Froth Craft Beer Magazine by Froth

FROTH CRAFT BEER MAG

new beers coming from red duck

irish stout 6.8%

a/v

brewed wit h L ough ran Famil y i ri s h Ma lts

c it y of

u m b er

4.8%

BROWN ALE

BIG BIG

a/v

licorice stout

LICKY LICKY

a/v

ho p s ha r k

hop s hark

hammerhead 6.8%

On limited release RIGHT NOW: Cousin Iti, Lord Burtonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Breakfast, Honey & Pearls, Rundy Bum and 6 Collab brews with Napoleone : Ales of the Ages series: Gose, Grodziskie, Gruit, Sahti, Steinbier and Braggot

a/v + 73 IBUs

beer rebels brewing pioneers

and lovers of real craft beer

independent and passionate since 2005

LETTER FROM THE EDITOR

Well hello there! I hope you managed to cope for a whole month without Froth! (I thought I would enjoy the time off, but I ended up pining after my Froth baby like a mother cow who has been separated from her calf. Sad, really!) Luckily Froth is back and more exciting than ever with this wonderful issue about all things dark and beery and wintery!! (Of course, you can drink dark beer all year round, but it seems to make more sense in winter, in the same way that you can also walk around nude in your house all year round but it’s a lot nicer in summer.) We love a bit of seasonal drinking, and it’s nice to reach for something dark and mysterious when the mercury drops and the skies cloud over. So why not find a pub with a roaring fire and a good tap list, relax with something strong and stouty and enjoy the dark side of the year. Cheers and beers! Emily Day, Froth editor

FROTH CRAFT BEER MAGAZINE IS AN INDEPENDENT PUBLICATION PUBLISHED IN MELBOURNE. INDEPENDENT. AWESOME. FREE. Publisher: Alfie Dog Media Editor: Emily Day Printer: Printgraphics Design: Clint Weaver (@pocketbeagles) Contributors: Emily Day, Graham Frizzell, Will Ziebell, Marie Claire Jarratt, Sarah White, Matthew Mister, Rocco Fazzari, Matt Hofmann, Alex Osbourne, Bel Smith, John Bush, Pia Poynton, Duncan Purvis, Struan Logan, Kieran Stenson, Timothy Train, David McKellar. Crafty Comic: Michael Alesich Frothword: Oliver Hayes Cover Art: Clint Weaver Printed by Printgraphics in Melbourne on paper produced using sustainable forestry practices.

All information © Alfie Dog Media. The opinions of the contributors are not necessarily those of the publisher. For editorial and advertising inquiries, contact frothbeermag@gmail.com Want Froth sent to your home? Subscribe at: frothbeer.com/subscribe FROTHBEER.COM facebook.com/frothbeermag @frothbeermag @frothbeermag

THANK YOU

Massive, massive thanks to everyone who helped out with this edition of Froth! Huge thanks to my lovely parents David and Silvia Day for handing Froth out in WA (and my mum for drinking beer), Kel Morton and Darren Smith for their support and awesomeness, my boss Travis Lewis for not firing me during Good Beer Week, my awesome beer mates Mick Stylianou, Phil Lesh, Shayne Dixon from BeerMash, the kids at SlowBeer, Purvis Beer, McCoppins, The Catfish, Gertrude Hotel, the Terminus, Markov, our awesome contributors Graham Frizzell, Marie Claire Jarratt, Sarah White, Frida Rowe, Will Ziebell, Gemma Mahadeo, John Bush, Pia Poynton, Rob Schenburg, Scott Ellis, Timothy Train, David McKellar, Alex Osbourne, Bel Smith, Matthew Mister, Duncan Purvis, Kieran Stenson, Struan Logan and Oliver Hayes, our ridiculously talented Crafty Comic artist Michael Alesich @ironoak, the super awesome cartoonist Rocco Fazzari, Matt Hofmann for his absurd photography skills, Nick Claus from the Belgian Beer Café, Hendo from Brewcult, Moon Dog, Kaiju!, Exit, Holgate, Hargreaves Hill, Valhalla, Peter Wheldon from Calibre Craft Beer Trading, the lovely peeps from Gold Coast breweries Black Hops, Burleigh Brewing and Balter, and immensely, humungous thanks to our hard-working designer Clint Weaver for being an ace individual and making magic happen every month for our beer mag.

CONTENTS 6 Beer News Latest news from Melbourne and Victorian breweries 8 Oz Beer News All the goss from around Australia 10 History of Dark Beer What is a stout anyway? 11 Things I’ve Learnt about Dark Beer It’s awesome and makes me sleepy 12 Dark Beer Reviews We rate our favourite stouts and porters 14 Craft Beer FAQ What do you have that tastes like Corona? 16 The Coast with the Most How the Gold Coast became a craft beer destination 18 Love Me (bar)Tender Comedian Struan Logan compares the UK and Melbourne 20 Join the Cult Froth meets Brewcult’s Steve “Hendo” Henderson 22 Hungover Games Science lady Bel Smith gives us the lowdown on hangovers 23 Cool Idea We check out the guys who made beer ice-cream for GABS 24 On Doctor’s Orders Froth chats with the Sydney brewer who’s making waves 25 Country Pub of the Month Froth visits Hargreaves Hill in the Yarra Valley 26 Sh*t My Mum Says Silvia goes to WA and has a ripper time drinking beer 28 Beer Label of the Month We look at Dainton Family Brewing’s Manhattan Ale 30 Bar of the Month We check out Carlton’s best-kept secret 30 Bartender of the month Celebrating the champs behind the bar 32 Tips for Home Brew Beginners Brew in a bag or Coopers kit? We help you decide 34 Why Drunks Make the Best Poets Or is it the other way around? 35 Beer Balladry Poems about our favourite tipple 36 The Froth Fun Pages Uncle Worty’s Bad Advice Column 37 More Froth Fun Pages Frothword, Mostly Beer Quiz and Crafty Comic!

For beer enquiries, please contact:

REDDOT BREWHOUSE

2/70 Foundation Rd, Truganina, Victoria, 3029 Tel: (03) 8360 8181 Email: janet@reddotbrewhouse.com.au

M E LB O U R N E BE ER N E WS

By Emily Day

The Belgian Beer Cafe in Southbank is holding a free event on July 21 to celebrate Belgian National Day. Six breweries are creating their own special Belgian-style beer to be served at the venue at the base of the Eureka tower on the day. KAIJU!, MOON DOG and KOOINDA will each brew a beer, as well as MURRAY’S from NSW and Belgian sour specialists RODENBACH who will have two beers. Belgian-born bar manager Nick Claus wants to combine “the best of Belgium and the best of Australia”. He’s recruited a jazz band and plans to tap a secret special keg on the day for Belgian beer fans, and the café will also be serving up classic Belgian food. Entry is free, and you can taste all seven brews for $45. Buy tickets online before July 15 and enter the code RBACH to get $9.99 off. www.trybooking.com/186579

Moon Dog’s Brook, Olly and Tess the dog, Luke from Wolf of the Willows distributor Square Keg, Nick Claus, Callum Reeves from Kaiju!, bartender Josh, AJ from Murray’s, BBC owner Michael Burke and Kooinda general manager Kyle.

Melbourne gypsy brewers OLD WIVES ALES plan to release their Hair of the Dog XPA in bottles in early July. This deliciously fresh and hoppy brew was awesome on tap and we’re pretty excited it will be out in bottles too. Their Blood Moon Red IPA is also out at the moment at several venues, following up on their GABS entry, a 7.5% coffee IPA called The Jackalope. See oldwivesales.com for stockists and more information Newcomers FURY AND SON will be launching their beer at The Catfish in Fitzroy on July 9. Based in Keilor Park in Melbourne’s west, the father and son duo, Andrew and Reno Georgiou, have been brewing since 2015 with head brewer Craig Eulenstein, formerly of Little Creatures, Mountain Goat and The Monk in WA. Follow on Instagram and Twitter @furyandson or check out their website for more details. furyandson.com.au

If there’s anything we love more than beer it’s a good pun, so we were stoked to hear that HARGREAVES HILL has released a “Dubbel whammy”. This exciting duo includes their 2015 limited edition Russian Imperial Stout (10.6% ABV) and their Abbey Dubbel, which has only been available at the Hargreaves Hill restaurant in Yarra Glen. The Russian Imperial Stout arrives in a delightfully weighty bottle with a wax lid, while the luscious contents are a black, velvety and luxurious example of the Imperial stout style. Generous quantities of chocolate malt and roasted barley drive the malt profile on this stout, with a generous body of traditional ale, German Munich and dark crystal malts checking the tail. A rich, long body of licorice, molasses and dark chocolate pushes through the middle, and the malt intensity cloaks a hefty bitterness on the finish. The Abbey Dubbel is slightly lighter at 7.2%, and is brewed in the traditional Belgian Dubbel style, with European malts, a blend of Abbey and Trappist Belgian yeast strains as well as noble hops. Aromas of sarsaparilla, brown sugar, chai spice and banana feature, leading into flavours of gingernut biscuit, sweet dates and raisin. Gentle bitterness supports the rich malt and lively yeast character. Well paired with the third course of a wintry evening feast. hargreaveshill.com.au Fans of US beer will be chuffed to learn that STONE & WOOD Group subsidiary Square Keg will be distributing New Belgium beers in Australia. The initial shipment will include New Belgium’s Fat Tire amber ale, Ranger IPA, 1554 Black Lager and La Folie from the Lips of Faith line. More locally, Square Keg has also recently taken on the distribution of WOLF OF THE WILLOWS, who share a brewery with Bad Shepherd in Cheltenham in Melbourne’s south-east. squarekeg.com.au Sydney brewers MERCHANT BREWING, who brought us the divine Earl Pear Golden Ale, have added a new beer to their excellent line-up – the Hasselsloth West Coast IPA. Featuring a horrendously eye-catching label (left) with a mutant creature that is a cross between Baywatch star David Hasselhoff and a sloth, this beer is packed with resinous, face-crushing hops and is as tasty as the label is grotesque. merchantbrewing.co EDGE BREWING PROJECT recently returned from a trip to Europe where they collaborated with Danish breweries Amager Bryghus and Beer Here, and Omnipollo and Dugges in Sweden. The beers will be available in Australia from August. Edge has also been planning something pretty special with their sumptuous Stagger Lee Imperial Stout, which won gold at the International Beer Cup. Adam Betts from Edge says that he snuck a portion into red wine and rum oak, and it has been in barrels for seven months. The barrel-aged version will be released in July in 1.5-litre magnums. edgebrewing.com.au

! r e f f O l a i c e p S

F F O 20%

S R E E B T F A R C D E X I M ANY 6

UPON FOR PRESENT THIS CO

20% OFF

ANY 6 MIXEDS CRLIDAFOFRTTHEBMEONETHROF

VA . LIMITED JULY 2016 ONLYTITIES ONLY. TO RE TAIL QUAN

THE ONLY STORE DEDICATED TO SOURCING CRAFT BEER, WINE & SPIRITS IN THE EASTERN SUBURBS

FRIENDLY AND EXPERIENCED STAFF THERE TO HELP YOU

WEBSITE COMING SOON WITH ONLINE STORE WWW.APODLIQUOR.COM.AU

OPEN 10AM TO 7PM EVERY DAY

LOCATED AT 499 WHITEHORSE RD MITCHAM, VICTORIA

OZ BEER N EW S

Marie Claire Jarratt bring us all the news from New South Wales www.newsouthales.com Winter means only one thing – loads of dark, malty beers. For Murray’s Craft Brewing Co, that means it’s time for Dark Beer Month – this year featuring a whopping eight new brews. Keep an eye out for Angry Man Brown, Wild Thing Imperial Stout (and its coffee version, made with 1000 espresso shots) and Hell of the North Belgian dark ale to keep you warm throughout the chillier months.

