Any self-respecting beer lover who has been to Adelaide will have made it part of their mission to call in on Jade and her hop and whisky-loving friends at The Wheaty. One of the finest beer bars in the land run by people who live and breathe what they do with true passion, it’s a place that many brewers are happy to showcase their beers at for the first time and one where you can put yourself in the hands of the staff and be taken on a high quality boozy journey. Heck, last time The Crafty Pint called in we were met by a chap for whom Hahn Super Dry was the drop of choice: quite a challenge. After a couple of missteps (Croucher’s Pilsner featured “too much bitterness”), we’d turned him on to Emerson’s Pilsner, Murray’s Punch & Judy and Rogers and, hopefully, another craft beer conversion was underway.
Anyway, that’s not why we brought you all here today. No, that was to tell you about the venue’s plans for next month, when it will hold the inaugural Good Beer Wheaty, a mini-beer festival for the locals who can’t make it to Melbourne for Good Beer Week. Featuring “High Hop Nerdery”, beer launches, events centred around beer and whisky and visits from the likes of Darren Robinson from Doctor’s Orders and the Yeastie Boys, it should help assuage any sadness for those left behind.
“Blame the Yeastie Boys,” says co-owner Jade Flavell. “After several beer-fuelled conversations with Stu and Sam at last year’s Good Beer Week we all decided it would be an excellent idea to hold a Yeastie Boys concept tasting at The Wheaty – then GBW ended and we all resumed normal activities.
“Stu, however, remembered said discussions and within weeks had invited himself and Yeastie Sam to The Wheaty to make good our plan; naturally I thought it would make sense to build a whole mini-beerfest around the Yeastie’s visit and so Good Beer Wheaty was born. We figured that Melbourne shouldn’t have all the fun, and with a nod to Good Beer Week and its endeavour to make the most of visiting good beer people for the AIBAs The Wheaty put together a collection of craft beer (and whisk(e)y) events of the kind we already host – but over a concentrated period and with some very special bells and whistles. Good Beer Wheaty is very short, very craft & very Wheaty.”
The full program is online, with events running from May 12 to 15. We might even squeeze in The People’s Pint SA Launch too if it can be arranged in time. As for the craft beer scene in SA, Jade says: “As far as The Wheaty goes it’s never been better; the demand and enthusiasm for craft beer is unrelenting and infectious: people want good beer!
“As far as the broader scene goes, it’s getting there. While we haven’t seen the explosion of dedicated, specialist craft beer venues in SA that has occurred in other states, such as Queensland, it’s getting easier to drink better beer. More pubs are dedicating fridge space – though nowhere near enough tap space – to craft beer, a handful of pubs and a restaurant are holding regular craft beer nights, bottleshops are improving, a couple of restaurants take beer seriously and a newly opened inner city bar looks like having a strong craft beer focus in tap and bottle. Slowly, slowly. Brewery wise the ‘old’ stalwarts are busy developing new beers, tweaking old ones and expanding their facilities and two to three new SA micros are set to fire up before the end of 2012. If all goes to plan the next 12 months could be SA’s craft beer watershed…”
In Wheaty land, the long-promised kitchen is finally set to arrive in November, so no more ordering pizzas from down the road, and they’re planning to brew a Ryewaka IPA with Adelaide Hills brewery Lobethal Bierhaus. Jade is also collating some “damn fine brews” for July’s ‘Font of Darkness’ and September’s ‘Fountain of Hoppiness’ so plenty more to look forward too.
What’s more, if you’ve not sampled SA’s craft beers but will be in Melbourne for Good Beer Week, then you need to know that the Tramway Hotel in North Fitzroy is turning over its taps to SA’s brewers for the week as part of The Crafty Pint coordinated Pint of Origin that sees five Melbourne pubs become showcases for interstate brewers for the week. You’ll find WA at the Great Northern, Tassie at the Courthouse Hotel, NSW at the Rainbow Hotel and Queensland at the Baden Powell.
