Brisbane is a city transformed. In the past couple of years, the growth in popularity of craft beer has been nothing short of phenomenal. Where once your choice of quality beer bars was pretty much limited to Archive Beer Boutique, The Scratch and Bitter Suite, now the CBD and its surrounding suburbs are awash with an ever-growing number of bars and breweries.
The variety is pretty incredible too. In the city itself you will find former old school boozers turned into smart craft beer havens and sharp bars with an array of quality on tap and bottle. Fortitude Valley and West End are thriving hubs, while Newstead has two microbreweries (Green Beacon and Newstead) sandwiching the excellent Tippler’s Tap. Even Caxton Street in the shadow of the Suncorp Stadium – or CaXXXXton Street, as Queensland blogger 250 Beers used to call it – has become an epicentre of craft beer excellence thanks to the likes of Brewski, Cartel, Statler & Waldorf and the wonderfully idiosyncratic Leftie’s (and its marvellous upstairs rabbit hole, The Mermaid Bar).
Little wonder last month’s beer week took the title Brewsvegas. Or that, as of today, the scene has its own beer zine. The Great South Yeast launches tonight at The Scratch, the brainchild and love project of a pair of beer aficionados working at the Queensland Museum: Bethany Watt and Tom K.
“We’re not brewers or bloggers,” says Bethany, who describes herself as an avid fan/supporter/drinker of craft beer. “We just like to encourage [the local beer scene] and publish it in print.
“My friend Tom has a background in journalism so I turned to him one day and said, ‘Do you want to make a magazine about beer?’ So we did. It’s something that I thought should exist.”
The first appearance of Pynt the Barbeerian, by Max Gibson
Independent and self-funded, The Great South Yeast is a colourful melange of writing, photography, brewery profiles, artwork and cartoons – all shot through with a sense of wicked humour and unbridled glee. It’s a “forum for the tipplers, swillers, dabblers, brewers and lovers of this liquid craft, to show their appreciation through the written, drawn, shot or any other printable contribution” according to its introduction.
It captures the spirit that we experienced on our all-too-brief visit to Brewsvegas. The city’s beer scene really does bring together a kaleidoscopic array of people, there are venues with highly distinctive personalities and, while those in the industry most definitely take their beer seriously, one can sense mischief and creativity in equal measure at many of craft beer’s Brisbane homes, meaning that, for the adventurous visitor, you’re never quite sure what lies in wait at your next stop.
“Everyone [in Queensland] has to come to this city,” says Bethany. “You have to join all these country folk in the city so the vibe is totally different vibe to Melbourne or Sydney. There’s something just a bit rougher, which you can either deal with or not. But I like it.”
As for living through the beer scene’s rapid change, Bethany says: “For a long time, if you wanted to have a good beer – even five years ago – it had to be home brew. Now I have close friends at the likes of Green Beacon and Newstead Brewing.
“When Archive first opened, if you met someone there you could be sure that you’d have something in common with them because they were there for the beer. That’s where I met my partner, in fact, because I told him what he should be drinking⦔
It is at one of the other early adopting beer bars that the magazine is launched tonight, where many of the remaining initial run of 250 copies will be handed out. Already, most of the run has been distributed so the intention is to post a PDF online and then, for future editions, to print more. The aim is that it will always be free, so they are working on ways to fund the project to ensure that Bethany and Tom aren’t out of pocket again in the future.
Ben Nicholls' delightful Shower Beers
They are also looking for new contributors – writers, artists, photographers and so on. If you are interested, you can get in touch by email at info@thegreatsouthyeast.com. Or you could head along to the launch from 7pm to 9pm tonight at The Scratch.
“It’s just a space to come and have a party,” says Bethany. “A space that we like. We’ll be giving away copies to people that have been chasing them and we will probably raise some money to pay back some of the printing costs. We just want to meet people that want to be involved.”
It sounds like a wonderful venture, one totally in keeping with the spirit of the city’s beer scene, so we wish Bethany, Tom and their contributors well. If you are heading along and would like to show your thanks in the form of beer, Bethany’s is a Russian Imperial Stout; failing that, anything but a saison or farmhouse ale.
The magazine will appear online at some point here. To find out more, you can contact Bethany and Tom here.
Photograph at top by Hannah Roche.
