Get Ready For Good Beer Week - The Brewers: 961 Beer

April 26, 2013, by Crafty Pint

Get Ready For Good Beer Week - The Brewers: 961 Beer

Back in March, The Crafty Pint was lucky enough to be invited to a Melbourne Food & Wine Festival event at East Brunswick’s Rumi restaurant featuring Lebanese craft beer matched with owner Joseph Abboud’s much-loved Lebanese food. Guest of honour was the man behind the beer, Mazen Hajjar of 961 Beer (above with mic), who we caught up with before the dinner. In a chat that lasted no more than 45 minutes, he gave us enough material to pen a 1,750 word article the following day – and with good reason.

At the age of 39, he can already count award-winning war photographer, CFO of a major bank and founder of two separate airlines among the “Previous Jobs” section of his CV. It puts the fact that he decided to bring craft beer back to the place where he believes beer was born by teaching himself how to brew and build a brewery into perspective.

You can read the feature we wrote on him here or find out a little more about him in this short Q&A he sent our way this week:

Name: Mazen Hajjar
Brewery: 961 Beer
Where it’s located: Outside of Beirut, Lebanon, in a small village called Mazraat Yachoua
When it was founded: 2006

Brewer bio: 39 years old, started two airlines after a career in investment banking but quit for the love of beer.

Which of your beers are you most proud of and why? Lebanese Pale Ale as it celebrates Lebanon’s culinary heritage and is uniquely Lebanese.

Why are you coming to Good Beer Week? To share our passion with the world and to meet beer lovers from Australia.

What are you most excited about? The opportunity to tell our story and to interact with people.

Why should people come to your event? Hopefully to try something different from a different land where beer started.

If you were a beer, what would you be and why? Any flavourful beer. I hate bland stuff. I want people to love or hate my beers not be OK with them.

  • Mazen is appearing at the Moor’s Head in Thornbury at Beer Comes Home – an event featuring 961 beers, the story of beer’s origins in the Middle East and “inauthentic pizza”.*

Also look out for a keg of 961 Porter – the first draft beer from 961 to reach Australia – at the Good Beer Week Festival Hub as part of the Crafty Curates tap lineup.

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