Australia’s first ever People’s Pint has been brewed! The beer made its way through the brewhouse at Temple Brewery & Brasserie yesterday ready for release during Good Beer Week. It means we can finally reveal what form the Double Hoptendre conjured by the competition winner Leo Hede will take. And it also means that we’re able to reveal that the spirit of giving in which The People’s Pint was conceived still has a lot more to give…
The launch of the beer will also be the formal launch of a new scholarship that will see one young Aussie brewer sent overseas to work at one of the world’s leading international craft breweries for two weeks – all expenses paid. You’ll have to wait until Good Beer Week to find out which overseas brewery is involved – and submissions for the scholarship will not open until the festival is finished – but we can confirm that Temple, in conjunction with Good Beer Week, plans to make this an annual affair.
“This is a chance for us to give something back to the industry,” says Renata Feruglio, who founded Temple with husband and brewer Ron. “Brewing is a really hard gig but everyone along the way has been very supportive.”
When The People’s Pint was being planned by The Crafty Pint and Good Beer Week, we were keen that it would not be a profit-making exercise, hence the idea for a scholarship. As soon as we approached Temple to see if they would become the brewers of the beer, they not only loved the idea but got straight back in touch to say they would add in their own money to fund the scholarship.
“We want to help provide the motivation for the pursuit of excellence,” says Ron. “We strive to achieve that here at Temple and we know that it’s really hard – it’s much easier to make something that’s less than excellent. Our intention is that whoever ends up receiving this scholarship will be sufficiently motivated to reach loftier heights in their brewing.”
As for The People’s Pint itself, the Double Hoptendre is a “Double Hopped Rye Red Ale” that is expected to register around 6.2%. Starting from the original description in the competition entry:
“A woman walked into a bar and ordered a Double Hoptendre. So the bartender gave her one… This is a spicy, flamboyantly hopped, cheeky beer, not afraid of making a statement, big flavours but enough subtlety to be acceptable for all occasions; it speaks its mind without offending anyone.”
the beer took shape in a conversation between Leo and Ron. They discussed what Leo had in mind, the characteristics he was seeking and what he was hoping to achieve.
In the end, the “Double” and “Hop” translated into the use of two hops throughout (Styrian Golding and First Gold) plus plans for some hefty “double dry-hopping” with them. Both hops have a spicy as well as floral character too, which accounts in part for the “spicy”, while the fact that a whopping 15kg of them will be used covers off “flamboyantly hopped”. The spiciness is also catered for by the use of rye malt; except there’s not just one rye malt – Ron has used four different varieties, including German and American malted rye and caramel rye. Between them they should help account for the “big flavours”.
Comments online during the voting phase suggested many expected the beer to be an IPA with big pungent hops, so the fact it’s something very different hints at the double meaning element of “Double Hoptendre”. And, in a nod to the fact that this is the beer of the people and many of the people who took part nominated beers inspired by the red of the Australian desert, Ron decided he’d try and make it as red as possible too.
“From the conversation with Leo, it was clear he wanted something spicy and interesting and with its own personality,” says Ron. “So we decided to use rye extensively along with English Maris Otter. The ‘Double’ meant it had to be hoppy and I was keen to stick with my current crusade of staying away from fruit salad hops. Both hops we’re using contribute spiciness and some floral and lemony notes while the redness should make it pretty interesting.”
The beer is launched at Temple on the Monday night of Good Beer Week on a night that features the formal announcement of the scholarship and musical comedy from ElbowSkin too. There has also been interest from a number of great interstate craft beer venues so, all being well, there maybe a coordinated national launch.
“I’m nervous about the beer,” admits Ron, “because it hasn’t gone through my usual pre-production process so it’s something of a live gig! Red beers are always a challenge to get right too as they can easily become brown.”
That said, he tells us: “It should have a dry spiciness, a full mouthfeel from the numerous malts that are in there, while the hops should be distinctive because they are being used in abundance and they are two hops that haven’t been used in a signature context in Australia; they should be quite aromatic but different.”
See you on May 14 to find out if he’s right!