Hop-lovers fear not, 4 Pines has a beer for you too. Mosaic-hopped American Amber has been promoted to the seventh beer in the core range and bottles began appearing on shelves in early June. Doctor’s Orders also have a few new brews on the way, which you can read about in the article in this edition of Froth. Sydney’s newest craft beer bar, The Noble Hops, opened in Redfern earlier in June. Ten rotating taps and a fridge of countless bottles feature both local and US brews. Keeping the small bar vibe, there’s no food as of yet, but there’s plenty of delicious whisky. By the time you read this, NSW will have probably lost State of Origin again, but you can still watch the final game at Quarrymans in Pyrmont. They’re doing a State of Origin beer battle between Yulli’s Brews (NSW) and Black Hops Brewing (QLD). Here’s hoping we can win that, at least.

Beer News from Western Australia by Pia Poynton

Margaret River’s brewery elders Bootleg Brewery are up to number five in their Hop Swap series of beers, single hop pale ales featuring a new variety with each release. Hop Swap #5 showcases El Dorado and is available now. Astra will be #6 and is expected in September. Other new beers include an IPA using a new American hop variety and there’s another edition of Imperial Bull, Raging

Beer News from South Australia by Sarah White

We are a patient group of drinkers here, studying the GABS form like we’re a struggling punter who bet the rent money on a slow nag. Enough with the horse analogies, except to say, we are the slow nag and bring us our damn GABS beer now! After a week that went slower than a macro beer trying to pass at a craft festival, we were gifted with 14 taps of pure joy at The Franklin Boutique Hotel. The Moon Dog Duke St Draught hopped-up lager was doing well, followed by Prancing Pony’s Imperial German Sledgehammer pilsner. Maybe the regulars who were hoping for a West End or a Four Wives might now try a Moon Dog and Google what a Love Tap is. I want to be there when they do. The serious-looking drinkers I spoke to sang a different tune. One had a supersized Nail Brewing Red Carpet Imperial Red Ale and Big Shed Beery Ripe Porter, which makes you wish you were on a bearskin rug in front of an open fire. The green-tinged Doctors Orders Mutagenic Cephalopod gose and Mildura Brewing’s beer with no hops or malt, aptly called Substitution IPA, were tried with excitement and scored high. Temple Brewing’s Rapture hit the Belgian Tripel spot and got us closer to that craft beer nirvana we are all seeking. Most of these drinkers also had a touch of heaven earlier at The Wheatsheaf, where the festival and Bull’s bigger brother, being brewed right now to go into cabernet merlot wine barrels for a few months. Winter means that it’s time for the annual release of Cacao Stout by Eagle Bay Brewing Co. Made in collaboration with local bean to bar chocolatiers Bahen & Co, the Cacao Stout uses husks from the cacao nibs that would otherwise be discarded during the chocolate making process. Every year husks from different varieties of cacao are used meaning each year brings a different flavour profile. Colonial Brewing Co are set to release a New Zealand Red IPA that features all NZ malts from Gladfield Malt and NZ hops. With a brewery in both WA and VIC, Colonial’s in-house East vs West Battle sees each brewery make a beer in a chosen style. The end of July will see the breweries battle over brown ales. Brewcorp, the Nail Brewing and

local favourites Pirate Life and their Loose Lips Sink Ships Triple IPA had been tapped. A hearty 14-percenter that indeed loosens lips and makes you hope they bring it out in one of their large Pirate-sized cans. A bottle of Robe Breweries Moby Dick Ambergris Ale was also spotted behind the bar. I know it isn’t actually whale vomit and more of a digestion aid by-product, but is this really the time to be pedantic about beer? (Who are we kidding, being a beer pedant is a full-time occupation for many.) Unfortunately I didn’t get to digest the ale on this occasion. It is my white whale.

Feral Brewing joint venture, will be relocating in early August to a new site three times the size of the current one. The new location will also bring an upgraded bottling line and the addition of a canning line.

WA beer tips by Rob Schenberg Instagram @pursuitofhoppiness

Winter has settled in. It’s a season one would normally reach out for a rich red wine, a heart-warming whisky or a brainnumbing barley wine. But beer lovers are a weird bunch. Come sideways rain, teeth-chattering cold or finger-numbing snow, a beer should be there all year round to be enjoyed, because true beer knows no season. Which is why we’ve got a wide array of beer styles that herald from the West. These are core range beers from quintessential breweries that get me excited about the awesome produce coming out of WA, and go to show that you don’t always need to go all out pedal-to-the-metal to keep beer lovers happy.

Colonial Brewing Company – Draught Kölsch Ale

Nail Brewing Red Ale

Nail has really hit it on the head with this red ale, a complex beast that is quite synonymous with a well-crafted Pink Floyd song. Well not exactly, but it does share that multi-dimensional experience you get with many great American-style red ales these days. A thick malty platform gets laid down right from the get-go, moving quickly to build more of a bitter hoppy tendency. The bitterness lingers for a while, but you can always reach out and touch that rich malt in the background. It’s a perfect balance of caramel and toffee-like malt married to the excellence of the Citra hops, providing citrus and tropical fruit goodness. The sweetness isn’t too full-on as with many red ales, and the bitterness isn’t up in your face either. And that faint boozy warmth couples perfectly with these elements, making it the excellent year-round drink of choice.

Cans are definitely in vogue at the moment. Haven’t you heard? Almost like a mini keg in itself, the canned beer of today blows away any old-fashioned can-hating stigma as soon as the parched lips of the doubtful touch that aluminium opening. And when you talk about drinkability, there’s no going past a Kölsch. Coming from WA’s southwest is the can with the plan from the fellas at Colonial, the brewery who brought the 360-degree ring pull can to Australia with their lip-smacking Small Ale. The Kölsch style, originating from Köln, Germany, is a reserved creature. Usually it’s a pretty simple beer, while some tend to the fruity side of the spectrum. However, whichever one you go for it will always remain light, refreshing and easy to drink.

‘IT’S SO FRESH YOU CAN ALMOST HEAR THE BIRDS CHIRPING’ Colonial’s Kölsch shines with a pale golden hue and provides ridiculously refreshing flavours of subtle lemon and grassy hops that pair excellently with a light effervescence and slight tang at the back of your mouth. The bitterness is kept in check by the light bready and straw-like malt that drops off quite abruptly. It defines the word “sessionable”, because before you know it, you’ve gone through a whole can and are ready for the next one. There’s no arguing whether this is the perfect beer for winter. It gives you a taste of spring, a primer for the upcoming seasons. It’s so fresh you can almost hear the birds chirping and feel the sun shining through the newborn leaves just by cracking open the can. Think of it as your transportation device away from the crappy winter weather you’re enduring right now. FROTH CRAFT BEER MAG

9 2

WHAT IS A STOUT By Will Ziebell

ANYWAY?

Porters & Stouts / Intro by Dan McEvilly / The darkest of all beers, these brews typically range from dark brown to the deepest of jet blacks and are more than likely opaque. These deliciously velvety beers are brewed using chocolate malts, dark crystal malts and black malts, you should expect a glorious creamy and flavoursome mouth full with anything from dark roasted bitter sweet chocolate, roasted coffee, molasses, treacle, vanilla, dark fruits and much more, often with a slight acrid smoky note. The story of stout is the story of the English language, about how a word can change from its origin so much that it loses a lot of its meaning. It also shows how this kind of change doesn’t really matter at all; enough people still know that stout is a tasty beer that’s perfect to reach for as soon as the temperature drops. Even though the history of stout is closely linked with another beer style (porters) the best way to really understand the beer is by having a look at the word’s etymology. In anticipation of the likelihood that anyone browsing a beer magazine probably doesn’t want to learn the ins and outs of a single word in the English language we’ll keep this brief and painless. In early usage the word stout was an adjective used to denote strength or courage, maybe even a little bit of valour. Over time the common usage of the word narrowed until it was generally just about being strong.

‘References to stout ales can be found as early as the 1650s’ It’s in that sense that stout was used to refer to different beers; the stronger versions of any given style had the prefix stout added to it. Confusingly for modern beer drinkers, early stouts could have been any type of beer and any colour, they just needed to be strong. Stout pale ales and stout browns were all relatively commonplace, and wouldn’t have surprised the 17thcentury drinker. It also explains that while there is no reference to ‘porter’ as a type of beer prior until the 1700s, references to stout

ales can be found as early as the 1650s. It was the rise of porters from about the 1750s onwards that slowly transformed the word ‘stout’ from an adjective into a noun. Porters were dark ales first brewed in London which quickly became popular with the city’s working class, particularly among the porters (hence the name), and by the start of the 19th century it was London’s most popular beer style. As the style’s popularity surged, porters quickly took on a variety of forms, and it wasn’t long before brewers began producing plenty of stout porters which had higher ABVs and tended to have fuller, creamier bodies. Londoners soon became big fans of the stronger version of the style and who could blame them? A quick glance over any Charles Dickens novel (or maybe even Marx’s Das Kapital if you want to impress someone on the train) shows that there was plenty of reasons London’s poor could use a nice strong beer. So the adjective became a noun and in doing so any meaningful connection to the word’s origin was lost. While even today some people may think of stouts as always being at the strong end of the scale, that simply isn’t always the case. Like plenty of other styles, the beer’s definition is entirely in the hands of the brewer (or the marketing department). You only need to look at the world’s most famous stout, Guinness, to see that strength doesn’t really matter at all. While it can vary from country to country, Guinness Draught sits at 4.1% in Australia and few modern beer drinkers would consider that particularly strong, let alone very courageous. Will Ziebell is a beer history writer based in Melbourne.

