For most people, being in the wettest part of Victoria would be cause for complaint. Not Luke Scott, head brewer at the Otway Estate Brewery, who has an impressive water harvesting system and a pair of 150,000l tanks at his disposal to capture the rain. This pure water is used to brew his beers, ensuring they are truly a product of the Otways.
Brought in to start a brewery alongside the existing Otway Estate Winery, Luke has taken a two-pronged approach: a standard range of approachable beers under the Prickly Moses label, ranging from a pilsner through to a stout and the “Otway Trilogy” of French and Belgian Farmhouse Ales available in longnecks – plus occasional short run specials.
When Otway Estate’s owners decided to build the brewery, it was seen as something that would complement their wine production. Three years on, with its beers playing their part in Australia’s craft beer revolution, the brewery is taking the lead. The Prickly Moses label is found in pubs all along the Great Ocean Road, as well as in Melbourne and further afield, with the Otway Organic Lager and a cider made with apples grown on the estate helping win a new audience.
The brewery, which takes its name from a native plant local to the area, is well worth a visit. Sat on the edge of the beautiful Otway Ranges National Park and less than 50km from the Surf Coast, it has three holiday cottages onsite with views over the rolling countryside, a well stocked cafe and restaurant with outdoor dining. It also produces its own cordials. And if you want to go a step further, you can sign up for residential beer courses and learn to brew hands on.
Otway Estate Beers
The Specials
Regulars
Otway Organic Lager
Made with raw ingredients that are all certified organic and rainwater harvested at the brewery, this crisp, refreshing lager is one of the greenest beers in Australia.
Style: Lager
Otway Stout
A deeply dark beer with a crema like head, this dry stout has a gentle roast and treacle aroma that merely hints at the flavours within. Dark chocolate with a touch of burnt caramel gives way to a pleasantly lingering mild bitterness from the roasted malts. A classic winter beer.
Awards: People's Choice Winner - Stouts, Federation Square Microbreweries Showcase 2009 and 2010. Silver medal - Australian International Beer Awards 2010
Style: Dry Stout
Strength: 5%
Otway Ale
A clear, light amber ale with a white head that clings to the side of your glass, the Otway Ale is subtly complex. The nose mixes an almost sherbet like sweetness with a touch of malt and the grassy, floral bouquet of classic English hops. Upfront caramel flavours soon give way to a steadily building hop bitterness reflecting the mixture of varieties used in the boil to create the sort of beer enjoyed in English pub gardens for years.
Style: Pale Ale
Strength: 4.9%
Otway Pilsner
Using fresh rainwater captured at Otway Estates is perfect for this style of beer, a light Bohemian pilsner which demands subtlety of flavour. It pours with a bright white, lingering head and has a gentle floral aroma from the use of traditional European Saaz hops, which also lend the beer a soft, dry finish. An eminently sessionable, thirst quenching lager.
Style: Bohemian Pilsner
Strength: 4.8%
Otway Red Ale
The Red Ale is a traditional Irish ale, meaning the emphasis is firmly on the malt character. The blend of malts includes some roasted barley which give the beer an element of roasted nut, even a hint of woodiness. The distinctive earthy aroma and flavour of English Goldings hops add balance.
Style: Irish Red
Strength: 5%
Otway Wheat
This cloudy, light gold beer is Otway’s take on the Belgian witbier (White Beer) style, which means citrus and coriander on the nose and the palate. A refreshing beer in which the use of unmalted wheat adds a touch of nuttiness, it’s also only 4.3% so won’t knock you out while quenching your thirst on a hot summer day. It pours with a creamy white head, a creaminess that’s matched in the mouthfeel.