For those for whom The People’s Pint is new, there’s a load of info on the competition website here (apologies if any of it’s out of date now that it’s over!). At The Crafty Pint, we’d like to thank not just Temple for getting involved and offering the scholarship, but also Bintani for providing the rather large amount of grain and hops, Grain & Grape for yeast, Code Create for the website and William Delmont for the logo. In keeping with the spirit of the venture, everyone has supplied their time and goods free of charge. Thanks!
Temple will be extending its opening hours all throughout Good Beer Week, from midday to 11pm all week.
Australia’s first dedicated craft beer store is about to open the doors at its new home. Slowbeer has moved a couple of kilometres closer to the heart of Melbourne from its old base in Hawthorn to new, bigger premises in Richmond, where it has installed extra taps and will be inviting guests to pull up a pew inside or out so they can enjoy their purchases on site – with a platter of cheeses and cured meats on the side if they so desire.
“The focus is shifting to be more social,” says owner Chris Menichelli. “We’ve got seating inside, will be adding footpath trading very soon and plan to open a beer garden at the back for next summer.
“I really wanted to push the food side of things but not in a pretentious way, just in a relaxed, social manner. We’ll have a board with four local and imported artisan cheeses that change regularly plus some smoked and cured meats, preserves and olives.”
The beer range will remain much the same, although there will soon be four taps pouring and the ability to offer more growlers, which will be decorated with the store’s new branding and logo. The intention is to use the greater capacity to hold more frequent events at the store, the first of which will be Slowbeer & Food Pairing, Italian Style during Good Beer Week. It will focus on the Bizarre range of beers from Birra del Borgo, one of the most adventurous Italian craft breweries whose beers are just starting to arrive in Australia now, alongside Italian cheese, charcuterie and antipasti.
The new store is at 468 Bridge Road, Richmond, and opens on April 24. It will be open seven days a week, from midday to 9pm. There is a corkage charge to drink in store, ranging from $2 per bottle to $4 depending on size.
Happy Valley
The Valley Cellar Door beer garden in action
Slowbeer isn’t the only bottleshop in Melbourne offering the option to eat and drink in, with Chapel St Cellars, Mordy Cellar Door and Valley Cellar Door in Moonee Ponds among those where you can do both. Chapel St Cellars now has seven taps pouring while Valley has just expanded its draught offering, moving from one tap to four, expanding its beer garden and operating more as a bar than bottleshop.
If you head to Valley Cellar Door this Saturday, you can catch ‘Beer Song’ writers ElbowSkin performing an hour’s set of musical comedy in the beer garden from 4pm. Tickets cost $25pp.
Alternatively if Japan is your thing, Chapel St Cellars will be showcasing beer and sake for its Good Beer Week event on May 19. Tickets cost $35pp.
As of today, the good folks behind the good ship Good Beer Week will be giving punters the chance to win tickets to one of the 100 events coming to Melbourne and Victoria in just over three weeks time. Each day’s competition and the previous day’s winner(s) will be announced at 2pm, giving you just 24 hours to get involved.
The first giveaway comes courtesy of us here at The Crafty Pint, with two pairs of tickets for the launch of The People’s Pint on May 14 up for grabs. Given the beer itself – the Double Hoptendre – is due to be brewed at Temple Brewery & Brasserie today, it only seemed appropriate. As for what the Double Hoptendre is, you’ll have to wait until Monday…
The Good Beer Week giveaways are being run through the festival’s Twitter and Facebook accounts, with each day’s question and the list of winners also appearing here. There you’ll also find the rules, which can be summarised as:
“Share” the question on Facebook or retweet it on Twitter
Hunt down the answer to the question and email it to competitions@goodbeerweek.com with your contact details
Cross your fingers and hope you get notified 24 hours later.
If you like the sound of winning stuff and you missed the story on here yesterday, then there’s also a whopping $1,000 up for grabs for the winning piece of art in True South’s Art vs Beer Good Beer Week competition. Read all about it here.
Anyway, good luck. And if you win today’s comp, we look forward to seeing you on May 14!