EMBRACE THE DARK

Words by Emily Day

I’ve been reviewing a LOT of dark beers for this edition of Froth magazine. I don’t usually drink dark beers because they make me fall asleep immediately, so I’ve been drinking one or two and then have the most amazing 12-hour sleeps. The reviewing process has been slow going but, dammit, I’ve persisted. After drinking several bottleshops dry, I’ve come to several conclusions about the wonderful world of porters and stouts. 1) Porters and stouts are a little bit interchangeable. You can’t immediately assume that a stout is going to be more bitter or stronger in terms of alcohol. For instance, the recently released Hawkers Imperial Stout was deceptively smooth and rich and gobsmackingly tasty while still being incredibly drinkable. This is the kind of beer that I would happily give to my grandmother – that is, if I had any intention of sharing it. 2) There are a whole bunch of different types of stouts. Milk stouts, chocolate stouts, espresso stouts, breakfast stouts, oyster stouts, even sour stouts (Townshend’s Flemish Stout from New Zealand was not to my taste, but I’m sure sour fans would enjoy it), and a mushroom stout (Nøgne Ø’s Chaga Stout, brewed with Alaskan mushrooms, because Norway). Milk stouts tend to be sweeter and easier drinking than a traditional dry stout, according to Exit Brewing’s Fraser Rettie. Exit’s Milk Stout (pictured) is simply delicious, with the addition of lactose providing a creamy texture. Fraser says: “A milk stout is given its name because lactose (being a sugar in milk) is added to the boil,” says Frase. “The lactose does not ferment out so the result in the beer is that there is a little bit of residual sweetness left in there (or in the case of Hendo’s Milk & Two Sugars – a fuckload of sweetness is left there). The idea is to try to get the balance right between the coffee like bitterness of the roasted barley and the sweetness of the lactose.”

SIX THINGS I’VE LEARNT ABOUT PORTERS AND STOUTS THIS WINTER

3) The Scots and Poms really know how to brew stouts. Obviously these buggers have been doing it for a while, with the style originating in the UK. Out of North Yorkshire, Samuel Smith's Organic Chocolate Stout is a divine cocoa-flavoured treat in a big bottle, while Young's Double Chocolate Stout from Bedford is a smooth and indulgent delight for chocoholics. BrewDog from Scotland produce some incredible dark beers, with the intensely rich and fruity BrewDog Tokyo Intergalactic Stout making me feel as though I had left the Earth behind and was sailing off into space. Try it.

“I don’t usually drink d a r k b e e r s because they make m e f a l l asleep” 4) A breakfast stout doesn’t mean you have to have it for breakfast. (You totally can if you want, we won’t judge *silently judges*.) Breakfast stouts are creamy and smooth, brewed with oats and often lactose, emitting tantalising whiffs of coffee and cinnamon. The most well known example is Founders’ Kentucky Breakfast Stout from America, which is a creamy and delicious delight and well worth seeking out for any stout lovers. English brewery Siren also have a pretty smashing one called Broken Dream.

5) Australia is producing some topshelf dark beers. For a country which until recently was dominated by shitty weak lagers, Oz is killing it when it comes to stouts and porters. Some of our favourites include Bad Shepherd’s Oatmeal Stout (an excellent session stout with roasty mocha notes), Wolf of the Willows’ Johnny Smoke Porter (we’re in love with the label and the delicious notes of chocolate, coffee and campfire), Hargreaves Hill Stout (read our country pub review where we pair it with a triple chocolate brownie), Mornington Peninsula’s Imperial Stout (Mornington's Porter is also a big seller, according to Shayne Dixon from BeerMash in Collingwood), Red Hill’s Imperial Stout (an 8.1% jet-black treat with a touch of caramel), West City Brewing’s Oaty Session Stout (there’s a reason that brewer Fergus won awards for his stouts when he was a home brewer) and Moon Dog's Ogden Nash’s Pash Rash, a ridiculously sublime Imperial Redskin Stout that evokes the sticky raspberry lolly of our childhoods. 6) Chuck it in a barrel and it will taste better. You can have a stout and then you can have a whisky or bourbon barrel-aged stout and your face will actually fall off (in a good way). Boatrocker’s Ramjet Russian Imperial Stout (aged in whisky barrels) and Roger Ramjet (bourbon barrels) are without a doubt the crème-de-la-crème of tasty dark beers. This beverage is so dark and rich and smooth you will feel like you are floating down a grown-up version of Willy Wonka’s chocolate river. At 10-plus per cent, the Ramjet packs a hefty punch but the taste makes it all worthwhile. FROTH CRAFT BEER MAG

DARK BEER REVIEWS

Words by Dan McEvilly, Duncasaurus Rex, Graham Frizzell & Sarah White

REVIEWS BY DAN MCEVILLY INSTAGRAM @crafty_kev

Brewery: Nail Brewing Beer: Clout Stout ABV: 10.8% Beer Type: Imperial Stout Brewed in Bassendean, WA I managed to get my hands this rare beauty and now I have in front of me in all its glory – bottle number 371 of 600 from 2014. Carefully conditioned at 18°C for six months and bottled on February 17, 2014, to age well. Clout Stout is a Russian Imperial Stout brewed for the beer connoisseur – and the wealthy ones at that. Averaging somewhere between $70 to $90 a bottle, this makes Clout Stout probably the most expensive beer in Australia, and with that price tag comes a huge amount of pressure to be sublime. Poured from the bottle it’s thick and creamy, a sumptuous black in colour and topped with a dense tan head.

This brew oozes luxury with aromas of coffee, chocolate, dark fruit, liquorice and a hefty helping of molasses combined to make a truly divine smell that invites you in to take a sip of this beautifully crafted brew. A luxurious velvety smooth complexion provides a creamy rich coating of the mouth as every sip warms your insides. Initially sweet and full-bodied before developing into a smooth, bittersweet finish. Best slow-poured at 14°C, Clout Stout is phenomenal! Perfectly balanced, crafted with love, you will savour every sip of this truly opulent brew. Whether it’s a 2011 or the recently released 2015, Clout Stout only gets better with age and is one of the best stouts about, so give yourself the gift of beer this winter and treat yourself. Brewery: Mornington Peninsula Brewery Beer: Russian Imperial Stout ABV: 9.5% Beer Type: Imperial Stout Brewed in Mornington, VIC This is the biggest and boldest of all Mornington’s stouts. Pouring a deep earthy brown, almost black, topped with a thick tan head. You could almost confuse this brew with those rather fancy espressos endorsed by that prat George Clooney. But fear not, this is more Putin than Clooney, although saying that, maybe you should fear. Enticing aromas of rich chocolate, dark coffee and roasted chestnuts dominate like the old Soviet Union gymnastics team. Smoked vanilla, coffee, dark chocolate, toasted caramel and liquorice flavours are thrown together creating an oily texture any Russian oil baron would be proud of. It’s all finished with a big, dry hop bite that burns the back of your throat and will be sure to keep you warm during those harsh Russian winters or those rather short cold spells we call winter in Australia.

Brewery: Stone & Wood Beer: Stone Beer ABV: 6.5% Beer Type: Altbier Brewed in Byron Bay, NSW Brewed for when the days are short and the nights are cold, Stone & Wood's Stone Beer is a glorious annual release that pays homage to an old brewing technique by adding wood-fired stones to the kettle to rouse the boil and intensify the malt characters of the brew. It also marks the end of the Festival of the Stone – a great excuse to bring friends from the wider beer world to Byron Bay for an all-day celebration. Stone Beer pours a deep earthy brown, almost black and is topped with a creamy honeycomb head. This brew has an incredibly intense aroma of caramel which penetrates the nostrils as soon as you hover over the glass. I could be tempted to rub some on my neck and see what I can attract, it smells that good. The caramel aroma travels perfectly through into the taste with hints of dark fruits and toasted nuts thrown into the mix. But it’s the cocoa and dark chocolate that really dominate. Stone Beer is a full-bodied affair that’s richer than Bill Gates and smoother than Samuel L. Jackson’s bald head. There’s a touch of caramel sweetness at the end finishing with a well-roasted earthy dryness. This right here is a reason to love winter, making Stone Beer the one annual release you don't want to miss.

REVIEWS BY DUNCASAURUS REX INSTAGRAM @duncasaurusrex Brewery: Sierra Nevada Beer: Barrel Aged “Narwhal” Imperial Stout (12.9%) Brewed in California, USA A holy mother rises from the briny depths Bringing with it viscous Kentucky warmth, Little porter fish and sculpins dart for cover, Creaking the plank boards above. Oh unicorned plump-flapper of imperial clout, Hiding the true colours well. Melded your beauty has now become, The chocolate lingers, the coffee absorbed. Yet down here on ocean floor where vision is black,

REVIEW BY GRAHAM FRIZZELL

blindtastetestgrahamfrizzell.blogspot.com.au

Brewery: BrewDog Beer: Black Eyed King Imp (Vietnamese Coffee Edition) – 12.7% Brewed in Scotland BrewDog is to extreme stout as ziplining is to extreme sports. But who really cares for cheating death and involuntary voiding of the bowels when there are flavours bigger than the line at Aspen to be had? Enter: BrewDog's Black Eyed King Imp (Vietnamese Coffee Edition)! Yes, it's the strongest ever beer in a can and, yes, it tastes every bit of its 12.7%. The Imp pours like a daredevil's blackened blood with a head of mocha. On the nose it's a whiplash of bourbon and whisky woodiness. Complex coffee, roasty, vanilla notes and woody tannins ride the palate like a skateboarder insane enough to ride down a mountain road. This isn't a beer for the fainthearted, but yeah, stuff extreme sports for a game of soldiers.

