The longest-established of all Australian craft breweries, Matilda Bay was founded by Phil Sexton in West Australia back in 1984, making small batches of beer for sale in Fremantle’s Sail & Anchor pub. First off the production line was the Redback wheat beer – the first of its style made in Australia and still winning awards today.
Other styles unfamiliar to Australian palates, such as dark lager Dogbolter followed and, in the early 1990s, the brewery was purchased by Carlton and United Breweries. Founder Sexton would go on to found Little Creatures, while the backing of one of Australia’s biggest brewers provided Matilda Bay with the financial clout to reach a much wider audience.
It left its West Australian roots behind to move to the Garage Brewery in the outer Melbourne suburb of Dandenong in 2005, where under the stewardship of Brad Rogers (who has since founded Stone & Wood in Byron Bay) and now Scott Vincent, a team of brewers acts as the Foster’s group’s craft beer arm. In early 2012, the brewery moved again, to a former Cadbury factory in Port Melbourne where it both brews and welcomes customers to its Brewery Bar seven days a week.
Having outgrown its microbrewery origins, Matilda Bay appears on taps all over the country, often acting as the first contact drinkers have with craft beer. Its own range invites drinkers to embark on a journey through the world of flavoursome beers, with the likes of the hugely hopped US style Alpha Pale and other seasonals lying in wait.
Matilda Bay Beers
The Regulars
The Specials
Regulars
Alpha Pale Ale
A serial award-winner, this is the big boy of the Matilda Bay range, a highly-hopped take on the powerful Pale Ales developed in Northwest USA. Boasting pungent fruit and citrus aromas from the use of Cascade hops, a mouthful of pale malts and a powerful wallop of bitterness, it’s a great way to experience the taste of West Coast American without splashing out on the airfare.
Style: American Pale Ale
Strength: 5.2%
Beez Neez
Initially created as a Christmas gift for staff, Beez Neez soon became a permanent addition to the Matilda Bay range. A wheat beer with the addition of light amber honey in the boil, it’s clean and crisp with a gentle honey and a dry finish.
Style: Honey-infused wheat beer
Strength: 4.7%
Bohemian Pilsner
Matilda Bay’s take on the classic Czech style first created in Plzen back in the 19th century. The late addition of Saaz hops give the beer its floral and spicy aroma, which give way to a lightly fruity palate and a distinct hop bitterness.
Style: Czech Pilsner
Strength: 4.7%
Big Helga
Launched amid great fanfare late in 2009, this is Matilda Bay’s more approachable lager for those who find the Bohemian’s bitterness too confronting. Now widely available nationwide and brewed out of the Cascade Brewery in Tasmania to meet demand, it’s inspired by the traditional Oktoberfest beers made for the annual festival in Munich.
Style: Munich Lager (helles)
Strength: 4.7%
Dogbolter
A beer that turned heads when it first rolled out of the Sail & Anchor Pub Brewery in Fremantle in 1987, the name Dogbolter was transferred two years later to a dark lager coming out of the Matilda Bay Brewery. Now part of the brewery’s Reserve range, is a Munich style dark lager made up of six different malts that lend it flavours of caramel, chocolate and toffee. The Germanic Hersbrucker hop gives it a light floral aroma and gentle bitterness too.
Style: Munich Dark Lager
Strength: 5.2%
Redback
One of the beers that started Australia down the path to where we are today, Redback was launched in the mid-80s to coincide with the Americas Cup defence. Matilda Bay reckon it’s Australia’s first craft beer – a German style hefeweizen (wheat beer) with fruit and clove aromas, it uses both wheat and barley plus Saaz and Australian Pride of Ringwood hops to create a refreshing beer that continues to win awards today, a quarter century on from its inception.
Style: Hefeweizen
Strength: 4.7%
Fat Yak
Realising not everyone is up for the lipsmacking beast that is their Alpha Pale Ale, the Matilda Bay brewers came up with a beer that’s along the same lines, but toned down into something more approachable. It has the fruity hop aromas familiar to those who enjoy Cascade-laden American Pale Ales plus some more grassy aromas from the addition of Nelson Sauvin hops from New Zealand, but comes without the overpowering bitterness that accompanies the bigger ones. Like Big Helga, now produced at the Cascade Brewery in Tasmania.
Style: American Pale Ale
Strength: 4.7%
Specials
Long Shot
The result of a collaboration between Matilda Bay’s head brewer Scott Vincent and leading Melbourne coffee merchant Toby Smith, of Toby’s Estate, this coffee-infused dark ale is the brewery’s 2010 winter seasonal. Ethiopian Yirgacheffe coffee beans were used to make the infusion, which was added to the tanks post-boil. As Crafty wrote upon being given a pre-release taste, the result is a “cocoa-cum-mocha aroma as the chocolate notes of the malts come through with a touch of vanilla to balance the coffee. It’s goodbye stout-like roasts, hello dark ale richness, with the coffee infusion now just that: an infusion that adds to the ale base without overpowering it, making for a more approachable finished product.”
Available:
Dan Murphy’s exclusive
Style: Coffee-infused Dark Ale
Strength: 6%
