Islands of Gold

March 5, 2012, by Crafty Pint

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Islands of Gold

It was a mix of old and new at the recent Sydney Royal Fine Food Show’s beer competition. The old: Matilda Bay picked up its usual trophy for the Alpha Pale Ale (but will it mean they start pushing their best beer more widely?) and picked up another for the Redback Original. The new: Illawarra Brewing Company picked up a couple of golds of their own – two of only five awarded in what is generally regarded as the toughest judging of any beer comp in Australia.

You could be forgiven for asking: “Who?‘, given it’s not a name that’s bandied about a great deal, but the brewery formerly known as 5 Islands is on a mission to establish a reputation for its own beers, having previously focused more on brewing beers under contract for others.

“After changing the name last year we really ramped up our efforts to push the beer to other bars in Sydney and locally in Wollongong,” says brewer Shaun Blisset (right above). “This was driven by the new owner / operations manager Dave and by us basically wanting to develop our beer and brew more of it than the contract stuff. Anyone trying to sell craft beer in NSW knows it’s a tough gig getting tap space, but we have persisted and become available regularly at some good venues in Sydney and Wollongong. As a result of our wish to expand and make more beer, we soon realised that a move from our old site to a bigger location was needed if we were to become more efficient and productive.”

The Illawarra beers that collected golds were the Nelson Pale and Koelsch, two of 15 beers produced at the brewery either under their own label or for others.

“We’re extremely happy with the results,” says Shaun. “It’s definitely a confidence boost and means that we are doing something right. We brew a lot of beer at Illawarra Brewing Company, more than ever before. We brew six beers plus a seasonal that we always have on tap at the brewery bar in Wollongong but contract brewing still takes up a lot of our time while we build the Illawarra brand. In all, we brew 15 different beers giving us a fair repertoire of styles that we regularly make so we get to work with a wide variety of malts, hops and yeasts. This helps Ashur [Hall] and I develop our brewing skills and methods while we learn more about beer styles and other people’s ideas that we may not have otherwise had access to.

“Another great thing about these awards is to see progression of our beers. We were left in July 2010 with the keys to a growing microbrewery with a pretty impressive legacy of beers designed by AG [now head brewer at Mornington Peninsula Brewery] who turned the former Five Islands Brewery around, but we needed to make them our own. We have made changes to all the recipes we were left with, some more than others, mostly to suit personal taste and have had good results and feedback.

“The two beers that we received the gold medals for were in the same category and they couldn’t have been more different from each other. The Koelsch is one of our regular beers and the Nelson Pale was a seasonal that we had brewed for the first time. We have developed the Koelsch over the past 15 months to a point that we are very pleased with and since the results we have been given the green light on brewing the pale on a regular basis.”

 

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Matilda Bay head brewer Scott Vincent

 

While Illawarra’s gold medallists are relatively wet behind the ears, it was a pair of old hands that did the business for Matilda Bay. The brewery recently moved to a new facility in Port Melbourne from the Garage brewery in Dandenong, its latest move since uprooting from its original home in WA after being taken over by CUB. The Redback Original, a wheat beer that took out the best draught trophy, was the first beer ever produced by the brewery almost 25 years ago.

“Redback was the first beer that we brewed and to see it still taking out champion titles all these years later in a craft beer industry that is going from strength to strength is immensely satisfying as a brewer,” says head brewer Scott Vincent. "As for Alpha, it is definitively the beer lover's beer. I am incredibly proud to brew a beer like Alpha Pale Ale. It's beers like Alpha that are the reason we love brewing beer so much in the first place."

The fifth gold medal awarded went to Sydney’s Redoak Brewery for its Honey Ale. You can view the full set of results here. As for the brewing team at Illawarra, they’ve got big plans for the coming months.

“We’re always excited about designing and brewing new beer and have about half a dozen styles we will do as our seasonal beers this year with an amber heff, Belgian dubbel and saison first on the list with others still to come,” says Shaun. “We are now operating in our new purpose built brewery with a bar/cellar door being built that will serve tours and open weekday afternoons and weekends for sales by the glass and growler filling. We have been discussing the idea of an Illawarra beer festival weekend at some stage this year that we will host at the new location and invite other breweries to join in, as well as an Octoberfest style event.”

Illawarra Brewing Company is based at 4/83-85 Montague Street, North Wollongong. Their website is currently under construction, but you can follow them on Twitter.

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