History is littered with tales of artists who have found inspiration in alcohol. The likes of Van Gogh and Picasso were fond of a little absinthe, Hemingway had something of a love affair with rum, while Dylan Thomas' tipple of preference was beer and more recently, Elbow’s fondness for the amber nectar saw them have beer brewed that bears their name. Even once the beer has been drained, there’s no stopping some people taking beer can art or experimentation with beer bottles to rather impressive lengths. And now, as their Good Beer Week offering, Black Rock’s True South is looking for the beer in art, or is it the art in beer? They’re inviting creative types – or those who simply want to give it a go – to come up with beer-themed artwork to feature at a Good Beer Week exhibition and are offering an incredible $1,000 cash prize for the piece of art judged the finest.
“We wanted to do something different,” says Tanya Harrowell, from True South. “Sam [their brewer] creates different and innovate beer all the time, and it was important for us to do something that tied into our location. We’re also aware that there is a lot of talent in the beer community and I want other people to know that and we also want to attract people that would ordinarily have nothing to do with beer.
“Craft beer is growing, and it’s growing for a reason, because it appeals to a much broader audience then the mainstream brands can and do. Brewers all over Australia and the world are constantly reinventing themselves, trying to be the most creative, doing stuff that nobody else has thought about before. We can’t all be brewers, but we all have opinions.
Submissions are open until May 1, with the exhibition opening at the brewery on the first night of Good Beer Week, May 12. The artwork will be judged by a select team of beery experts, with the awards handed out on the last night of the festival, May 19. To find out more about the rules – or submit your entry – head here.
As well as the Critic’s Choice prize of $1,000 in cash, there is a People’s Choice prize chosen by visitors to the exhibition during the week of two five litre mini-kegs and a degustation dinner for two at the brewery. The artworks will also be put up for sale by the brewery on behalf of their creators.
“We’re looking for people’s thoughts, their ideas, but mostly their artwork,” says Tanya. “And I don’t just mean the stuff you hang on the wall. I would love to see drawings, sculpture, film and tinny art. We’d love it if people submitted work that we haven’t even thought of.
“We want to put on an art exhibition that showcases the unique and challenging qualities that craft beer offers but also to bring a positive, unique and interesting presentation of what beer means to the masses.”
More details of the exhibition and opening and closing nights can be found here.
It’s not the only competition going on in the lead up to Good Beer Week. Currently, Melbourne’s top mixologists are taking on a challenge set down by the organisers of the Lageritas, Hopsmopolitans and Amberetto event at Black Pearl. They’ve been tasked with inventing a beer cockail, with the top four as judged by a panel of experts to be featured at said event, which will be a beer cocktail masterclass led by serial award-winning barman Chris Hysted. The Crafty Pint once set Chris the challenge of making a cocktail featuring beer and whisky called Ground for Divorce, inspired by the opening lines of the song that bears its name by the aforementioned Elbow. It went on to win best whisky cocktail in Australia, so this guy knows what he’s doing.
Anyway, beer, art and cocktails. Quite a mix. And that’s just two of 100 events taking place during Good Beer Week…
Pic above from the wall of the Junction Beer Hall, in Newport.
Australian beer and space themes aren’t so unfamiliar to each other – we do, after all, already have Moon Dogs, Retro Rockets and supply the world with Galaxy hops. But an actual beer in space? It would seem to be the stuff of science fiction rather than something grounded in the laws of earthly physics. If you really were trying to brew a genuine space beer surely you’d need the help of, well, some sort of rocket scientist. In a quirk of fate, that’s exactly what Manly brewers 4 Pines chanced upon.
Dr Jason Held is a space engineer from Colorado and is the Director of Sabre Astronautics. He’s also a keen craft beer drinker, former home brewer and happens to reside in Manly.
As he told us: “I walked into 4 Pines, went up to the manager and said ‘I’m going to ask you a question I’ve never asked another man: Would you like your beer to be in space?’”
Needless to say, being presented with such a unique concept made it difficult to refuse. That first meeting was back in 2010 and, ever since, Sabre and 4 Pines have been working together to make the dream a reality.
As Jaron Mitchell, General Manager of 4 Pines, says: “Beer has followed humans around for the past few thousand years, so if humans are going to head into space more often I guess it’s only natural that beer will follow. We’re really excited to be part of a project like this that’s never been done before.”
