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Take The Good Times & Make Them Better
“Citra is like salt – you kinda need it… but also we have a lot contracted so we need to get through it!”
Banks Brewing hold a place in many Aussie beer drinkers’ hearts, not least as one of the country’s finest brewers of all things hop-forward and hazy. Yet the Seaford brewery launched by Chris and Penny Farmer back in 2016 has – usually without fanfare – pioneered many other styles and techniques over the years.
These days, West Coast pilsners are at the very top of both Chris and Penny’s list of favoured beers; we wrote about them alongside Cali IPAs in late 2024, yet they released their first all the way back in 2018. That beer was inspired by one of many fact-finding missions (holidays?) to the States, and a fondness for studying what’s happening in other beer cultures is often behind their desire to keep pushing forwards.
We sat down with the couple at their brewery, one that’s much-changed from its earliest days. Then, they only ever envisaged having a tiny, winery-esque cellar door before they realised very eager drinkers wanted more, which has led to Banks – formerly Mr Banks – evolving and expanding ever since.
We discuss building a business alongside a young family, the beers that showed them who they were as a brewery, the beauty of collaborations, forging new outlets, constant renewal, and their brush with a Hollywood icon.
Before we get to that, however, we discuss the moment Albo seemed to offer hope for small producers in an election promise only to dash those hopes once the details were revealed. And Will talks about a good news story from the Central Coast, where Six String have this week opened their new venue ready to host live music once more.
We also reveal the first winner of the Bluestone Yeast Brewery of the Month: Cypher Brewing in Canberra.
Start of segments:
- 9:30 – Chris & Penny Part 1
- 32:24 – Bluestone Yeast Brewery of the Month
- 37:58 – Chris & Penny Part 2
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.
