With the popularity of their Pacific Ale showing no signs of slowing, it seemed for some time that all the Stone & Wood team had time for was brewing more of the beer and installing more and larger tanks in which to keep it. Yet in between taking delivery of big, shiny stainless steel tanks the Byron Bay brewers have been concocting other plans too, revealed this week in the form of a new beer to join their permanent range and the launch of a side project that will focus on bringing together people from throughout the community to create one-off brews.
First up will be the Jasper Ale, a deep red ale that “reflects the red volcanic soil of our hinterland”. Inspiration, say the brewers, “comes from German Alt, American Amber Ale and an English Brown Ale styles. We love the spicy bitterness that a German hop such as Hersbrucker brings to a beer to balance that rich malt character.”
Over the past couple of years, Stone & Wood has released a Red Relief Ale as a fundraiser and entry for last year’s Great Australian Beer SpecTAPular – which you can see them talking about here – as well as the annual Stone Beer – both enabled the brewery to trial elements found in Jasper.
Then next up is the launch of The Mash Collective: “An opportunity for people from all walks of life to come together to share their seperate obsessions and collectively create a brew from a common ground … their love of beer.”
According to Stone & Wood’s Jamie Cook: “We have experienced it ourselves when we first established Stone & Wood. Then as the team has come together to help build the business we’ve seen a collective form, which is a broader group of people with even wider interests come together and everyday share a common goal … making good beer.
“We all work pretty hard at Stone & Wood, but we also like to make sure we also enjoy the community that has formed around it. So The Mash Collective is a vehicle for the team and that community to work together on a series of projects that help us all celebrate our love of beer.
“We have an open approach to how we run the business and although we have often talked about the idea of doing collaborative brews with other brewers and other brewing companies we always felt that approach was a little too industry focussed and introspective.
“The Mash Collective won’t just be about the people here at Stone & Wood. For each project we are going to reach out and select a group of people from our broader community to work as a group to create a beer. We’ve met some great people over years … there are musicians, writers, surfers, artists, chefs, and all sorts of artisans and people who are specialists in their chosen fields.
“So for each of the beers from The Mash Collective we will have a diverse group of people, each with their own personal obsession, that come together to collaborate on brewing a beer. To share their beliefs, their perspectives and their ideas about beer. From selecting a style to formulating a recipe to designing the label and of course coming together on the brew day to bring it all to life.
“For them, they get to share in the creation of something special to them as a group, and to experience that satisfaction of seeing other people enjoy their creation, and for us, and everyone else, we get to witness that collaborative process and of course we get to taste the fruits of their collective creativity ⦠and really to us, that’s what brewing beer is all about.”
The first beer from The Mash Collective will make it’s debut at the Great Australian Beer Spectapular (GABS) in May at the start of Good Beer Week.
That said, amid the new beers and side projects, there’s still plenty more shiny steel on its way. As part of the brewery upgrade, they have relocated their filling line, moved storage offsite and installed more refrigeration equipment to keep the extra tanks cool. Next up, they’ll be shuffling tanks to make way for two new 100,000 fermenters – the first six on order. And they thought they were heading to Byron Bay for a quieter life!
