Play the full episode
Everything Indie, All The Time.
“It’s when you pretend to be, you know, one thing, or have principles about why you’re not doing something in a certain way, and you’re not going to sell out: your independence is important, this is why it’s important, and you bring people along with you.
“And then you get offered enough money, a tap on the shoulder, and all of a sudden your principles go out the window, and it’s like, ‘Actually, no. Don’t worry about that. We can be bought.’
“That’s what I take issue with, and every time it happens it does devalue the industry.”
Terms like “legend”, “iconic” and “trailblazer” get bandied around a lot, probably rather more than they should. Yet I doubt there would be anyone in the Australian beer industry who would quibble if we applied any – or all – of them to Jade Flavell and The Wheaty, the Thebarton pub she’s been running for more than two decades.
We sat down with Jade to reflect on her time in hospitality, her passion for good beer (and whisky), “thinking drinking”, and celebrating independence. That we joined her in the band room at the rear of the pub was highly appropriate too as the discussion of independence covered more than beer and hospo and took in the huge challenges threatening the future of independent music venues in the face of their own version of the multinational brewing and booze retail behemoths.
The conversation stretches back to Jade’s early days in Adelaide pubs, alongside the two mates with whom she’d take over Wheatsheaf Hotel – Trotty and Liz, and examines how drinking culture has come a fair way in the decades since yet still has distance left to run.
Jade takes us through the transition from rundown, rotting pub to groundbreaking beer venue then award-winning brewpub, and to becoming The Wheaty’s “benevolent dictator” following Trotty’s passing and Liz’s decision to leave the business. She tells us about her intention, as guardian of the pub, to find a way to ensure it remains a home for great drinks and live music when the time comes to pass the baton.
Prior to the chat with Jade, and rather contrary to those discussions of independence, we kick off the show talking about the recent departure of Scotty Hargrave, the head brewer and founding member of Balter, five years after the sale to CUB, as well as the new brewery for students at Bendigo TAFE.
This week also sees us announce the first winners in our “Have You Done A Rallings?” campaign to highlight good beer citizens across Australia, and launch another campaign celebrating the country’s brewers. Brewery of the Month is presented by Bluestone Yeast, and you can find out more – and nominate your favourite breweries – here.
Start of segments:
- 8:58 – Jade Flavell Part 1
- 35:29 – Have You Done A Rallings?
- 40:21 – Jade Flavell Part 2
You can watch or listen to the episode here or on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube and other podcast platforms. Please like and subscribe – and if you are enjoying the show, feel free to rate and review it too.
To find out more about supporting the show or otherwise partnering with The Crafty Pint, contact craig@craftypint.com.
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.
