This month’s attendances at the Man Utd and Liverpool pre-season friendlies in Sydney and Melbourne have shown Aussies still have quite an appetite for certain British exports (despite the Ashes, Lions, Tour de France…). No doubt the team at Stone & Wood will be hoping that Brits have an equal appetite for Aussie beer as today they have confirmed a gentleman’s agreement with a London brewer that will see their beers sold across London and Camden Town Brewery’s beers sold in Australia.
Having tested the waters to resounding acclaim with a few pallets of their beer at the time of last year’s Great British Beer Festival, they’ve chosen the occasion of this year’s festival to send their first significant shipment to the UK. It means their Pacific Ale and Stone Beer will feature at the festival, while other beers from their lineup will form a tap takeover too. It makes a lot of sense, with the Pacific Ale closest in style to English summer ales, albeit with that distinct tropical character, as evidenced by its Silver Medal in that category in last year’s World Beer Cup in the US.
“Certainly our beer sits quite nicely in London,” says brewery co-founder Jamie Cook. “There’s a nice little community that’s building there and we want to be a part of it – not necessarily go crazy, but there is a little role for Stone & Wood within that. We’re getting things in place for the future if we want to get serious about it.
“[The Pacific Ale] really does jump out of you in that marketplace. It’s seen as a little exotic in a market where you have got some very malt-driven real ales; there’s not a lot of refreshing beers over there other than lagers.”
It seems a good time to take this step. The British craft beer scene has developed in leaps and bounds since The Crafty Pint’s founder left the country in 2008. Initially hampered by opposition to anything claiming to be quality beer that wasn’t in a cask by sectors of CAMRA (Campaign for Real Ale) then boosted by the likes of the bolshy bigmouths at BrewDog, increasing numbers of small breweries have started brewing top notch real ales, craft beers and lagers unconstrained by history or tradition. They’ve been supported by a tiny but growing number of specialist bottleshops spriuking their wares and, increasingly, many forward-thinking landlords creating great boozers that line their bars with both traditional handpumps and taps pouring craft beers from all over the world. It has seen the old world of real ale collide with the fast-changing craft beer world to often dazzling effect.
The London scene has become vibrant in the past couple of years too, with Camden Town Brewery alongside trailblazers like Kernel and Brodie’s. Founded by expat Aussie Jasper Cuppaidge, and now counting former Little Creatures head brewer Alex Troncoso among its staff, it has steadily spread its distinctive tap fonts across the capital, with the charge led by its award-winning German style Helles Lager.
“It works quite well for us to work with Jasper over there and him over here,” says Jamie. “The key thing is that we have a very similar mindset and approach to the market.
“The move [to send Stone & Wood beers to London] last year was to put a toe in the water. The reaction we got was that we needed to do it again. We had a conversation with Jasper because he wanted to bring beer out here for Good Beer Week and we helped him do that.
“At the moment it’s just London focused. There’s a few little places up north that have expressed an interest in taking some in bottled form. [For now] it’s really just around craft beer places in London; Europe is not on our radar.”
With Jamie one of the driving forces responsible for getting the Craft Beer Industry Association (CBIA) off the ground, and his Stone & Wood colleague Brad Rogers the current Association chairman, we asked how their decision to facilitate the importing of a British beer sat with CBIA’s policy to “Protect, Promote & Grow” the homegrown craft beer industry.
“I think it’s going to happen, isn’t it?” says Jamie. “We already see it now. The market is certainly seeing a lot of imported beers here so there’s a consumer interest in them. It’s a case of taking a measured approach.
“As an industry body, [CBIA] needs to be mindful of what beer is coming in and act accordingly, but individual operators have to operate as individual businesses and do what’s right for them.”
He says the purpose of the association is to bring individual Australian based businesses together to make sure the local craft beer industry grows.
“The people who haven’t joined CBIA have sat very strongly in their own business camp and say, ‘My business model doesn’t fit into the industry model so I shan’t participate.’ It’s not about every business being the same, it’s about driving the sector,” he says.
It’s something Stone & Wood has done since launching less than five years ago and which, if successful, their move into London could also achieve. At the very least, if it starts to repair some of the damage done by Foster’s over the past three decades in the UK it’s a damn good thing.
“Brother Breweries” – The Gentleman’s Agreement in full
Stone & Wood Brewing Co and Camden Town Brewery have entered into a gentlemen’s agreement to support each other’s beers in their respective markets.
The relationship is similar to a twin town or sister city, where there is an alignment of ideals and ethos, and it provides the opportunity to introduce each other’s beers into the respective local market. The locales of Camden Town and Byron Bay share a like-minded alternative culture, and Stone & Wood Brewing and Camden Town Brewery see themselves as “Brother Breweries”.
What this means is that we will be distributing each other’s beers: Stone & Wood will have Camden Town beers on their trucks in Australia and Camden Town will have Stone & Wood on their vans in London.
The brother brewery idea came to fruition after Stone & Wood Brewing Co whet the thirst of the British beer scene with some bottles and kegs last summer and then this year at Jasper Cuppaidge took a handful of Camden Town beers to Australia for Good Beer Week in Melbourne.
Although both brewers are working hard to keep up with demand in their local markets they recognise that in this new brewing era there is a global beer village developing. The brother brewery approach is a step away from the traditional brewer and importer/distributor model and is more in line with the collaborative culture that exists within the independent brewery community.
It’s not about world domination, but we know there are people who are keen to try our beers and we both believe that having the support of a fellow brewer to introduce our beers to them is the best way to go. The agreement allows us to focus on quality without the commercial pressures of volume from a traditional distribution relationship.
We both have a healthy respect for the success that each brewery has achieved in a relatively short period of time in their home markets, and believe that their success is largely due to the focus on the quality of the in August – they’ll be pouring on tap for the first time at Climpson’s Arch, E8 3SB, on Saturday 17 August from 12pm. A mix of both kegs and packaged beer will be distributed across London from mid August. The next shipment of Camden Town Brewery beer is due to arrive in Australia in time for summer.