Opaque death is the master of sorts, But nothing can temper this barrel-aged beast Whose bones float up to the shores. One bottle down and this seadog is drunk. Brewery: Yulli’s Brews Beer: Fat Nerd Vanilla Porter (6%) Brewed in Surry Hills, NSW Oh Fat Nerd, glaring at me with your Comic Book Guy contempt, I see the real you. I see you drinking freshly brewed espresso, not the 7-Eleven $2 crap left on your desk to go cold. I see your warmth to my bones, not your spiteful stare and mistimed cringe humour. I see your timid vanilla and bitter chocolate murmurings, not the D&D dice-rolling fanaticism you conjure for days on end. I see your gypsy brew rendezvous in Sydney's inner west and not your fast-food macro-produced gluttony. Oh Fat Nerd, I see you.

Brewery: Feral Brewing Beer: “Boris” Russian Imperial Stout – 9.1% Brewed in Swan Valley, WA Boris is the Russian espionage agent who settles down in a new suburb, nestling himself so well into the community that you can do nothing but absolutely love him. He donates to the local charity, helps the oldies mow their lawn, but deep down inside, he's a psychopath that's bottling up all his rage and can't wait to let it loose. Right off the bat, you're introduced to an aroma of rich chocolate liqueur, enticing the weak and strong minded alike into proceeding further with the relationship. Which then leads you to have a drink, where you're served up a bitter espresso shot poured over sweet vanilla bean icecream, melding together to make a deliciously balanced hit of affogato on steroids. Once you've downed the first course of dessert, a tray of velvet chocolate cake is stuffed down your throat, with its oodles of boozy warmth as if it came right out of the oven. And this is where the pent-up rage is unbottled. At 9.1%, this seemingly harmless taste sensation leaves you on the floor, never to get up again. Which is probably why you want to be sitting down for this one. But it'll be one of the best times you ever did sit down for, leaving a smear of flavours for you to hazily ponder over.

Brewery: Garage Project Beer: Cabbages & Kings Oyster & Horopito Stout (12%) Brewed in Wellington, NZ Like some toff-nosed walrus burping his clammy sea breath into my otherwise favourable stout, he throws in a gentle fart of last night’s prawn vindaloo for good measure. I watch in befuddlement as he then scratches his arse and flips me the bird with his flipper.

REVIEW BY SARAH WHITE Dieu Du Ciel – Aphrodisiaque ABV: 6.5% Brewed in Montreal, Canada You'll want to whisper to this beer how much it means to you because there's pure lust from first smell of the roasty malt, vanilla and cocoa powder notes. It gets closer to love with every swallow of the audaciously restrained balance of coffee, hints of vanilla, bourbon, and milky unsweetened chocolate. Then continues to the perfect bitter ending of cocoa and hops together. It's not a thick and velvety stout but doesn't want or need to be with such a caressingly soft and smooth mouthfeel. Not too little and not too much of everything make this one that could happily take away your stout virginity or be enjoyed by a discerning expert of the dark beer arts. FROTH CRAFT BEER MAG

CRAFT

BEER

FAQ WORDS BY MATT HOFMANN What’s closest to Corona? Skunk piss! No really, bear with me. You’d be hard-pressed to find a craft brewer who would subject their meticulously slaved-over brew to sunlight by encasing it in a clear bottle, and Coronas can sit in these for at least a few weeks at a time. Light is one of beer’s natural enemies, and even just a few minutes of exposure can cause a beer to turn “skunked”. That’s the actual term! Without getting too science-y, a chemical reaction occurs when sunlight hits beer that causes small amounts of sulfur compounds to form, the same that occur in skunk spray. I’d probably throw a lime in that too. Just opt for the lager.

What’s your girly beer on tap? It seems a bit silly to assign gender roles to something as broadly enjoyed as alcoholic beverages, doesn’t it? However, if you really need an answer to appease you so you don’t cop it from the old ball and chain when you get back to the table (I’m just kidding – this is a horrid expression, I just figured if you asked this question I might need to speak your language for a moment), then it’s really pretty easy! All of them. All the beers on tap can be enjoyed by anyone identifying as a female. Maybe spend a bit more time getting to know the beverage tastes of your partner before approaching the bar. What’s good? Vivaldi. The Back to the Future trilogy. Australian Rules Football. Glimmering ponds. Photosynthesis. Not coriander. You’ll notice that most of these are subjective. Give me a little bit of yourself. Let’s get to know each other. Let’s find out what’s good together. Do you have any draught? Oh boy, are you in luck. Draught refers to beers poured from a keg or barrel, so anything you see pouring out of the tap is draught! Unfortunately some megabrewers have tried to confuse the definition, and thereby the populace, by

producing “draught” in a bottle to make a play at keeping some brand familiarity across their line. We’re smarter than that though, yeah? As if we’d let them trick us like that, right? Eh, just try the lager. Is that dark like Guinness? No thanks. Saying you don’t like dark beers because you don’t like Guinness is like saying you don’t enjoy music because you hate Meghan Trainor. While you are correct with your tastes, you can see how much else you might be missing out on. Darker styles of beer can come in a wide range of flavour profiles, from bitter dark chocolate to roasty coffee to sweet toffee treacle, with some bigger barrel-aged brews even infusing notes of bourbon, whisky and pinot noir. Give that lonely dark beer on tap a go and I promise you’ll be sounding like a beer wanker in no time. Nah, these are all too bitter/fruity. Have you got anything that just tastes like beer? Most breweries will have a fairly wide selection of beer styles for you to try, and if you are still having trouble, the government states that licensed venues must always provide free water to punters. Have you considered that maybe you just don’t like beer? FROTH CRAFT BEER MAG

THE COAST WITH THE MOST Sunshine? Tick. Surf? Tick. Craft beer? YES! The Gold Coast sheds its tacky reputation and becomes a craft beer wonderland.

Growing up on the Gold Coast, one of my enduring memories is finding a tinnie of XXXX half‑submerged in the sand on the beach. It was gold and sparkling and I didn’t know what it meant, but I thought: one day I will find out. Fast-forward 15 years, and I found out, and yeah, it wasn’t great. I’d also found out that other people scoffed at the Gold Coast as a cultural wasteland populated entirely by bogans, which I was a little sad about, as I had found it to be a green and lush wonderland populated entirely by snakes and frogs and cane toads and surfers and spiders the size of my head. Now a resident of freezy-cold Melbourne, I go up to the Goldie every winter to warm up and marvel at the tanned and healthylooking locals jogging around in shorts. While the Gold Coast’s allure is its weather (and theme parks), it can now add another drawcard – its burgeoning craft beer scene. It’s now home to three awesome breweries – Burleigh Brewing, Balter and Black Hops. There are also a bunch of cool bars, meaning you don’t even have to drink XXXX. Surfer’s Sandbar in Surfers Paradise pours excellent beers from around the world, while House of Brews has 32 craft beer taps. Lester & Earl is an American-style restaurant in Palm Beach with ocean views and a great tap list, while Bine Beer Bar

in Mermaid Beach is recommended for its classy list of Australian beers. Loose Moose in Broadbeach serves up burgers, spicy ribs, craft beer and over 130 types of whisky, while Ze Pickle in Burleigh has 12 rotating taps and an absurdly enticing burger menu. Southport, meanwhile, is home to Not Tonight, a bar with a top-notch tap list supplemented by over 55 types of bottled beer. But back to the breweries. Burleigh Brewing has been on the scene since 2006, and this year moved to a larger facility in Burleigh Heads, where you can enjoy an exceedingly jolly night in the shadow of their immense brew

by Emily Day

tanks. The staff are friendly and the beer range is massive, with 24 taps pouring tasty brews such as the Hef, “My Wife’s Bitter” and FIGJAM IPA. Local food trucks and live music create a fun ambience, making you stay a lot longer than you intended! Newcomers Balter Brewing have set up their stylish brewery in Currumbin. Backed by top surfers including Mick Fanning, Balter combines effortless cool with brilliant beers by head brewer Scott Hargrave, formerly of Byron Bay Brewing and Stone & Wood. Their first beer, a fabulously crisp XPA, wowed many at GABS (and at the time of writing was on tap at the Great Northern in Carlton).

Balter Brewing on the Gold Coast: good beer and a classy fitout.

Visitors to the brewery can try a couple of Balter's other beers, including the Honey Bucket – a golden ale with honey malt notes and medium bitterness. Balter’s eye-catching white and turquoise cans are yet to make it down to Melbourne, but once they do, we would like to have them in our fridge immediately. With their beer on tap at 65 venues from the Sunshine Coast to Melbourne, we reckon we are going to see a lot more of these guys in the future.

Burleigh Brewing: A fun vibe and friendly staff, such as Michelle (below).

“THE GOLD COAST’S ALLURE IS ITS WEATHER (AND THEME PARKS), IT CAN NOW ADD ANOTHER DRAWCARD – ITS BURGEONING CRAFT BEER SCENE” Also in Burleigh Heads is Black Hops Brewing, the brainchild of Eddie Oldfield and Dan Norris, who recruited brewer Michael “Govs” McGovern to help them make an Eggnog Stout. Not a beer you would readily associate with the Gold Coast, but the stout was a hit and the boys decided to go pro. They opened their brewery, located a short walk from Burleigh beach, to the public in last month. Their range includes delightfully left-of-field brews such as the Australian Saison, 30 Cal Lager

and the Bitter Fun hoppy pale ale. Their deliciously desserty Assault Trifle which they brewed for GABS came ninth in the People’s Choice Award, and the boys plan to regularly release specialty beers such as their boozy Belgian Tripel. They also plan to brew seasonal IPAs: red for autumn, black for winter and white for spring. With this playful philosophy and the exceptional skills of Govs in the brewhouse, we’re totally excited to see what these guys come up with next!

Black Hops Brewing in Burleigh Heads has just opened its bar to the public.

