In next to no time, the Young Henrys crew has established itself as one of Australia’s most creative and exciting young breweries as well as ingratiating themselves with seemingly every drinker, venues, band and artist in and around their Newtown home. And now they’ve got a chance to go and woo the Brits. Rather appropriately for a brewery that includes a beer called Real Ale in its core range, they’ve been invited to travel to the UK to create a beer for the forthcoming J D Wetherspoons pub chain’s annual, nationwide Real Ale & Cider Festival.
Each year, the organisers invite a select band of international brewers to hook up with one of the UK’s biggest real ale producers. In the past, Brendan Varis from Feral has made the trip twice, while this time around Young Henrys co-founder and head brewer Richard Adamson (above) will be making his third trip, and will be joined in the UK by Kiwis the Yeastie Boys.
Richard will be hooking up with Banks Brewery in Wolverhampton to make a casque conditioned version of his Real Ale that will be sold in more than 900 of the pub chain’s venues across the UK.
He says: “I’m really looking forward to getting back in the Banks brewery with Simon [Yates] and making our Real Ale. It’s an honour to represent Australia with a beer that’s inspired by those classic English bitters and showcase our unique locally grown hops.
“It’s fantastic that the beer will because conditioned and served on traditional hand pump across the United Kingdom.”
The bay itself is based on a traditional English style but uses three Australian hop varieties – Galaxy, Ella (ormally Stella), and Topaz.
As for the Yeastie Boys, they will be brewing their offbeat Gunnamatta Earl Grey India Pale Ale at the Adnams Brewery in Southwold, Suffolk.
"Gunnamatta is our biggest selling beer but we’re brewing more of it in a single day there than we brew in an entire year here in New Zealand!" says Yeastie Boys’ brewer and creative director Stu McKinlay. "It’s a scale of brewing beyond anything we’d dream of and, with more than a million people visiting those pubs during that fortnight, it is undoubtedly the widest exposure we’ve ever received on that side of the world!"
Gunnamatta has developed a cult following in the Pacific Rim since its award winning release at 2012’s Great Australasian Beer SpecTAPular, where it was named Champion Beer. Despite the attention and awards that the beer has received, McKinlay was still shocked upon receiving the email from the organisers.
"I honestly thought the invite was a practical joke from one of my friends – to be flown to England, the home of both beer and tea, to brew our beer at one of my favourite breweries felt like the cliché of selling coal to Newcastle,“ he says. "People call us rockstar brewers and this really does feel like we’ve been invited to Glastonbury!"
As well as enjoying their busman’s holiday, the Yeastie Boys intend to use the trip to explore distribution possibilities into Europe.
"We’ve been approached by several distributors in Europe over the last two years but have held off exporting there as we concentrate on the New Zealand, Australia and existing Pacific Rim markets," says their directive creator Sam Possenniskie. “We’re very conscious of growing in a way that suits what we want from this business.
“Demand for our beer locally has been difficult enough to keep on top of but this trip coincides perfectly with a significant increase in production capability coming online in the first quarter of 2014.”
Yeastie Boys also intend to look into the possibilities of contract brewing their regular beers (which also includes Pot Kettle Black and Digital IPA) in the United Kingdom or Belgium, for distribution across Europe, while on this trip.
The festival takes place from March 26 to April 10, which is handy as The Crafty Pint’s founder will be in the UK then too. Nice.
