New breweries mark 2006

Beer from Fresh, The West Australian, December 28

By Vic Crossland

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It’s been another remarkable year as WA consolidated its status as the top beer State. It beat all-comers at the Australian International Beer Awards - Fremantle’s Little Creatures was named Champion Australasian Brewery and Colonial Brewing of Margaret River snared the Champion Small Brewery title. But the main gain for beer lovers in 2006 was the number of new breweries.

Mash Brewing: Since opening in March, the Swan Valley brew-restaurant has become a firm favourite, selling Mash draught beers – ranging from pale ale to Mexican-style lager - not only on the West Swan Road premises but also at several metropolitan bars and pubs. Customers can watch the brewing process behind the bar, knowing what they see is what they’ll get to drink with their meals. Brewer Dan Turley also oversees exclusive contract brewing for retail outlets to serve under their own tap decals. Phone: 9296 5588.

Cowaramup Brewery opened this month in wine country north of Margaret River, realising a dream for partners Jeremy Good and Claire Parker, helped by Ms Parker’s parents. The rural venue joins the area’s thriving craft beer trail which includes the long-established Bootleg and the two-year-old Colonial breweries. Cowaramup’s 200-seat bar-restaurant serves craft-brewed Pale Ale, Bavarian Wheat and Pilsner. Several new 800-litre batches have been brewed already to replace beer stocks selling swiftly on tap. Phone: 9755 5822.

Occy’s: This three-month-old operation enjoys a terrific location for a brewpub and outdoor concert venue – an outbuilding at heritage-listed Newtown House homestead near Busselton. Named after 90s surfing hero Mark Occilupo by self-styled brew “brothers”, Occy’s is a regeneration of Wildwood Brewery, a shed in Steve Downes’ garden where Bill Annear brewed half-mash beers.

The two men, helped by their wives, transformed the new site, erected the brewery, which has a locally-made 600-litre mash tun, and did the restaurant and bar fittings. Oddly, the best-selling beer is named Mexican Lager, yet has no rice or maize, just wheat and barley malt and European and English hops in a citrusy, bright summer quaff. Occy’s Bitter is a pale ale, dry-hopped with Tasmanian hops, with pale malt and a dash of crystal. The on-tap range also includes a stout, a Yorkshire Bitter which –again, oddly – is actually a 4.2 per cent “brown ale” with US hops as well as English Goldings – and an unusual mid-strength Berliner Weiss wheat beer. Phone: 9755 8300

Indian Ocean Brewing: The spacious bar restaurant at Mindarie Keys complements The Boat pub but with an emphasis on sophistication. Apart from all-day food, main focus is on the copper-clad brewhouse behind a glass wall in the corner bar. An excellent pale ale, a refreshing White or cloudy Belgian wheat beer as well as the inevitable Indi Pilsner brewed in full view of the customers outsell the mainstream brands on tap. The choice will be even better when the promised handpumps are installed to serve some real ale. Phone 9305 0700

Ironbark Brewery: Farmer and brewing nut Graeme White has fashioned a cosy yet stylish food-and-beer venue around his home-designed brewhouse in Caversham, which came fully on-stream in winter. The emphasis is all Aussie, with draught and bottled items such as Bloke’s Brown Ale and Hanna’s Lager on the ever-changing line-up. Non-alcoholic Tinny Thomas Ginger Beer is so popular it sells out every time the temperature rises. Chef Les Howard makes inventive use of Australian bush ingredients in his dishes and the layout and décor is charming and welcoming. Phone: 9377 4400

Tanglehead Brewing Co: A renovated old hotel in Albany with ocean views has become a showpiece brewpub. All the beers from the 800-litre full-mash brewhouse are named with local history and links in mind, and there’s a good range, largely ales, on tap. A beer appreciation club has been set up and Tanglehead is advancing the concept of craft beer and food-matching in the town, for tourists as well as residents. Phone: 9841 1733.

NEW YEAR TOASTS

If you wish to make a big impression at your New Year’s Eve party, here are three locally available beers to help you do it in style.

Deus is a new luxurious beer style for confounding wine buffs as a special occasion tipple. Dubbed “the champagne of ales”, Deus - along with a similar bubbly brew called Malheur which is not yet available here – unashamedly meets all the criteria of sparkling wine as a drink for celebrations or at table with fine food. Poured from the Dom Perignon-style 750ml bottle, it even looks like blush champagne, but tastes better because of the malt and hops, according to staff at the International Beer Shop.

The price - $50 retail – reflects the meticulous Deus process. It ferments for a month at the village brewery in Buggenhout, Belgium, with two yeasts to achieve the whopping 11.5 per cent alcohol content. Taken by tanker to a the Champagne region of France, the beer is fermented a third time, in the methode champagnoise, to provide the bubbles. Bottled Deus remains in the champagne cellar at 12C for nine months, then is tilted and rotated for a week. It’s a cunning filtering move: Yeast that gathers at the bottle neck is frozen and removed before the bottles are corked and wired.

Thomas Hardy’s Ale was first brewed in Dorchester, Dorset, by Eldridge, Pope to salute author Hardy, whose Wessex novels eulogised beer. It’s a vintage brew, classed as a strong English bitter ale at 11.7 per cent alcohol, in the stewardship of O’Hanlon’s microbrewery in Devon since 2003 when the original recipe, yeast and trademark were bought up.

Each 250ml bottle is numbered and date-marked. A lot of Fuggle dry-hopping and sugar probably go into what is a complex, momentous beer. Despite being mashed with pale malted barley, it’s a dark, reddish colour.

Taste impressions vary with who’s the tastier and the beer’s age - some find toasty notes, others dried fruit. Generally, pineapple yeastiness is evident when young – that is, for the first couple of years – mellowing to gingery, raisiny fruitiness after five or so years and a big Christmas-cake and port-like flavour as decades pass. I’ve sampled a 25-year-old Hardy’s Ale and the rich, many-faceted flavour remains a vivid memory. Even the 2004 edition should help make this New Year memorable.

Quelque Chose

Dubbed “something” for lack of an accepted beer style, Quelque Chose makes a talking point aperitif or after-dinner sociable snifter. Cherries are steeped in a bitter ale for several months before being blended with the roasted-malt wort at Unibroue brewery in Quebec.

Designed for sipping warmed to 70ºC, the ultimate comfort drink exudes an unctuous whiff poured from the champagne-corked bottle. However, chilled and poured over ice it is more suitable to the down-under festive season. The International Beer Shop crew reckon it’s more like a summer wine than beer, particularly because it has little or no head when cold.

Whichever way you drink this 8 per cent strong, burgundy-hued ale, it makes a wonderfully fresh yet rich introduction to the coming year. Life is just a bowl of cherries, you can say.

Quick Ones

Fuller’s ales are to go on tap in WA in the next few months. Perth-based importer FM Liquor Classic Beer Co has nailed the sole Australian rights to beer from the venerable London brewery, known worldwide for bitter ales Fuller’s ESB and, increasingly, London Pride. Both brands will still be available here in 500ml bottles but the chance to drink the draughts should have ale fans salivating.

Back to the Bay: The man who headed Matilda Bay Brewing Company’s craft brewing revival in 2003 has left the hospitality and beverage business. Aussie Jamie Cook returned from Britain in the 1980s to work at Castlemaine-Perkins, WA’s Matilda Bay and CUB, climbing to the position of Foster’s Australia wine marketing manager. In January he will leap across to public relations with a Melbourne firm which represents . . . Matilda Bay.