BALTER BREWING balter.com.au 14 Traders Way, Currumbin Opening hours: Fri: 3pm-7pm, Saturday & Sunday: 12-6pm

BURLEIGH BREWING burleighbrewing.com.au 2 Ern Harley Drive, Burleigh Heads Opening hours: Wed & Thu: 3pm-6pm, Friday: 3pm-8.30pm, Sunday: 2pm-6pm

BLACK HOPS BREWING blackhops.com.au 15 Gardenia Grove, Burleigh Heads Opening hours: Mon-Fri: 10am-6pm, Saturday: 12pm-4pm FROTH CRAFT BEER MAG 17 FROTH CRAFT BEER MAG 17

Bar

LOVE ME TENDER

By Struan Logan

I’ve just finished my stint working behind a Melbourne bar, having only worked there six months because according to the Australian government I am a dirty Scottish immigrant who can only work a limited time so I don’t take jobs away from hard working Australians. Having spent a lot of time working with international bartenders here, we can all agree that working behind a bar in Melbourne is easily the best place to be. The basics are the same as the rest of the world: the hours are long, they drudge into the wee hours of the morning and the customers are often drunken pricks who demand shots that stink up the bar. The difference is that when you look at your bank balance at the end of the week you’ve actually been paid a decent amount of money, unlike Europe or New Zealand where you get an embarrassingly low pay rate or in North America where you spend the end of your shift going through a tips box hoping the customers have been generous that night. My background is working in Britain, mainly in London as a bartender where the pay rate was £6.50/$13 (do you honestly think British people tip? Hell no!) Whilst wages are low in London, rent is incredibly expensive which drives up the price of everything else. It can feel very depressing when you hand over a single beer that is worth more than your hourly wage. In Melbourne I can work part-time and still make enough money to live in a house and do stand-up comedy gigs in my spare time, whereas in London I was working over 40 hours and was still losing money due to the cost of the shoebox I was living in. At the time I counted myself lucky, I worked alongside an actress who had been on TV, been nominated for a BAFTA and still had to work behind a bar to make rent. She only got to quit her bartending job after getting her financial breakthrough on a tampon commercial. In Melbourne there is a career path that makes sticking with hospitality and becoming a manager actually worthwhile; the salary is decent, the

perks are good and there are a ton of great bars and restaurants you can work for that aren’t run by massive conglomerates (if you’ve ever been into a Wetherspoons in the UK then you get what I mean). This concept was pretty alien to me because back home, 99% of bartenders don’t want to be bartenders, never mind becoming a manager. They are actors who are jumping between auditions, musicians who haven’t broken through or delusional idiots who are desperately trying to get their niche articles on craft beer published. The amazing trump card of working as a bartender in Melbourne is the penalty rates, which conservative politicians are desperate to get rid of. Penalty rates means your pay goes up for working evenings and weekends. This does not happen anywhere else in the world! Some countries do it for public holidays but when I got told the penalty rate for working a public holiday meant the pay would be $50 per hour, I spat out my coffee all over my new manager’s desk, thankfully he is English and perfectly understood my reaction. The state of Victoria doesn’t just have public holidays for Christmas and New Year, here you have public holidays for

“IT CAN FEEL VERY DEPRESSING WHEN YOU HAND OVER A SINGLE BEER THAT IS WORTH MORE THAN YOUR HOURLY WAGE” stupid things like sport or even stupider – the Queen’s birthday. I’m a Scotsman who voted Yes to independence so as you can imagine my opinion of the monarchy isn’t positive but if you asked me to work a bar shift where I had to dress up as the 90-year-old and sing God Save the Queen on the hour every hour, I would have done it for less than $50 an hour. What this column is basically trying to say is when I’m served at a bar by a hipster who gives me attitude and shitty service, I want to clip him round the ear and tell him he has no idea how good he’s got it! FROTH CRAFT BEER MAG

BREWERY PROFILE Words by Emily Day Photo by Matt Hofmann

"I’ve just made a lager the way that I want to make a lager and just threw the style guide out the window."

BREWCULT

FROTH CHATS TO HENDO FROM BREWCULT ABOUT EPIPHANY BEERS, EXCISE AND WINNING THE AIBA CHAMPION GYPSY BREWER OF THE YEAR

Who is Hendo? I’ve been brewing for about 20 years. I started home brewing and doing Coopers kits and then I wanted to know what that gooey stuff in the tin was. I wanted to learn more about beer. So rather than look it up on the internet I went to university and did a postgraduate degree. I started at Edith Cowan University in Perth in 2004. And then I deferred and went overseas to the UK to work for a year. While I was there they closed the brewing school at Edith Cowan so I had to transfer to the University of Ballarat, or Federation University as it’s called now. I was under the guidance of Dr Peter Aldred, and Bradford Tetlow, who’s now head of sensory at Little Creatures. After I finished that I decided to go pro. My first job was Prickly Moses, Otway Estate. I was there for nearly three years. Then the opportunity came up to become head brewer at Southern Bay Brewing Company in Geelong, which is a massive brewery. I was there for a year when I decided I would start Brewcult. That was in February 2013.

JOIN THE CULT

What was your first Brewcult beer release? I first released Hop Zone session IPA just before Good Beer Week in 2013. My first GABS beer was Acid Freaks, a balsamic porter. So that was a way to step onto the scene with a freaky beer. I think it got third or fourth in the People’s Choice. It was a pretty extreme beer, but I wanted to do something that would make people sit up and take notice. What did you brew for GABS 2014? Pepper Steak Porter. The full name of the beer is Pepper Steak Porter: A Vegan Beer Experience. It’s actually the only vegan GABS beer I’ve ever done. I love the irony of it. I was thinking about how to put meat in a beer, so I was thinking of stock cubes or beef drippings or something like that, and it didn’t sound really pleasant, so I thought “why not just use smoked malt with whatever they use to smoke meat with”. So we smoked some malt with hickory mesquite chips and it was awesome. You don’t have to use the ingredients that are on the label of the beer to get that taste. Hops are a classic example. You get citrus and pine and tropical fruit notes from something that doesn’t come from citrus or pine or tropical fruit. That’s why hops are awesome. So when did you first fall in love with hops? I think it goes back to my epiphany beer. Early 2000s, living in Perth, Matilda Bay Alpha Pale Ale was my epiphany beer. It was before Matilda Bay was owned by CUB and before they moved, so when they were in Fremantle. It was made by a brewer who I still think is an absolute legend – Brad Rogers. That beer was just so full of – I think it is Amarillo hops in it – and it was for me, five, 10 years ahead of its time. And it was that hop “zing” which made me go “Wow, this is really cool”. What is your favourite Brewcult beer? God, there’s lots of them because I like them all for different reasons. I know this sounds really artsy-fartsy and weird, but I make the beers because I’m thinking or feeling something at the time. As soon as I try to make a beer which is for profit or for money or to please a specific person, I don’t get it right. But when I let myself go and I don’t give a fuck … I’m an introvert – I know that sounds really weird – but I’m actually an introvert and I entertain myself, so if I do something that I find funny or entertaining and I laugh at it or smile, that’s good. And so the same goes with the beers. Beer Geek Rage Quit is always a lot of fun because I get to work with Matt Hofmann, who I’ve got to know as a friend through that. He’s a dead-set legend – he brews for me now. So that’s always fun because we just take the piss and we have a laugh. Thanks Captain Obvious [IPA] is pretty special, because that’s a beer that I specifically made to enter into the AIBAs three years ago. I really worked on that so hard. To see it this year win the gold medal, and subsequently that’s what qualified me to win the champion gypsy brewer trophy, that was a real “fuck-yeah” moment, that was really cool. How did it feel to win the Champion Gypsy Brewer award at this year's AIBA awards? That was very awesome. I’m pretty humbled by that. It’s a major achievement, personally. I first went to the AIBAs in 2008/2009, I was living in Queensland, just got divorced and I was working for my brother, and not in a really good place. I rode my motorbike down from Queensland to Melbourne and I went to the AIBA dinner and it was at the Crown Palladium and there were 800 industry people there, and I knew two people in the room. I saw guys like Brendan Faris from Feral do really well there and I was like “I want to do that. I want to be that good.” That was my aspiration.

So to win a gold medal for a beer which I entered specifically into the AIBAs, and to be the inaugural champion gypsy brewer – I’m really grateful to the RASV for recognising gypsy brewers. To go from a place where I knew nobody in the industry, to the AIBA dinner the other week, I couldn’t fucking move because I know everyone now, and they are all my friends and colleagues, that’s so cool. I’m at a point where I can look back and go “fuck, I worked hard to get to that point”. So I feel a sense of accomplishment, but I’m not done yet. I’ve got more to go now, but I’m pretty stoked I got that. What’s the best thing about working in the brewing industry? I get to work with my friends. Because I don’t have any friends outside of beer. No, that’s not true. Well it’s kind of true. It’s a collaborative, competitive industry. There’s room for so many brewers and players within the industry. We’re like kids playing in the sandpit, but the sandpit is constantly growing. Is there anything about the industry you’d like to change? I would like beer-loving public to start to educate themselves more and appreciate that beer is perishable and needs to be consumed as fresh as possible. It’s all good and well to buy a beer that’s the latest thing, and particularly if it’s a hoppy beer, and go an stick an IPA in your beer cellar at room temperature for six months and then drag it out and go and drink it, and brag to your friends, and go “this is awesome!” No it’s not, it’s fucked! It was gone three months ago. It’s only 90-120 days that the product lasts. I don’t pasteurise or filter the beer, and the downside of that is that it just doesn’t last as long on the shelf. So you’ve gotta drink it fresh. The other thing I’d like to change is the biggest inhibitor to the growth of the industry, which is the excise requirements. I don’t have a problem with excise, we have a responsibility as a producer of alcohol, I get that. But I think there needs to be some federal assistance for small brewers starting out, they need some help getting started. What plans do you have for the next year? I’ve just completed my 2017 financial year plan, I've got a few rereleases and at least five brand new beers in there as well. I’ve also completely redesigned Spoiler Alert Pale Lager from the ground up. I really love lager, I think done properly it can be really cool. So I’ve rewritten the Spoiler Alert recipe, it’s the way I wanted it to be in the first place. I tried to make an oldworld lager with old-world hops like Sars and Hallertau, but do you know what, I’m just not fucking good at that shit, so I’ve just made a lager the way that I want to make a lager and just threw the style guide out the window. So it’s got lots of Nelson Sauvin and Chinook and Cascade and Galaxy in it. Your dad helps make your tap decals, does he like your beer? My dad only likes dark beer, so he every time I see him he says, “When are you going to make a dark beer?” My dad’s got an epiphany beer – it’s the Mikkeller Beer Geek Brunch Weasel Bourbon-Barrel edition. He was in town with my brother and my stepbrother and we all went to dinner at the Local Taphouse in St Kilda, and we had a meal and a dessert and I said [to the bartender] “What do you have for a dessert beer”. And they said “I’ve got the right beer. It’s the Mikkeller Beer Geek Brunch Weasel Bourbon-Barrel edition.” It’s an imperial stout infused with the world’s most expensive coffee from the civet cats who eat it and poop it out and then they aged it in the bourbon barrels from three months. My dad had been drinking beer all night, hates hoppy beer, just couldn’t find a beer that he liked. He got this beer and his eyes just lit up and he said, “Son, I get what you’re doing now.” And I went: “Thank you.” FROTH CRAFT CRAFTBEER BEERMAG MAG 212 FROTH

