Back in 2011, when Good Beer Week first started out, one of the festival’s founders had another spark of inspiration. As a means of bringing attention to the week and also to highlight the community spirit within the beer world, Barney Matthews, then at Beer Deluxe and now at Matilda Bay, suggested bringing together three breweries united by location by distinct in approach to create a collaboration – back when collaborations were rare as hen’s teeth in Australia.
That beer became the Abbey Collabbey – or Abbotsford Collabbotsford, bringing together Mountain Goat, CUB (in the guise of Matilda Bay) and Moon Dog, who had barely finished welding the dairy vat into their brewhouse and bolting the first chandelier to the rafters. Tomorrow night (May 21) sees the fourth iteration of the Abbey Collabbey launched at Mountain Goat in what has become a Good Beer Week tradition and one of the week’s busiest events; last year, on the Wednesday night the brewery was the number one check-in location for Untappd globally. The Royston, across the road, was number four…
This time around, the beer is their biggest yet, a 10.2 percent barley wine that just nudges ahead of an imperial stout brewed in 2012 for size. The first beer was a Belgian style dubbel with waffles; last year they created a Ryeless Red Rye Ale (they forgot the rye malt on the day…)
“It’s huge,” says Goat co-owner Dave Bonighton (above middle with Karl van Buuren of Moon Dog, left, and Neil Whittorn of Matilda Bay, right). “ We brewed it back in February after a series of emails. It’s 10.2 per cent alcohol but also has a big dry hopping regime with mainly Australian hop varieties.”
As with the 2013 release, they will be pouring the beer in draught form at all three breweries over the course of Good Beer Week but some will be bottled as well. We’ve seen what we believe will be the label and that alone will make it worth the purchase. What’s more, for the fourth year running all profits will go to the Collingwood’s Children’s Farm.
“We hope it’s the biggest beer to ever come out of Matilda Bay,” says Dave. “There was a little bit of discussion about making a 10 percent plus beer there. We are very happy that we did.”
As for how they landed on this choice of beer, he says: “We hadn’t done that star before. We have a long list of things that we would like to brew and we felt that this is the right time of year [ for this kind of beer]. There were so many reasons to do it and we couldn’t think of a single reason not to.”
The first Abbey Collabbey was filmed for The Crafty Pint by the Post Project back in 2011, and the same film crew returned to create a short film all about number four. You can view it here:
Better still, you can taste the beer at Mountain Goat tomorrow night, where they also have a number of special beers lined up, including their new collaboration with Brooklyn Brewery, an Australian spiced Saison called Ridgy-Didge.
The brewers would like to thank the sponsors who help them bring the brew together. They include O-I (glassware), Bintani (hops and malt), Post Project (filming), Visy (packaging) and Graphix (labels).