Awards: AIBI Bronze Medal 2009 & 2010 Peoples' Choice Award for Best Wheat Beer at 2010 Fed Square Microbreweries Showcase
Style: Witbier
Strength: 4.3%
Specials
Prickly Moses Tailpipe
Silly Crafty. There we were, happily plodding along in the mistaken belief that the Tailpipe was one of Prickly MOses brewer Hendo’s little playthings only on show at the Taste of Melbourne. But we were wrong, stumbling across it on our last visit to Slowbeer. And glad we were to be wrong, as it’s claim that it’s a “Big Ass Brown Ale” is spot on and Big Ass Brown Ales are always welcome at Crafty Towers. As you’d expect from such a beer, there’s plenty of everything, from the New World hops and nutty roast malts on the nose to fulsome chocolate flavours and a bitterness that’s part resiny hops, part roast in a beer that continues a run of releases from the Otway brewery that’s far removed in conception from its regular range.
Available:
Blackhearts & Sparrows
Slowbeer
Prickly Moses
Style: US Style Brown Ale
Strength: 7.1%
Prickly Moses Oktoberfest Lager
A beer that’s brewed every year for the Otway Estate Oktoberfest is the Prickly Moses' brewers take on malt driven Vienna style lagers. Made with malts and hops grown in the southern German state of Bavaria and, of course, the local Otway rainwater, we’re told to expect “a rich, malty palate with a balanced hop bitterness and aroma with a reddish hue”. It will be flowing at the Otway Oktoberfest on October 22 but has already started to appear elsewhere, after making its bow at The Local Taphouses' own Oktoberfest.
Otway Estate, The local taphouse both venues, Biero
Available from these bottle shops Otway Estate, Black Hearts and Sparrows, Purvis Cellars, Purvis Beer, Corkscrew Cellars Torquay.
Available:
Prickly Moses
Blackhearts & Sparrows
Purvis Cellars
Purvis Beer Richmond
The Local Taphouse Darlo
The Local Taphouse St Kilda
Biero
Corkscrew Cellars, Torquay
Style: Vienna Lager
Strength: 5.2%
Prickly Moses Chocolate Ale
The second new beer to be unveiled during the Prickly Moses showcase at Young & Jackson’s this sees the brewers from the Otway Ranges hooking up with Grounded Pleasures, who have supplied organic fair trade Ugandan Red Cocoa to create a rich, chocolaty ale. According to brewer Hendo: “We created this chocolate ale to highlight the reddish hue of the cocoa in a malt-driven beer.” He says there are subtle mineral yeast tones, designed to accentuate the origins of the cocoa. Some orange peel was added to the boil too. As with the Session Ale that’s also been debuted this month, if the feedback’s good they may be brewed again so if you like what you taste, let them know.
Available:
Young & Jackson’s (tap)
Blackhearts & Sparrows (growler)
Slowbeer (growler)
Style: Chocolate Ale
Strength: 6.2%
Prickly Moses Session Ale
A beer that tells you pretty much all you need to know about it in its name. It’s an ale. From Prickly Moses. Designed for sessioning. However, we’ve got space to fill on the page (and brewer Hendo likes to talk about his babies) so what else might you like to know? Well, it’s the first of two beers they’re debuting during their showcase in the Chloe’s Bar at Young & Jackson’s. It uses lots of the Topaz hop once almost exclusively used for bittering but now being explored for aroma and flavour, here added late in the boil and for dry-hopping (alongside some Centennial). Hendo says that gives you lychee, citrus and musk, apparently. The aim is to show Topaz can make something other than mainstream lagers and, if the beer’s well received during the showcase, it may reappear in keg and bottle down the line.
Available:
Style: Australian Ale
Strength: 4.6%
Prickly Moses Black Panther
One of two new beers from the Otway brewery making an appearance for the first time at the Melbourne leg of the Good Food and Wine Show, this dark beast originally reared its head during the Prickly Moses showcase at Young & Jackson’s least year. Now back, it’s an India Black Ale allegedly inspired by the mysterious legend of big black cats that roam the Victorian bush. It’s made with a “generous” addition of North American hops both in the boil and in the fermenter with caramelised black malt used to impart a subtle burnt flavour. According to the brewers, you’ll find “citrus hop notes and strangely enough some aniseed or licorice” plus “a luscious head that holds up well”.
