As the classic Sam Cooke track* goes, it's been a long time coming, but Dollar Bill Brewing are hopeful they'll finally have their unique cellar door experience open next spring. The wild ale specialists have entered the two week advertising stage for the "Invermay Beer Farm" they hope will attract beer tourists to Ballarat.
The brewing company launched by Fiona and Ed Nolle has quickly won a dedicated legion of fans, despite typically producing tiny volumes of their farmhouse ales, funky ciders, fruited ales and spontaneously fermented beers. And the couple has been eager to create a home for the brand at their 7.5 acre plot in the regional city.
It's one where they're planting an orchard to grow fruit for their beers and ciders as well as an acre of hops, with the intention being to welcome guests one weekend a month, plus the occasion function day, to spend time with Ed learning about brewing, barrel-ageing, bugs and blending.
"It's a big step because we're finally advertising after having our permits for one-and-a-half years," Fiona says.
The aim is to create a cellar door meets "garden of beer" that takes bookings in advance – $5 per person including first beer and limited to 40 people per day – so they can plan ahead.
"Ed is always going to be there, and if people want to walk through the hops, he'll have time to do it," Fiona says. "It's very much about teaching people; we want to share our knowledge.
"We don't want to be a tavern and we don't want to be a bar."
Instead the aim is for people to sample their diverse range and, while there are no plans for a kitchen, they will offer charcuterie platters. The intention is also to have a guest brewery sharing their taps each month – ideally with someone from each guest brewery travelling to Ballarat for part of the weekend.
While they're only applying to be open for a maximum of 48 days each year, Fiona says it will provide a much-needed additional revenue stream; they launched the Rare Oak Society – a members club featuring exclusive beers and merch – as a means to reduce the impact of the pandemic on their income but she says: "We're bleeding out the eyeballs. We're a family of five that's lost so much through COVID."
As for the hop farm, she says their site is less than ideal for growing the notoriously challenging plant so they're looking at some innovative approaches.
"We're just running the trellises at half height [about 3m] because of the wind and will maybe use some bamboo to hold them up," Fiona says. "We could bring people out from [the brewing courses at] Federation University to learn how to trellis hops and see more than the stainless side of breweries."
The family's aim is to attract fans of their beers from across Australia and help Ballarat bounce back after a year in which hotel bookings in the city have been down by a third.
"The majority of people will make a weekend of it," she says. "We just want to get it open and get a few people through the door so they can see it for the asset it is."
They've launched a petition if any fans of the brewery want to support their plans. You can check it out here. They currently have the first weekend of March targeted for opening to the public.
*Have to admit I'm a sucker for Baby Huey's version.
James Smith launched The Crafty Pint in 2010, two years after moving to Australia from the UK. He was taken to Mountain Goat within weeks of landing in Melbourne, joined their indoor cricket team, and is still navigating the rabbit hole that is craft beer to this day.
The beers that turned you on to good beer:
- Watching pints of McEwan's 80 Shilling settle when visiting family in Edinburgh.
- Pints of flat Bass from the jug at the Cap & Stocking in Kegworth.
- A first Paulaner Hefeweizen when working in Munich in 1998: “This smells of bananas!”
- Castle Rock Harvest Pale – how could a 3.8 percent ABV beer be so good? (It turns out it was an early example of the three Cs – Cascade, Centennial and Columbus – in an English bitter).
- Dogfish Head 90 Minute IPA poured through hops at the Sunset Grill in Cambridge, MA, in the company of a man who turned out to be the Beer Nut (while we were both covering a double murder case at the time).
- Ordering a Mountain Goat Hightail on my first day as an Aussie resident as it was local and I’d never heard of it; “A dark Australian beer; well I never…”
- Murray’s Icon 2IPA at Beer DeLuxe Fed Square, recommended by a guy I’d not long known who's now the main man at Fixation, served by Mik Halse, now head of sales at Hawkers. How could an Australian beer smell as good as that?!?
You've got three beers to turn someone else on to good beer; what are they and why?
- Any really good, fresh and balanced West Coast style IPA. Punchy hop aromatics are the most obvious way to capture someone's attention and these IPAs, done well, present the key components in beer (if you're sticking to just water, malt, hops and yeast) in harmony yet with the volume turned up.
- Saison Dupont. Arguably a selfish choice here as I bloody love the broad saison style and dearly hope it will finally take hold in Australia one day. Given a choice, I'd probably crack one enlivened with Brettanomyces like Molly Rose Matilde for myself but, when it comes to turning on someone new, you've got to go with the classic.
- Rodenbach Caractère Rouge. Because if you don't enjoy or can't appreciate this beer, I'll never win you over. And because Filip, the fruit and wood specialist at Rodenbach that designed it, is a beautiful human.
The last beer you enjoyed:
Fixation IPA at The Incubator.
Three things that represent you:
- The Soft Bulletin by The Flaming Lips
- Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
- Golden Plains
NB All articles written by James in the first eight years of the site appear as By Crafty Pint. Today, that's used for collaborative efforts by the wider team.
