Back when The Crafty Pint started up four years ago, Scott Wilson-Browne was something of a lone duck in the world of Australian craft beer. Sure, Richard Watkins was having fun in the underbelly of Canberra's Wig & Pen and David Hollyoak was offering up his frequently Willy Wonka-inspired beers in Sydney, but to sample them you had to travel and taste at source. Scott, on the other hand, was forging something of a mad scientist reputation in the Victorian countryside and sending his out there confections, via specialist outlets, further afield.
Indeed, it seemed that every time we got in touch with him we needed an encyclopaedia to hand.
"Ah yes, a braggot," we'd say, quickly flicking to the "B's" so we could feign knowledge of whichever flight of fantasy he was off on.
"What's that? A gruit beer?" Frantic flick to G… "Yeah, be fascinating to see what those beers they were making back in the Dark Ages taste like."
Now, of course, the local beer scene is awash with brewers knocking out experimental beers. The likes of Queensland's Bacchus and New South Wales' HopDog BeerWorks offer similarly eclectic, release-heavy, small batch lineups, others of vastly varying sizes like Moon Dog, 7 Cent, Young Henrys, Kaiju! and Make Beer like to push the boundaries, while there aren't too many Australian micros that haven't tried their hand at at least one off the wall beer.
"I've always been following people like Dogfish Head – keeping in touch with what's going on in the rest of the world," says Scott, co-founder of Red Duck Brewery with wife Vanessa, of his trailblazing ways. "Sometimes you might think a new beer is an original idea but maybe it's only because it hasn't been done in this country before.
"I know I'm small and don't have a big reach in the market but occasionally you see other breweries doing things and I think, 'I did that five years ago.' If I've influenced people to make amazing or more interesting beers then, quietly, I think I have helped. There's no pat on the back but hopefully we helped change the landscape and showed that it's possible [to make experimental beers commercially].
"It was hard to sell some of those beers even to beer geeks back then. Now I get people saying they've heard of beers [that are long gone] and want to know when I'm going to do them again. You also come face-to-face with people at the cellar door and there are some who don't want anything other than a pale or Kolsch but then they try something else and walk out with a six-pack of Egyptian beer."
Despite the rapid growth in popularity and diversity of craft beer in recent years, he still believes there's plenty of room for such experimentation, particularly when looking at other countries such as the States. But it's experimentation that needs to come hand in hand with "a bit of maturity, settling down and more unity", he says, to ensure growth happens in a manner that doesn't "start getting ugly" for the little guys.
For his part, this week sees the start of a launch sequence reminiscent of The Wedding Present, the UK indie band that released a vinyl single every month for a year two decades ago.
"The general plan was to do six new releases seasonally – so 24 different new beers each year," says Scott. "But, for this first one, I ended up with nine and thought, 'OK, that's close enough.'"
We'll be adding the beers to the New Beers section of the site as they're released in pairs, but Scott says to look out for a number of hop forward beers in the first nine (because that's what the people want), including the return of his popular Bengal English IPA, as well as beers such as Wild Hunt, which he says is the closest to a Christmas beer he'll be releasing: a spicy Belgian style red ale.
It's the sort of release schedule that makes it easy to understand how at this year's Good Beer Week Red Duck was able to line up 63 different bottled beers of their own for sampling at their brewery open days. And also the sort of release schedule that makes it fairly surprising that beer number 100 has not yet been reached. That day is set to be in May next year and, provided it works out, the beer will be Double Dragon, a whopping version of Golden Dragon.
The beer currently sits around 12 percent but is soon to be sent to a local winery to be dosed with champagne yeast in the hope of nudging up towards the 16 percent mark. Preceding it as beers 98 and 99 will be, respectively, Ra #5 and Cherry Red, a cherry wood smoked malt, rye and red wheat and cherry beer.
"It's hard to go past the Golden Dragon [as the favourite of my beers]," he says. "It's not super hoppy or made with weird ingredients but it's still pretty amazing. It's hard to go past Canute the Gruit too [the first of his sour, smoky, hopless Medieval beers] as when I first made it there were cries of exasperation and alarm: 'You're not going to release that are you?'
"I said, 'Why wouldn't I? It's amazing!' and the response was, 'It's sour and smoky and horrible and unlike anything else', which I thought was even more reason to put it out."
Among the soon-to-be 100 beers are several series, with Scott (standing in the picture on the right) seemingly fond of creating sequels. Sometimes these are bigger or smaller versions of a particular beer, while in other cases they are versions of the beer with additional yeast strains, barrel time or unusual ingredients added. Among them are the Ra series of beers – officially tagged Imperial Egyptian Bread Beers – and the variations on the Orval-inspired Gnaume originally brewed with Anders Kissmeyer.
So does he look at the various barrels lying around his Ballarat brewery – garnered from a Tasmanian whisky distillery, a local port producer and various other Victorian wineries – and plot their contents several beers ahead?
"Not as a structured plan," he admits. "It's a bit more ad hoc. That said, we are keeping track of what we put in them rather than using my memory. Certain beers go over the top of others, and we try to plan to have something to fill them up whenever emptying them.
"With the wine barrels, I always get them re-coopered and charred. It's not about making beers really woody, it's about ageing them and the difference that that makes to a beer."
With beer 100 set to land in May and the brewery's 10th anniversary following next October, it's all a far cry from the early days in 2005. Back then, Scott launched with a pale ale, shortly followed by an amber and porter.
"I remember some famous words from Dave [Bonighton] at Mountain Goat," says Scott. "He said, 'You're mad! Start with one!'
"I said I wanted six. 'What?!?'"
Ninety-four beers later and he's far from done, even if coming up with new ideas becomes more challenging.
"It is getting harder for me to put out a beer that's different or challenging or interesting," he says. "But part of the challenge is to make sure it's not just weird beer for the sake of it. It's about making one that might be different but has context."
And so when the tenth birthday rolls around, will it be with Double Dragon or another specialty in hand? Neither, of course; that would be far too straightforward.
"I'll be drinking Red Duck whisky," he says. "When Timboon Distillery opened, they wanted something to practice on. My fourth batch of Amber had turned out too high in alcohol so I sent it to him. Two months later, he gave me two buckets of cask strength spirit. I put them in barrels for seven years and then bottled them. It tastes like a 25-year-old single malt."
If you'd like to taste it, you'd best be nice to the Red Duck team. With no spirits licence, it will be samples for friends only.
