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Moving East & Brewing Green with Hamish Coates - Rocky Ridge
Rocky Ridge gave the beer lovers of Melbourne a boost midway through 2024 with the news they had acquired Thunder Road Brewery in Brunswick in order to establish an East Coast outpost. On September 13, they'll throw open the doors of the new-look venue to the public, with brewing of their beers for the eastern states already underway.
While availability of their beers outside WA has been relatively limited up until now, in their home state of Western Australia the brewery took little time forging a fine reputation after launching in 2017; today, they're well-established as one of WA's finest.
They've picked up a stack of trophies over the years, have a tight core range, produce a phenomenal amount of limited releases, and are in no way afraid to experiment – nothing, it seems, is off limits.
All of that would make for a great podcast chat, but there's much more to their story than that: from day one, their approach to brewing, business, community and the planet has been as important as the liquids they produce. Indeed, before demand started to seriously outstrip their forecasts (which happened very quickly) they were growing many of the ingredients that went into their beers themselves and hoped to increase that over time.
Born on co-founder Hamish Coates' family farm in Jindong, not far from Busselton in the South West, the brewery he launched with partner Mel Holland operates off grid, is always exploring ways in which to brew more sustainably, has been involved in multi-partner projects to develop new products, and is a shining example of how breweries can lead the way. Even the decision to buy Thunder Road was driven by a desire to stop sending beer across the Nullarbor and instead produce beer for customers in the east in the east.
We sat down with Hamish in the bluestone cottage attached to the Brunswick brewery the day before they signed the deal for a conversation covering all of the above and more. The chat was recorded before we'd set up our podcast studio so is audio-only.
If you're reading this in time, there's still a few spots left for members of The Crafty Pint's beer club, The Crafty Cabal, to attend pre-opening drinks, meet the team, and enjoy a tour of their new home before it opens to the public. Details here.
You can find the episode on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and YouTube. And, with a few episodes under our belt, we've also created a dedicated section for The Crafty Pint Podcast on the site, as well as on the homepage.
We're keen to work with partners looking to reach new audiences and achieve their objectives in fun and creative ways. So, if you'd like to be part of the action, get in touch.
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.