HUNGOVER GAMES By Bel Smith

Hangovers – they’re the worst. With last night’s joyous boozy haze nary but a faint and slightly nauseating memory, you wake feeling sleepy, sick and stupid, with a headache that seems to transcend dimensions. The medical term for an alcohol hangover, apparently, is my new favourite word: veisalgia (from kveis, which is Norwegian for “uneasiness after debauchery” and algia, Greek for “pain or grief”). But what is it about booze that really punishes us the next day? No one really knows for sure, but there are plenty of labs sciencing away to try to get to the bottom of “the morning after”. Here are a few explanations for the barrage of shitful symptoms you might wake with. A STRAIN ON YOUR MEMBRANE (A STRAIN ON YOUR BRAIN!) Let’s start with that headache – it feels like a clamp squeezing the shit out of your brain. Dehydration, unsurprisingly, is the primary culprit here. But how can you be dehydrated after drinking litres of delicious beery fluid the night before? A pea-sized blob under your brain called the pituitary gland usually pumps out a hormone called vasopressin into your blood. Vasopressin is an antidiuretic; in other words, it tells your kidneys to chill and retain water. But when you have a few boozy drinks, the pituitary gland turns that vasopressin tap off. With less vasopressin in your blood, your kidneys work harder and you pee more – commonly known as breaking the seal. Hours later, you’re sprawled facedown across your bed. As the alcohol you’ve drunk is broken down by your liver, your pituitary gland resumes its usual service. But now your body has less water to work with, and you’re not going to replenish those stocks while you’re out cold. It needs to prioritise where that remaining water goes –

and your brain is not high on that list. You might’ve heard the brain is about three-quarters water by weight. When some of that sweet sweet H2O is sucked out and redirected elsewhere, your brain shrinks like a sponge drying in the sun.

“Your brain shrinks like a sponge drying in the sun” To stop it rattling around, our grey matter is anchored by a network of membranes that connect to the skull. But when your brain shrinks, it pulls on those membranes – and this creates that crushing pain. (It’s not from the brain itself, as there are no pain receptors there.) And when you wake with that dry mouth that feels like it’s loaded with sand? That’s your body’s way of demanding water. Paying for an IV drip, and getting that fluid straight in the vein, is probably only worthwhile if you can’t hold any water down.

I’M WITH STUPID Feel a bit dopey and down when you’re hungover? You’re not alone. Hangovers really do affect how well you think and feel emotionally. In 2013, UK psychologists subjected hungover people to a battery of cognitive tests (poor buggers) and found they made around 30% more mistakes than their chirpy, hangoverfree counterparts. The problem: working memory, which manipulates information and makes decisions, is impaired with a hangover. Strangely, your immune system might be partially to blame for this one. When your body is invaded by pathogens, white blood cells release molecules called cytokines into your bloodstream – kind of a message system to rouse the rest of the immune army into action. Healthy people injected with cytokines produce symptoms such as nausea, fatigue and memory loss. Sound familiar? A Korean study in 2003 found having a hangover coincided with more cytokines in blood. And just this year, a German study showed those pesky

cytokines can tinker with the part of your brain that makes new memories, including emotional ones, and create depressive symptoms in mice. THE SPEWS AND THE SWEATS As your liver dutifully processes alcohol, a by-product is acetaldehyde, which is estimated to be up to 30 times as toxic as alcohol itself. Given to healthy people, it produces vomiting and sweating.

DO CERTAIN DRINKS AMPLIFY HANGOVERS? A popular idea is that certain drinks will give you a worse hangover the next day – bourbon is worse than vodka, for instance, or white wine will leave you better off than red. Only a few studies have looked at the role of congeners, molecules naturally produced in fermentation, which are found in highest levels in bourbon and lowest in vodka. But a 2010 review of the research found there’s little evidence for the congener theory. The amount of alcohol you drink is a much better indicator of hangover strength. So if you’re in the 23% of the population who doesn’t seem to suffer hangovers, good for you (and go to hell). But if, like me, you regularly wake in a world of pain, I’ll walk you through hangover “cures” next issue – and dispel a few myths while I’m at it.

A sweet collaboration involving new Collingwood brewery Stomping Ground proved that beer ice-cream is not just the stuff of daydreams. The origin of ice-cream makers Billy van Creamy can be traced back to a clink of beers in a Fitzroy North bar. Over a few tasty froths, brothers Mitch and Alex Wells decided to pack in their 9-to-5 corporate jobs and

Words by Kieran Stenson

WHY DOES EVERYTHING HURT? Recharging electrolytes with sports drinks is a common habit after exercise, but as to whether they work for hangovers, the jury’s out. Some people can have perfectly normal salt levels in their blood yet still have a killer hangover. The water in sports drinks, or that you dissolve electrolyte tablets in, are probably doing you more good. Some scientists think muscle aches are due to spikes and dips in your blood sugar levels when drinking. If you drink alcohol with sugar, a molecule called lactate is released into your bloodstream. That, in turn, is metabolised by your poor old liver to produce lactic acid – the same stuff that gives you muscle soreness and stitches.

COOL IDEA

launch their own business making gelato and sorbets. Mitch said they had watched the growing food truck mania and noticed a lack of dessert options. They decided to plug this gap by launching a quality gelato truck that would stand out against a fleet of “creepy Mr Whippy vans”. After 18 months of late-night experimentation they locked down some flavours and quit their jobs, hitting the streets in a converted truck in January 2015. Passionate about quality, the brothers make all their gelato and sorbets themselves with fresh produce sourced from local businesses. The boys came full circle from their beery moment of inspiration by collaborating with Stomping Ground Brewing Co, Collingwood’s newest brewery run by the guys behind GABS and the Local Taphouse. After tasting the Stomping Ground beer range, they devised four flavours of ice cream: a

stout gelato, beer malt gelato, peach sour sorbet and Berliner weisse sorbet. The stout gelato rolls around the tongue with a burst of creaminess, fading away to a rich and smoky flavour as the kick of the stout comes through. The beer malt gelato is the pick of the bunch, made by steeping a bag of Stomping Grounds’ malt of choice in hot milk before running it through the gelato machine. It is balanced, subtle and inexplicably comforting. The sorbets are refreshing and highlight the fruity bases of the beers they were made from. The weisse has a phantom tingle of carbonation that tickles the palate.

“a stout gelato, beer malt gelato, peach sour sorbet and Berliner weisse sorbet.” Served up at GABS in Melbourne in May, the tasty collaborations received rave reviews with punters queuing up for a taste. After selling out halfway through the weekend, Alex Wells was back in the kitchen late at night cooking up another batch. It’s looking like the next chance hopheads will have for a taste could come when Stomping Ground open their 250-person bar, restaurant and beer garden in June/July. There is talk of Billy van Creamy supplying some dessert offerings for the joint. Regardless, the brothers are keen to hit the festival again next year with some new ideas.

Find out more at billyvancreamy.com.au and stompingground.beer FROTH CRAFT BEER MAG

ON DOCTOR’S ORDERS

Squid ink, wasabi, yams and rhubarb. Over the years, Darren “Doc” Robinson has added some strange ingredients to his beers. He’s the one-man brewing operation (pun intended) behind Doctor’s Orders, a Sydney-based brewery renowned for creating unique, thought-provoking and sometimes downright crazy styles of beer. “Every craft brewery had their pale, pils, amber and stout. I wanted to do what others weren’t,” says Doc. When asked to choose the weirdest thing he’s added to a beer, the answer doesn’t come easy. “Probably the combination of Atlantic red seaweed, porcini smoked salt and squid ink that went into the Marine Gose [Mutagenic Cephalopod] we made for GABS this year. Oh wait, quinine powder for bittering in the Tonic Beer we did with Yeastie Boys and Wheaty Brewing Corps a few years ago. Oh, or the Atom collaboration last year [Isotope], with bog myrtle.” Doc learned his trade through home brewing, with a system given to him by his mother-in-law for Christmas in 1999. “My non-beer

drinking wife still reminds me that it’s all her fault for where I am now!” Ten years later, he won a home brew competition at the Schwarz Hotel (now the Sydney Brewery, based in the Hunter Valley). The win gave him the opportunity to commercially brew his winning beer, a chocolate hazelnut porter named Secret Squirrel. It was released two days into a heatwave at the end of a long and cold winter. “Craft beer drinkers loved it. Traditional beer drinkers hated it,” he says. With a full-time job in IT and a group of generous friends (including The Australian Brewery, Nomad Brewing Co, Rocks Brewing Co and Young Henrys), Doc has never found the time nor the need to invest in his own brewery. He’s affectionately referred to as a “cuckoo brewer” – just as the bird takes over the nests of others to lay eggs, he takes over the brewery of a friend to make his beer. Since 2011, Doctor’s Orders core range has consisted of four seasonal beers – Prescription 12 (Belgian Black IPA), Zephyr (Double White Ale), Iron Lung (Black Imperial Pilsner) and Plasma (White IPA). Autumn 2016 saw a change to the core range with the release of Anaphylaxis, a manukasmoked black IPA with chipotle. (Try saying that five times fast!) This winter, Plasma will also be retired, as Iron Lung was for autumn. “The working name of the new beer is Saccharophobic. It’s a salted caramel brown ale, where I’m also gently smoking the salt with whisky barrel apple wood.” Aside from the core range, Doc has also taken part in a variety of limited-release collaborations.

“Each is unique in their own right, but the one that stands out the most is the Sixpoint collaboration a few years ago,” says Doc. “I was waiting for co-founder Shane at the airport at 6am on brew day, but he never arrived. He’d missed his flight, because he’d been admitted to hospital with a concussion after a motorcycle accident.” That didn’t stop him taking part in the brew day shenanigans, though. “We made a mask of his face and put it on the assistant brewer to act as Shane. We sent him pictures and videos throughout the day, as he lay in his hospital bed.”