The concept came about because of the way that the space travel market is changing. On the back of companies like Virgin Galactic that will offer flights and Bigelow Aerospace who have designed inflatable hotels, you’ll no longer have to be one of NASA’s ‘best of the best’ to reach space – all you’ll need is a very large wad of cash and a bit of patience; tens of thousands of people have already signed up. Quite reasonably then, it’s assumed that if people are going all the way to space for a bit of a holiday, they’d probably want to enjoy a beer while sitting and taking in the view of the earth.
“And not just any beer”, says Jason, “but a full-flavoured beer that tastes just like a craft beer you’d drink on earth."
While the concept of a space beer may seem as straightforward as packing one in your carry-on luggage, there are plenty of problems us normal earth folk would never consider.
“On earth, your body is designed to deal with things like gravity,” says Jason. “The blood flow is pulled towards your feet, whereas in space it flows freely. You get more of it to your head, which swells a bit and you can actually appear younger – it’s like a form of rejuvenation”.
Head in the clouds, feet on the ground.
While that’s clearly a cosmetic benefit, there are downsides on the palate.
“Because of the swelling, it can feel like having a mild form of a cold. Your tongue can expand and dull your sense of taste, particularly if you’ve been up there for a long time. That’s why so many astronauts return to earth and become so fond of strong-flavoured things like Tabasco and Kimchi, the Korean dish.”
The gases pose another problem. On earth, if you drink something fizzy and feel the need to burp, you easily expel the air but the liquid remains. The lack of gravity in space means that if you burp, there’s the possibility of what Jason referred to as ‘wet burps’ which, in a slightly disturbing train of thought, means you could be surrounded by floating liquid droplets from your own digestive tract. With all the science behind it, it’s slightly ironic that the crudest indicator of whether the beer passes the space test is whether or not you end up burping after drinking it. Nevertheless, when considering brewing a beer for a zero-gravity environment, these are the types of things that must be taken into account.
In order to select the right beer for the job, the team did initial trials with the full range of 4 Pines beers before settling on Stout as the most appropriate style due to its relatively low level of carbonation and full flavour. The next stage of testing was certainly far more rigorous than your usual tasting session. Three versions of the beer were taken to the Queensland University of Technology and loaded into a drop-tower, which is essentially a tall shaft where the beer is dropped and experiences near-zero gravity. According to Jason, the video recording of these tests allowed them to monitor the “physical chemical properties of the beer and how it changes based on different levels of gravity”.
Based on those results, the successful batch was taken on what the clip below suggests could be the most fun beer tasting in history. The beer was taken up on a zero-gravity commercial flight, colloquially known as the ‘Vomit Comet’, and knocked back while monitoring basic biometrics and the all-important burp test.
And after all that rigmarole we’re left with our Space Beer, based on the original 4 Pines Stout. That neatly explains why if you now buy the Stout in bottles you may notice the small logo on the label which reads ‘Vostok: Certified Space Beer’.
‘Vostok’ is a reference to the name of the spacecraft that Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin piloted in 1961 to become the first man to orbit the earth. To mark the occasion, on April 12 of each year, people in countries all around the globe gather to celebrate ‘Yuri’s Night’ and for the past couple of years 4 Pines has held one of the official events. The Manly party is a time when local space engineers, astrophysicists, academics and anyone else that’s partial to dressing up in a space costume come together to drink craft beer. Meanwhile, the Stout theme happily provided another chance to revisit the 4 Pines Keller Door series of Stouts, which were originally released for St Patrick’s Day.
While much progress has been made, the Space Beer development programme continues to refine the product, with advancements now being made on a bottle design to combat the difficulty of consuming liquid without the assistance of gravity. Based on the principle of surface tension, where liquid sticks to the side of a vessel, initial progress has been made on a bottle where the beer starts at the bottom and wicks its way up to the top. This stuff really could be mistaken for science fiction, but for Jason it’s just “good research, fun research – the first in the world. And the more you drink the better our research gets!”
