BOOZE FREE PIONEER
“WE’RE PROBABLY A COUPLE OF YEARS BEHIND THE REST OF THE WORLD IN TERMS OF NON-ALCOHOLIC BEER”
We chat with Clinton Schultz from Sobah about his craft non-alcoholic bevvies
I think we last spoke about six months ago for Froth ‒ how have things been going with Sobah? It’s been growing pretty rapidly, we’re at the point now where we’re looking at setting up our own facility. We’ve got some pretty big growth plans for the next couple of years to open up a wellbeing centre and a few other things attached to Sobah. How have you found the response to Sobah? We’ve actually got far more popularity overseas than what we do here. Because non-alcoholic beer is very normal in America and in Europe, we’ve got some pretty big orders that once we’ve figured out how to get it there at a decent price, will happen. We’ve got interest from a lot of Asian countries ‒ China, India, Philippines, Thailand, Japan, Hong Kong ‒ and the UK and the United States.
So we’re thinking we’re probably going to make it overseas before we make it here, but we’re hoping that will make it snowball here in Australia. The whole nonalcoholic thing just hasn’t taken off as yet in Australia. We’re probably just a couple of years behind the rest of the world in terms of non-alcoholic beer and being able to separate the flavour of beer from alcohol. But it’s definitely improved in the last 12 months. What kind of responses do you get in Australia to your beer? Overwhelmingly, when I go out and do tastings in bottle shops and bars, the response is still, ‘No alcohol, what’s the point?’ A lot of the time, people don’t want to put in the time to actually listen, especially around the health and wellbeing aspect of non-alcoholic products. When I’m doing tastings and people make those comments, I’ll pull them up pretty quickly and say, ‘So what you’re telling me is you don’t enjoy the flavour of beer, you just want to get drunk?’ And they’ll be like, ‘Well what do you mean?’ And I’ll say, ‘Well if you actually cared about the flavour then
you wouldn’t be bothered about the alcohol content.’ So sometimes that’s worked to stumble people for a little bit, and that gives you a bit of an inroad to discuss things further. We’re struggling to get our products accepted by some of the larger chains ‒ so they will stock those German [alcoholfree beers] that are very generic and are imported, so generally it’s been quite a while since when they’ve been brewed and when they hit the shelves, so they’re not in their full capacity and flavour. Whereas we’ve got the only craft non-alcoholic beers available in Australia and they’re just not interested. And it’s largely around the price point. The other space that we seem to get really snobbed by is the beer festivals. We’ve applied to go to multiple beer festivals, and every single time we’ve been told, ‘Sorry there’s no places left’. Then we’ll hear of other brewers that we’re friends with getting their stuff in after we’ve requested. So we don’t know what the go is there, but it’s a shame because that means I don’t go to those festivals because there’s nothing there I can drink. What do you think of the launch of CUB’s Carlton Zero non-alcoholic beer? I think it’s good. Carlton are going to spend a lot of money on advertising which can increase the awareness, so we’ve been sending very positive messages of support to CUB about that! A lot of people have been saying, Don’t you see it as a threat?’ but we say no, they’ve got more money than we do to do the advertising and the awareness so that’s great. Find Sobah beers at the following venues in Melbourne: Carwyn Cellars in Thornbury, Nillumbik Cellars in Diamond Creek, Grape & Grain in Moorabbin, Good Love (vegan cafe) in St Kilda. For more info and stockists head to sobah.com.au