Available:
Otway Estate
Newmarket Hotel
Blackhearts & Sparrows
Style: India Black Ale
Strength: 6.2%
Prickly Moses Raconteur: A Love Story About Hops
For a brewery that knocks out more beers than most over the course of a year, it might come as some surprise that this is Prickly Moses' first IPA. It’s a beer that’s got brewer Hendo hot under the collar, hot enough to describe it as a beer that “tells the classic story of American India Pale Ale with hops the protagonist. A hop driven beer in every way, hops are added throughout the entire brewing process from the mash tun to the kettle and even the fermenter.” The hops in question are the classic “Three Cs” – Centennial, Chinook and Cascade – which he says are balanced by a caramelised malt profile. It’s the hoppiest beer Prickly Moses has produced to date and was created in part as an experiment to see how much hops the brewhouse and their beer handling procedures could handle.
Available:
Otway Estate
Beer DeLuxe
Blackhearts & Sparrows
Style: US IPA
Strength: 6.4%
Otway Estate Wild Hop Organic Ale
One of the more unusual of this year’s crop of hop harvest beers, this saw the Otway Estate brewers track down a field of wild hops on the edge of the Otway Ranges that had once been used to supply the long-defunct Ballarat Brewery. Having filled their truck with Canterbury Goldings, they threw everything – hop flowers and vines – into the mash tun and continued adding more hops right through the process in a beer with a traditional English Special Bitter malt backbone. Brewer Luke Scott says it has “earthy, spicy” hop characters, a “touch of nectary sweetness – peach and apricot – and fresh green hop flower characteristics coming through”. It’s keg only with the first one outside the brewery being tapped at Josie Bones' Hop Harvest Dinner on May 4.
Available:
Otway Estate
Josie Bones
Apollo Bay Hotel
Kelly’s Bar & Kitchen, Olinda
Grumpy’s Green
The Local Taphouse St Kilda
The Local Taphouse Darlo
Biero
Carlton Hotel, Geelong
Young & Jackson’s
Style: Harvest Ale
Otway Estate Red Fred
Getting fruity in time for summer, Otway Estate appears to have combined its beer and cordial-making skills in this organic raspberry beer. A heap of crushed raspberries were added to a base beer with a soft enough flavour profile to allow the fruit to take effect, although it’s in the aroma that they really shine through: it’s like taking a whiff of a fresh punnet. The raspberries' effect on the palate is more subtle, definitely there but not in the manner of a Lindemans Framboise, for example, instead adding a slight tartness to a drink that’s nothing if not refreshing.
Available:
Available from the brewery
Or at the Young & Jackson’s Otway Showcase
Style: Raspberry beer
Strength: 4.8%
Oktoberfest 2010
The Otway Estate team really push the boat out for their annual Oktoberfest, bring in German oompah bands, putting on traditional German fare and games, having souvenir steins produced and, of course, brewing a specialty Oktoberfestbier. Brewed in the traditional Vienna lager style with ingredients imported from Bavaria, the 2010 version pours a bright copper colour with a white foamy head, has a soft malt aroma with a hint of spice from the hops, a biscuity malt-dominated flavour and a long, dry finish. It’s being launched at the Otway Oktoberfest on October 2.
Available:
Style: Oktoberfest / Marzen
Strength: 5.2%
Barrel-aged Strong Ale
One of the benefits of having a winery and brewery on the same site is that it allows the brewer to get creative. This is the Prickly Moses Strong Ale after it’s spent a few months in an oak barrel previously used for Otway Estate’s Pinot. The result is a hint of oak on the nose and a smokiness to taste.
Available:
Otway Estate
Style: Barrel-aged beer
Otway Saison 2010
The 2010 vintage of one of Otway Estate’s trio of French and Belgian Farmhouse styles, the Saison pours a hazy golden colour with an effervescent white head. Fruity aromas from the yeast strains mix with soft alcohol notes on the nose and are matched on the palate by initial flavours of dried apricot. A tart, wine-like character comes through – one of the yeast strains used has red wine origins – along with a tingle of warmth from the high alcohol content before finishing with a lingering, astringent dryness not dissimilar to that of a strong French farmhouse cider.
Style: Saison
Strength: 7.2%