For Jaron, “it’s been a wicked journey to date but it’s only going to keep on going. I guess it’s really that terrible old cliché, watch this space…”
Thanks again to Nick O for this article. Check out more of his beery musings at his blog, Water & Hops & Malt & Yeast.
Take two champions of the brewing world visiting Australia for the first time, give them free rein over a brewery for a day, then bring in chefs from some of Melbourne’s leading restaurants and what do you have? The Good Beer Week Masterclass of Champions. After months of discussions, negotiations and excited chatter, all the details are now in place for what promises to be one of the 2012 festival’s truly unique events. Kjetil Jikiun, from Norway’s Nøgne Ø – named Champion Exhibitor at the 2010 Australian International Beer Awards, and the founder and head brewer from Californian brewery Moylan’s – last year’s AIBA Champion Exhibitor, are joining forces at Hargreaves Hill’s brewery in the Yarra Valley for a brew day, masterclass and brewery floor degustation rolled into one.
Kjetil, Brendan Moylan and his brewer Denise Jones have been in discussion with Hargreaves Hill owner Simon Walkenhorst and the Good Beer Week Team over the beer they will brew on the day and those that they will showcase during the degustation. Meanwhile, in the past few days the Good Beer Week Team has confirmed that The 36 Collective, a group of “dining chameleons”, has pulled together a dream team of chefs and waiting staff from the Stokehouse and Auction Rooms to create a one-off menu – with a little “service theatre” thrown in along the way.
The result is an experience for guests that will start with a bus trip from Melbourne CBD to the brewery followed by an intimate masterclass with Kjetil, Brendan, Denise and Simon while this unique collaborative beer is brewed. It will include brewhouse tours, sensory evaluations of the unfermented beer at different stages of the process and the chance to delve into the minds of the award-winning brewers. Then guests will sit down to a three-course degustation with an Eastern European theme (a theme that goes beyond the food), each course matched to a beer from each of the the three breweries.
“Whether you’re a beer lover, foodie or home brewer, this has to be the ultimate experience,” says Good Beer Week co-founder James Smith. “Bringing together the last two AIBA champions to create a beer especially for the festival is incredibly exciting. That we’re able to combine it with an intimate masterclass and a brewery floor degustation created by some of the brightest young talents in Melbourne is simply amazing.
Kjetil Jikiun
“I worked with The 36 Collective for The Gypsy & The Goat event during Melbourne Food & Wine Festival (see photo at top) where they created a menu that caused one guest to dream of her soup later that night so I’m really looking forward to seeing what they come up with this time.”
Josh Elias, from The 36 Collective, says they are taking traditional Eastern European food as a starting point – pickles, pastrami, lox, kreplach, perogies and so on.
“We’re looking at the old tradition of warmth and comfort from food but giving it a modern twist,” he says. “We want to provide food with lots of soul that’s given a twist that will promote the beers as best as possible and will give people a new kind of experience.”
He says the group’s aim is “to open the windows and doors to fine dining through new environments”, hence creating events in breweries.
“We’re taking fine dining out of fine dining restaurants and putting it into breweries, laneways and all kinds of different environments and spaces,” he says. “We like to align ourselves with brewers or winemakers or people who produce products that make people challenge the way they look at something.”
As for the Good Beer Week brew, it seems the brewers are keen to see how far they can take the Hargreaves Hill brewhouse. There has been talk of using exotic sugars and new or experimental Australian hop varieties, with Kjetil declaring, “I really love experiencing new flavours and aromas! This will be certainly be a lot of fun. Hopefully we can combine lots from many worlds!”
Brendan Moylan
The beer won’t be available until after Good Beer Week, but the two visiting brewers have nominated the three beers each would like to showcase with the lunch and Simon has offered to serve one brand new beer as well as one served straight from the tank.
“Getting to know the international brewers is really good fun,” says Simon from Hargreaves. “It’s a good opportunity for people to learn about brewing and it’ll be really interesting to see how the brew comes together.”