“Doc learned his trade through home brewing, with a system given to him by his mother-in-law” More collaboration beers are due to be released in the near future, including the second incarnation of Dr Funk, with Funk Estate in New Zealand. “We’ll be brewing that when I’m over there for GABS Auckland. It’ll come in 330 mL cans and should hit Oz shores in late July/early August.” Also making its triumphant return at the end of June is Dr Shedlove 2016, which last year featured sweet potatoes. “This year, it features taro and yams as the root vegetables. They were a pain in the ass to deal with!” Unlike last year’s release, it will be come in smaller, 330 mL bottles: “640 mL was just too big for this beer.” Obey Doctor’s Orders by grabbing a beer, the tastiest of all medicines, in bottle or on draught nationwide. doctorsordersbrewing.com

Words by Marie Claire Jarratt (newsouthales.com) / Photography by Marie Claire Jarratt and Bryn Price (Blue Doors Studio), used with permission FROTH CRAFT BEER MAG

COUNTRY PUB OF THE MONTH: HARGREAVES HILL By Emily Day

WINE NOT

The Yarra Valley is now a destination for beer fans The best thing about living in Melbourne is that you can drive for an hour and get to really cool places. Jump in a car (preferably someone else’s, so you can drink) and head north-east to the Yarra Valley, renowned for its wineries and cheese and other yummy things but also its burgeoning brewery scene. The Yarra Valley boasts Napoleone Brewery and Ciderhouse, Buckley’s Brewery, Coldstream Brewery, Public Brewery and Riders Brewing – as well as St Ronan’s Cider, Kelly Brothers Cider and Four Pillars Gin Distillery. Basically enough booze to get you really shit-faced in one day, so we took it easy and headed out for a delicious lunch at one awesome venue – Hargreaves Hill in Yarra Glen. Hargreaves’ original brewery was destroyed in the devastating 2009 bushfires that ravaged the region, and they had to use other facilities until they were able to set up their new brewhouse in Lilydale. Their restaurant is located in a beautiful old building, creamy white like a wedding cake, adorning the main street of the lovely town of Yarra Glen. The historic building was a bank in the olden days, and there are photographs inside on the walls of how it used to look in that bygone era. The cosy interior is an inviting balance of old-fashioned and modern, with several dining rooms to choose from with multiple fireplaces and a menu serving up delicious cheffy food, like pub grub but a little bit more special. It’s lunchtime but before we eat we’re pretty keen to try some beers,

"THE COSY INTERIOR IS AN INVITING BALANCE OF OLD-FASHIONED AND MODERN" so we order a paddle and taste their pale ale, golden ale, hefeweizen, ESB (delicious), IPA and stout. The food options are delectable and include burgers (even a veggie burger – yay!), fish of the day, etc etc Hargreaves are pretty keen to use local produce and ingredients that complement the brewery’s beers and malts. The brewery director, Simon Walkenhorst, is particularly interested in American brewing techniques and as a result, the menu features US-style dishes such as a 10-hour house-smoked Texas dry-rubbed brisket, and the smoky black-eyed bean, caramelised onion and walnut burger with sweet potato fries (pictured). The restaurant even smokes some of the ingredients with applewood from nearby Candlebark Farm. Owner and general manager Beth Williams says: “We’ve designed a well-rounded experience for our guests that we’re really pleased with. We have included vegetarian, vegan and gluten-free dishes so that we can cater for a range of diets and, have worked closely with local suppliers to bring you the best quality ingredients from the region.” If you’re coming for a beer and a snack, the menu includes a selection of treats including ESB-battered onion rings; sharing plates such as smoky chicken and chorizo tacos, larger plates featuring a 21-day dry-aged Black Angus rib-eye, four-hour slow-roasted pork belly, as well as sides and sweets. The service is lovely and the fireplace behind us encourages us to relax and order dessert – one each of course, none of this sharing nonsense. We get a bowl of mini cinnamon doughnuts with ice cream, and the decadent triple chocolate brownie (pictured) with a bourbon caramel sauce, matched with the Hargreaves Hill stout. I’m not sure

how to describe how awesome this was, except to say that I definitely didn’t need dinner that day. While a trip to the Yarra Valley seems synonymous with sunshine and summertime, the region is putting on some special events in July known as “Gumboot Season” to encourage punters to don their wellies and head out for fun family events such as gumboot-throwing competitions, a gumboot sprint and a series of dinners which focus on people in the region who wear wellies to work. So forget about the cold, put on your beanie and scarf and head out to Hargreaves Hill. Avoid designated driver dilemmas by booking a brewery tour – there are several companies who offer tours to the Yarra Valley, such as Aussie Brewery Tours (aussiebrewerytours. com.au) and Melbourne Brewery Tours (melbournebrewerytours.com.au).

Hargreaves Hill: 25 Bell St, Yarra Glen VIC 3775 Phone: (03) 9730 1905 / hargreaveshill.com.au FROTH CRAFT BEER MAG

SH*T MY MUM SAYS ABOUT

Silvia Day reviews some of the tastiest beers in Western Australia. For a long time we have been told about Margaret River by many people, all telling us how great it is and how fantastic the wineries are etc etc. So, finally, we went. The weird thing is, we didn’t make it to a single winery, unless that winery was part of a brewery. However, we made it to a hell of a lot of breweries – far more than I intended to! We started in Fremantle, then wound (literally, as the GPS in the hire car often misled us and made us go around in circles a few times until we ignored it and found our way out of the maze it created) our way south til we eventually reached that until now, elusive paradise! What did we do along the way? Tasted beers of course! If only I could write about the breweries themselves instead of the beers – the idyllic locations, the grand buildings, the beautiful gardens & lakes. Each time you stopped at a brewery, you would think you were revisiting Tarrawarra 1. EAGLE BAY BREWERY / at Eagle Bay just north of Dunsborough 1. Kolsch: 4.7% Pale golden, clear colour; less bitter than expected; a bit of a light fruity flavour and not as bad as it could be for a beer. 2. Vienna Lager: 4.9% Nice amber colour. I can’t taste any sweetness, but the slight bitter taste in the back of the throat does not linger too long. Drinkable! 3. Mild Ale: 3.5% Also amber & not hoppy – just a tiny bit later on. Pure beer taste, no weird additions which is good for beer drinkers, not me! 4. Pale Ale: 5.1% This very pale beer is a beer lover’s beer, with the strong beery taste & another remaining taste of ? What? Yeast? Citrus? Both? It’s a beer! 5. Extra Special Bitter (ESB): 5.4% Reddish brown in colour and a strange toasted malty taste & a smell a bit like a musty fusty cupboard without the old lavender. Once again, the initial bitterness does not linger. Is it me or the beer? 6. Black IPA (Brewers Series): 5.5% Very dark brown, almost black. It is very hoppy & bitter which removes any hints of those supposed coffee, caramel & cacao tastes although there is a hint of liquorice & a very subtle hidden creaminess. Too bitter for me. 7. Cacao Stout (Autumn Brewers Series): 5.3% It is a very black, & supposedly chocolate & coffee & berry tasting, if you have such taste buds which obviously I don’t. Not quite as bitter as the Black IPA, but still too beery! 2. BLACK BREWING CO. / Caves Rd, Wilyabrup 1. Rice Rager Lager: 4.8% Very pale & clear & not hoppy, so no bitter aftertaste, maybe because they use rice. A bit of a malty, yeasty taste & a bit sour like a lemonade. 2. Fresh Ale: 4.6% Even paler than the lager! A little hoppy & leaves a bit of an aftertaste, but not too much & it is slightly citrusy. 3. Milk Stout: 4.5% Dark as a Guinness, this is a session stout (you can drink more as it has less alcohol!) It smells a bit like a caramel toffee and it isn’t too hoppy or bitter, but I’m not too keen on it as it tastes like beer!

museum or going to those flash wineries in the Yarra Valley. They were definitely different to the Melbourne & Sydney CBD breweries!! Ok, stop procrastinating Silvia & do your job! I’ve been a little bit more nervous doing my beer tastings lately because many brewers now seem to want me to try their beers while they stand beside me, watching expectantly for my reactions, whereas not so long ago, I could just go & sit at a table somewhere in a corner, & I could sip & scribble notes in complete anonymity. Oh well, such is life! However, may I add that at every brewery, we met the most wonderful brewers & other people who worked there. They were all very lovely, which can be embarrassing for a non-beer-lover like me! Oh, and somehow, along the road back to the airport, we managed to end up in the Swan Valley, north-east of Perth to do yet another beer tasting at Feral Brewery.

Silvia enjoys a delicious beer at Eagle Bay Brewing.

3. BOOTLEG BREWERY / Puzey Rd, Wilyabrup 1. Grain Cru Porto Cherise: 6.1% Mahogany colour, Sour cherry taste, creamy like a cherry brandy & no strong, bitter aftertaste. Nice!! I only did one beer here as I think I’ve had too many already and I have one more to do today. The rest tomorrow! 4. CHEEKY MONKEY / Caves Rd, Wilyabrup 1. Blonde Capuchin: 4.9% It’s a very clear, pale wheat beer, not very hoppy, nor a strong aftertaste, but still a beer! 2. Hat Seller Kiwi Pilsner: 4.8% Also a pale, gold colour but a bit more of a hit with the hops. 3. Travelling Monk: 3.5% Amberish brown, but not really dark, with a burnt creamy taste like something’s gone wrong when cooking a dessert in the oven. There is a bitter aftertaste, but where’s the promised chocolate? 4. Hagenbeck Belgian IPA: 5.8% Another pale gold beer, but not quite as clear as the first 3, & it is a bit fizzy. A yeasty taste & smell & a bit citrusy with a strange strongly bitter aftertaste which is not my cup of tea. 5. Southern Wailer: Brewers Special 5.6% Very black, strange smell & taste – cough medicine? Charcoal? But doesn’t last long in the back of the throat because it is a wheat beer! Still, it’s not for me!

