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From Teaching History To Brewing It
In the early years of The Crafty Pint, I was lucky enough to spend time with and absorb knowledge from some of the titans of modern craft beer: the founders and key figures at places such as Feral, Mountain Goat, Stone & Wood, The Wheaty.
Among the people willing to give this recent arrival from the UK and his idea for a beer website a go was Shawn Sherlock. At the time, he was head brewer at Murray's Brewing, creating some of the best and most innovative beers found anywhere in Australia in Bobs Farm, about a 45 minute drive from Newcastle.
Alongside Ian Watson – who we most recently featured as he launched La Petit Rocher with partner Rocky Reed – he was releasing double IPAs at a time when hardly anyone in Australia had heard of any sort of IPA, as well as big, beautiful stouts, all manner of Belgian style beers – even barrel-aged American barleywines featuring Brettanomyces presented in 750ml bottles with corks and cages, specially imported by brewery founder Murray Howe.
A decade ago, he moved on from Murray's to launch FogHorn, the first brewery of the modern era in Newcastle, where it has since been joined by many more, as evidenced by the launch this week of the Brewcastle brewery trail.
Prior to starting out as a brewer at Murray's original home in the Pub With No Beer of Slim Dusty fame, in the tiny regional NSW village of Taylors Arms (population: 133), he was a homebrewing lecturer in Australian history in his hometown of Newcastle; indeed, we can probably thank the Howard administration's swingeing cuts to Arts funding for kickstarting one of the finest brewing careers of the current era.
As we were preparing to launch The Crafty Pint Podcast, Shawn was taking full control of FogHorn from Mighty Craft, the "craft beer accelerator" no longer involved in craft beer, which had bought into the business when his original partner was moving on. It meant we were keen to bring him onto the show to chat about his experiences working within different brewery ownership models – which he does.
Over the course of the episode, we also trace his career from its very start through the creation of many beers that were ahead of their time to his position today as a much-respected figure in the local beer community. He offers thoughts on the sort of business models that can succeed, what matters if you want to survive in brewing, and even shares some insight into creating great stouts, something he knows plenty about – he's got a few trophies as proof.
Will and I also reflect on the week's news in the intro, as well as the manner in which the once-ubiquitous Brettanomyces seems to have almost disappeared from brewers' weapons of choice. If you just want to hear from Shawn, however, you can skip straight to the 14 minute mark.
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Cheers!
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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.