Tickets for the Masterclass of Champions cost $250pp and can be booked here. It takes place on May 15. Guests can either meet at Fed Square at 9am to catch the bus to the brewery or head straight to the brewery in Lilydale.
As part of the tiny team of volunteers buzzing around in a self-made maelstrom ensuring everything’s in place for Good Beer Week, it feels like the festival is all-consuming. So it’s reassuring to find out we’re not alone. Walking into one of the participating venues, the owner approached clutching a copy of the program in his fist.
“It’s much bigger this time,” he said. “It’s everywhere!”
With blackboards, A-frames and posters bearing the festival logo appearing at venues across the state, media coverage online and in print cropping up with increasing regularity, a serious Good Beer Week buzz in the social media world, and posters and ads beginning to appear on walls, trains, in magazines and elsewhere, it should be starting to feel that way.
With just a month to go, the first events have started selling out. If you were hoping to attend the Brooklyn Brewery Dinner at Beer DeLuxe – bad luck, as all 80 tickets have gone, while Bright’s Brewer for a Day in the High Country is full and the Cantillon evening at the Belgian Beer Cafe Eureka is down to the very final few. The Good Beer Week Team will let you know as and when others get close to try and make sure no one misses out on their dream ticket. That said, if you do, the chances are there will be something else to ease the pain – at the very least one of the many free showcases around the city all week.
We can also confirm that, after a few months of back and forth, the US Brewers Association confirmed it is coming to Melbourne for the week. It’s bringing its Export Development Program – in other words, heaps of good beers from American breweries you’ve probably never seen before – to showcase at the AIBA World of Beer event. Here’s hoping Melbourne puts on a great show and they tell their members to send more over in the future.
With Steve Grossman from Sierra Nevada returning and Brendan Moylan confirming he’s bringing along his head brewer, Denise Jones – the woman behind the beers that saw the Californian brewery named Champion Exhibitor at the Australian International Beer Awards last year, there’s a good showing from the States. Who knows what Brendan, Denise and Kjetil from Nøgne Ø will come up with for their beer at the Masterclass of Champions; having been party to their ongoing discussions, it appears the sky’s the limit, with questions being asked of how far the Hargreaves Hill brewhouse can be pushed, just what exotic sugars are available, whether they can get their hands on new hop varieties and so on. With The 36 Collective – the team that presented the food in fine style at our Gypsy & The Goat event – confirmed as providing the degustation lunch we can’t wait. We’re in the process of finalising a few details with the participants ready to release the full lowdown early next week, but we’re confident the woman who bought a ticket for her husband “to give him the best 60th birthday present possible” will be welcoming home a happy man at the end of the day!
On the subject of new beers, brewers across Australia and New Zealand have been busy with their Great Australasian Beer Spectapular brews (see the Little Rabbit – Little Creatures / White Rabbit dream team in action above). The organisers of the event at the Royal Exhibition Building are after more than beers, however. They need volunteers. If you’re keen on helping out, head here to find out more.
Australia’s first beer of the people – The People’s Pint – is also taking shape. The beer that won the most votes in our nationwide competition was the Double Hoptendre concocted by Leo Hede from Brisbane which, following a chat with head brewer Ron Feruglio at Temple Brewery & Brasserie, is taking shape as a double hopped, spicy affair with a reddish hue apparently. Bintani has supplied the ingredients free of charge, with Grain & Grape contributing some yeast, ready for the brew to take place any day now. We’ll be there when it happens – to be there when it’s launched, head here.
So, the clock is well and truly ticking. Thanks to all the events who’ve been pushing the festival hard and to those who are keeping the Good Beer Week Team abreast of developments with their events. If you’re keen to keep in touch with the latest, check out the festival on Facebook and Twitter or sign up for the newsletter on the website. There will be competitions and giveaways via all three starting next week.
The brewery that kickstarted the craft beer scene in Australia nearly 30 years ago opened the doors to its latest incarnation this week. Matilda Bay moved its brewery from the Garage in Dandenong to a new site in Port Melbourne earlier this year and has now welcomed drinkers into its Brewery Bar. Open seven days a week, the concrete, brick and wooden bench affair overlooking the brewery promises both the full range of Matilda Bay beers as well as beer friendly nibbles – warm marinated olives, dips, cheeses.
