Regulars
The Specials
Regulars
Feral Hop Hog
A beer that needs no introduction to lovers of Aussie craft beer. Champion Ale at the 2009 Australian International Beer Awards, the Hop Hog is a superb recreation of the IPAs that originate in the Pacific Northwest of the US. Massive pine needle and citrus aromas waft from its glowing copper-orange body, with the hops also supplying a seriously impressive bitterness, all kept in check by the perfect malt backbone. Finally put into bottles in 2010, it’s becoming ever more widely available for Aussies in search of a big but balanced hop hit.
Style: US IPA
Strength: 5.8%
Feral White
The brewery’s first beer and still its best seller, the Feral White is a beautifully clean and balanced take on the Belgian witbier style. It’s so established in WA that you’re likely to find it on taps in places you’d never dream of finding a microbrewed beer. What’s more, after issues with the brewery that was producing the bottled version of the beer, bottling is being moved in-house onto Feral’s recently installed bottling line. As for the beer itself, it’s made with 50% barley and 50% wheat and an imported Belgian yeast strain. It’s cloudy and unfiltered with coriander and orange peel added during the boil to contribute a spicy citrus flavour.
Style: Belgian witbier
Strength: 4.6%
Feral's Runt
Taking the mantle of Australia’s Champion Ale from its biggest brother, the Hop Hog, in 2010, this American Pale Ale showcases once more brewer Brendan Varis' skill at balancing big hop flavours with the perfect malt backbone. A more delicate, dry and lightly hopped version of the Hog, it won Brendan an invite to the UK to brew 100,000l of it in cask-conditioned form to be served across the country for the pub chain JP Wetherspoon’s Real Ale Festival. Hopefully, he’ll be bringing some casks back with him…
Style: American Pale Ale
Strength: 4.7%
BFH (Barrel Fermented Hop Hog)
How do you improve on one of the best beers in the land? In the case of the Hop Hog, Brendan Varis stuck his award-winner into new French oak barriques for its primary fermentation before switching it to stainless steel for final processing and carbonation. He says: “Think of all the great pine needle and grapefruit you associate with Hop Hog with an added vanilla aroma and softened mouthfeel.” We say, try it wherever you can find it – it’s marvellous.
Style: Barrel Fermented IPA
Strength: 5.8%
Feral Dark Funk 2.0
Part of Feral’s mission to introduce Aussie beer drinkers to the wonders of sour beer styles, the Dark Funk is a no-holds-barred mother that incorporates into its blend 20% of Feral’s high alcohol Boris Imperial Stout that had spent 18 months being worked over by dediococus.
Style: Dark Sour
Strength: 5.3%
Feral Funky Junkie
A first in Australian commercial brewing, this beer uses as part of its blend a beer that was allowed to spontaneously ferment with microflora from the Swan Valley region. The resulting beer was rather too funky to be sold untouched, but blended with other Feral beers, it’s helped create an intensely sour beer unlike any other.
Style: Australian Sour
Strength: 4.7%
Specials
Feral King Brown
Of all the beers that were put on the lineup for the Festival of the Frothy, few had people more excited than this, a cognac barrel-aged Imperial Brown from Feral. Perhaps it was because it was a new beer from Feral, perhaps it was because the brewer Brendan Varis had called it the “most luscious” beer they’d ever created which, given the output from their Swan Valley base, is quite a claim. The result is a deeply dark brown beer and one that lives very much in the darker realms of flavour when it comes to its malt character, bordering on roasty with lots of rich, dark cocoa characters. At least that’s how it starts, before unravelling a big wave of smoky, woody goodness, like taking a drag on a Cuban with one hand while lazing back in a leather armchair and brandishing your cognac balloon with your other. A multi-layered beast to be savoured.
Available:
Style: Barrel-Aged Imperial Brown
Feral Boris (2011)
One of the first Aussie beers to go really big when it was first brewed, Feral’s Russian Imperial Stout weighs in at nigh on 12%. A big, bold, jet black, take-no-prisoners kind of a beer, a new batch has just been unleased by the Swan Valley brewers and started appearing on a handful of taps around the country. We’ve yet to get our smackers around the latest incarnation so are handing over tasting note duties to Al, who runs the Great Northern Hotel and has just taken delivery of a couple of kegs. “You wouldn’t pick it as 11.5%,” he says. “Very smooth, lots of chocolate and a hints of port.” He even wonders if it’s seen the inside of a barrel as he’s picking up a little oak. Only one way to find out if he’s right… EDIT: Having tasted it, we’d say it’s the most highly hopped Imperial Stout to pass our lips. And yes, you wouldn’t pick it as that big; very smooth.
Available:
The Local Taphouse St Kilda
Great Northern
The Wheaty
Feral
Style: Russian Imperial Stout
Strength: 11.5%
Feral Golden Ace
In the ongoing quest to create new beers and serve up new flavours, brewers are often on the lookout for an ingredient that can add something different. Late last year, a new hop variety arrived in Australia – the Sorachi Ace developed by Japanese brewery Sapporo. A couple of Victorian brewers played with it – each thinking they’d brewed the first commercial Sorachi Ace beer in Oz, only for Crafty to discover the guys at Feral in WA had beaten them to the punch. Feral 983 was the beer in question and now Sorachi, a hop we’ve found adds a really interesting character to the beers in which it’s appeared so far, returns in the Golden Ace. Described as “a crisp dry golden Belgian style ale with a refreshing lemon hop character”, it is Feral’s third bottled beer.
Available:
Feral – Now
Perth bars – Now
Perth bottlesops – From May 2
The Local Taphouse St Kilda – May 3
The Local Taphouse Darlo – May 3
The Wheaty – May 11
Blackhearts & Sparrows
Style: Belgian Golden Ale
Strength: 5.6%