“We’re now settled in at Port Melbourne,“ says head brewer Scott Vincent. "The whole team has been putting in long hours, not leaving any stone unturned to make sure the bar is a beauty for all our friend. We’ve tested all the taps, tasted the entire menu, and sat in every stool. It’s been thirsty work.
“The best bit is the three taps that run from the tanks, straight into schooner glasses. The liquid pouring from them will be unfiltered, unpasteurised brews, something a bit special. Nothing tastes better than beer straight from a tank.”
Matilda Bay was founded back in the early 1980s in WA by the group of friends that turned Fremantle’s Freemasons Hotel into the Sail & Anchor and began pouring the country’s first craft beers. After enjoying great success with their beers and a number of venues across the country, the brewery was bought by CUB, becoming the company’s craft beer arm. It moved its operation to Victoria in 2005, spending more than six years at the Garage before this latest move.
The new venue has room for just 30 for now, although we understand there are plans for a much larger capacity in the future. It sits inside an old Cadbury factory on Bertie Street, just a few minutes from the Melbourne CBD. There will also free brewery tours daily. If you’d like to take one, call or email ahead – (03) 9673 4545 or beer@matildabay.com – to book in.
Opening hours:
Monday to Friday: 8.30am to 7pm
Saturday to Sunday: 10.30am to 7pm
The Australian International Beer Awards continues to grow apace. After setting a record for the number of beers entered for judging in 2011, the second largest awards of its kind in the world has attracted more than 150 additional entries this year. Judging o the 1,352 beers from 39 countries began this week and will continue throughout April, with the winners to be announced at a Gala Dinner on May 17, during Good Beer Week.
Among the judges are international guests, Anders Kissmeyer, the Danish brewer who recently left Norrebro to establish his own brand, Kissmeyer, and Masayoshi Kaji and Shoji Kobotake of Japan. They will be tasting 692 international brews and 660 from across Australia. The former include entries from Cambodia, Fiji, Lithuania, Puerto Rico and South Korea.
Ann Houlihan, manager, Epicure Events at the Royal Agricultural Society of Victoria (RASV) said: “We have again received an outstanding number of entries for the 2012 AIBA from exhibitors across the world, recording an increase in not only the number of entries but exhibitors also.
“Now in its 20 year, the increase in entries is testament to the AIBA’s global reputation as one of the most highly regarded and respected awards of its industry."
To mark its 20th anniversary, the AIBA will this year host the first World of Beer event where beer lovers will be taken on a unique tour of the globe with the opportunity to taste the best local and international brews entered in the 2012 AIBA. We also understand here at The Crafty Pint that the showcase will feature the US Brewers Association’s Export Program, coming to Australia for the first time to present beers from American craft brewers never before seen on these shores. We have also been working the Brewers Association to set up an industry reception, details of which will be released in the run up to Good Beer Week.
AIBA’s World of Beer – Tastings From Around The Globe – will be held on May 18 from 4pm to 8pm at The Atrium, Federation Square. Tickets are available online here.
The awards organisers are also marking their 20th anniversary with the commissioning of a special beer, as mentioned in earlier Crafty Pint newsletters. The Collaborator is an Australian Brown Ale brewed last week by Andrew Ong and Brendan Varis of 2 Brothers and Feral respectively, both trophy winners in recent AIBAs.
The Perfect Match
Another first for the AIBAs in 2012 is their move to create a menu for the gala dinner with beer and food designed to work in harmony. The organisers invited Chris Badenoch, from Josie Bones, to write the menu, which was launched at an event at his restaurant this week.
The three course tasting was presented as a canapé menu, comprising dishes including ocean trout and spanner crab for entrée, pork belly for main, and baby pannacotta for dessert. It was served with tasting-sized samples of trophy winning beers from 2011.
Chris says: “We’re passionate about using beer as an ingredient as well as an accompaniment to great food and the dishes we’ve created for the AIBA highlight the quality and diversity of entries.”