WA CRAFT BEER 5. BREWHOUSE / Margaret River 1. Il’s Pils: 4.5% Pale golden colour, slightly fizzy & a bit hoppy with a creamy taste. 2. Bastard Brown: 4.5% A golden brown colour, but not clear. It’s a bit thick & sweet, but still bitter! 3. Coupan: 8.3% Dark colour, creamy, malty taste with a hint of cough drops & liquorice & a bitterness that does not last long! 4. Kuttback Kolsch: 4.5% Very pale & fizzy, tastes like a lemonade beer. Not too bitter. It is a blander taste, but could I get used to it? Not sure. 5. Black Duck Lager: 4.8% A clear light golden colour, with a less hoppy taste than the last one, thus making this more drinkable, which confuses me as the Kolsch is supposed to be more drinkable!

perth perth

yellingup yellingup wilyabrup wilyabrup

baskerville, baskerville, swan swanvv alley alley

fremantle fremantle

6. COLONIAL BREWING CO. / Margaret River 1. Draught Kolsch Ale: 4.8% Golden, fizzy, clear, tastes a bit like an orange with a little bitterness in the back of the mouth which doesn’t last long. Drinkable? Possibly. 2. Gary’s Darkest Hour: 4.8% Very dark with a strong liquorice or aniseed taste which leaves a strange, longer lasting taste than the bitterness of the hops! 3. Colonial Wheat Beer: 5% Pale, fizzy, bit of a hoppy hit but doesn’t last long, so that the original beer taste morphs into a herb stock taste with a hint of yeast? 4. Colonial Pale Ale: 5.2% Golden brown, slight hoppy taste & slightly sour – peppery? plum? Also some herby taste. A beer that real beer lovers would like more than I do. 5. Small Ale: 3.5% Fizzy, but a lovely, clear, golden colour. Citrusy taste, but the slight bitterness lingers for a long time!

eagle eaglebay bay

7. BEER FARM / Gale Rd Metricup 1. Reverse Filtered Lager: 4.5% Light gold, nearly see through, strange empty taste, no hoppy after taste therefore drinkable. 2. Australian Bitter: 4% Clear & golden, no strong bitter taste, but a bit yeasty or herby. “Sessionable” which apparently means you can drink a lot of it and not get drunk! 3. Milk Stout: 6% Very dark with a slightly sour taste that’s not citrusy, but lasts as an aftertaste which overshadows any hoppy taste. Maybe the sugar fends it off! 4. Western Cider: 4.8% Pale beige, not totally clear, sweet apple taste – no hops! Yum! 5. Hop in Cider: 4.8% Pale beige as well, but can see through it and smells like fresh mown grass & some herb – not sure which. Not much bitterness & no aftertaste, despite the hops! Hang on, the last 2 are not beers! I have been tricked!! Now I like Cider? 8. FERAL BREWING CO. / Baskerville, Swan Valley 1. Watermelon Warhead: 2.9% Pale, a bit cloudy, mixture of slightly sour taste, hint of watermelon & white wine as well. Strange, but different! 2. Hop Hog: 5.8% A real beer taste & colour – complete with the bitter aftertaste! 3. Funk’n Phresh: 7.8% Dark browny gold colour with a wet dog smell. A creamy taste a bit like a wet sock. Is that the barrel? Not a pretty taste!!

dunsborough dunsborough

22 33 44

metricup metricup

77 55

margaret margaret river 66 river

(SILVIA DAY’S ACTUAL HANDWRITING)

Ok, that’s enough tasting for now. I am not sure if most breweries in this area concentrate on less hoppy beers, or the lovely people there give me such beers to taste, or I am just getting used to beers overall! I shall have to keep experimenting to solve this conundrum. FROTHCRAFT CRAFTBEER BEERMAG MAG 272 FROTH

BEER LABEL OF THE MONTH

Dainton Family Brewing Manhattan Ale I’ve long been a fan of Dainton Family Brewing beers and their slightly off-kilter labels. They first came to my attention with their Red Eye Rye. The original label was a bit odd and was basically a one‑eyed dude holding a one‑eyed cat. A truly strange label for a truly great beer. But enough histrionics. We’re here to celebrate our latest entry into the Beer Label of the Month hall of fame. This month it is Dainton’s Manhattan Ale. In its early life, the Manhattan Ale was a joint venture with The Everleigh bar in Fitzroy that aimed to recreate the classic Manhattan cocktail as a beer. The original labelling was very simple but considered, with a beautifully traditional typography style that lent itself to the era of bootlegging in the swinging ’30s. When Dainton decided to add the beer to their specialty range, a redesign seemed only logical. The label revamp was “meticulously” art directed by head brewer Dan Dainton, whose instructions to his designer was to “Chuck a skull on it”. Which in essence is what you see today. The original typography has been given a hefty upgrade with subtle textures and patterning added and, of course, an appropriately moustachioed skeleton knocking back a cocktail to cement the Dainton brand. The design is darker and more striking but still captures the essence of the original. According to Dainton’s designer, “the inspiration for the typography and patterning came from some truly amazing vintage map covers from the late 1800s in a bid to compliment a beer best sipped through a waxed moustache in an old‑timey gentleman’s club”. This unique style reminds me of street artist Shepard Fairey’s work, and the new label perfectly balances the bootlegging era with a slightly insidious graffiti/comic style. To top it off, each bottle is sealed with wax to help ram home that extra fancy feel in a way only Dainton Brewing can. Top marks! Words by Matthew Mister @amouseinthefield

FROTH CRAFT BEER MAG

BAR OF THE MONTH: MARKOV

By Emily Day

HITS THE MARK Froth discovers Carlton’s best-kept craft beer secret

This classy Carlton bar has been on our radar for our few years but we’ve never been inside, maybe worrying it might be a little too upmarket, or more focused on wine than beer (eek). However, curiosity finally got the better of me and I worked up the courage to push open the door, walk through the front room, down the stairs and into what turned out to be a crafty paradise. Behind the unassuming frontage is a spacious bar with a pretty sweet tap list and a menu featuring hearty mains and snacks that pair well with beer. Blackboards feature the latest tap beers, which when we visited included Feral, Bridge Road, Kaiju!, Hargreaves Hill, Hawkers and Boatrocker. The space itself is pretty cool – it’s got a renovated warehouse feel with a chilled-out, unpretentious vibe. The staff are super friendly and ready to chat about beer (for non-beer drinkers, the wine list was also excellent).

BARTENDER OF THE MONTH JAMES BEATTIE (JIM) FROM GRAIN & GRAPE, MOORABBIN How long have you worked at Grape & Grain? I have just celebrated my one-year anniversary here at the "G". I now have tenure! Have you worked at many different bars? I've had many a hospo gig around this fair city of ours, including but not limited to the Portsea Hotel, The Royston, Two Brothers Brewery, Moon Dog, and America's greatest cultural achievement, T.G.I. Fridays (not my finest moment). What do you like about working at Grape & Grain? Where do I start! Grape & Grain is like a speakeasy, bottle shop, bar and now micro-brewery all rolled into one. It gives me access to an incredible range of beer from all over the world in a relaxing, unpretentious environment. It's even dog and kid-friendly! [Owners] John Tei and Mark Storrs have really nailed the concept in an area that was starving for such a venue. The staff and the customers are often on a first-name basis and love to shoot the breeze about life's big questions and, of course, beer. It's like an Australian take on the TV show Cheers.

A stone’s throw away from Lygon Street and Cinema Nova, and a short walk from Melbourne University, this is the perfect bar for a drink before a movie, or to go to grab a yummy dinner. The food is slightly more upmarket than the inner north’s usual deep-fried hipster fare, with dishes including pan-fried snapper fillets with watermelon, chickpeas and mint; mussels with tomato and chilli jam, coconut cream and coriander; wagyu burger; steak and sticky lamb ribs. Beer snacks include shoestring fries with aioli; potato and cheddar croquettes; spiced fried nuts; and corn on the cob with cayenne mayo. The budget-conscious are also well served, with Happy Hour between 5-6pm every Thursday and Friday, a free pint with a porterhouse steak on Wednesday, and a $15 deal on Tuesday which includes burger, chips and a pot of beer. (We’d love to know if the bar is named after Russian mathematician Andrey Markov, who came up with the “Markov chain” – a random process that undergoes transitions from one state to another. The Markov chain must possess a property usually characterised as “memorylessness”: the probability distribution of the next state depends only on the current state and not on the sequence of events that preceded it. Sounds like our typical Friday night.) MARKOV 350 Drummond St, Carlton VIC 3053 Ph: (03) 9347 7113 markov.com.au Mon-Thu: open from 5pm Fri: open from 12pm Sat: open from 3pm

What's the worst thing about working in a bar? There's not much I don't like about working a bar. Even the bad nights or crazy customers result in a great story to tell. If I had to choose one thing, it would probably be having to work whilst your non-hospo mates are out on the lash. What is your favourite beer you've had at G&G? That's like asking what's your favourite film or album without specifying a genre. I did enjoy Brew Dog's Dog D. It was decadent but very dangerous at 16.1%. If you weren't working at G&G you'd be ...? In a ditch or on a stage somewhere! Favourite bartending trick or tip? Develop a thick skin, a sense of humour and if possible obtain a psychology degree. What's your favourite style of beer? I love all the colours of the rainbow but I'm usually reaching for an IPA or a sour at the moment. Have you ever served anyone famous? I've served Lawrence Leung, Russell Gilbert, Eric Bana and the cast of The Fantastic Four. They were all lovely people! What's your strangest experience bartending? There are far, far too many to mention! Last week we had a gentleman in who claimed to be "Yahwey, the one and only adversary of Satan". He offered me $15 to advertise this fact to the general public. I told him I'd do it pro bono. He also claimed: he wrote Wonderwall in ’73, he was Jon Anderson the lead singer of "Yes", and that he invented the breathalyser! After realising he'd been drinking cough syrup from the bottle, my colleague Liam O'Hare and I decided it might be best to cut him off.

Showcasing the best of Australiaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s independent breweries

BonE NtheD Ihop GO

20 AUGUST 28 BREWERIES, 56 BEERS, NO WINE, NO CIDER tickets on sale from 1 june

www.bendigobeer.com

TIPS FOR HOME BREW BEGINNERS

Making beer at home can be as simple or complex as you choose, writes Alex Osborne. A love for beer is one of the most important factors for a home brewer. Daniel Parsons-Jones (known as the Reverend, as he spends his Sundays earnestly preaching home brew matters at Australian Home Brewing on Church Street, Richmond) got into home brewing because he loves the variety and complexity of beer. He also admits that part of its appeal was that “as a 20-year-old, it was a cheaper option than buying the commercial stuff”. There are home brew methods to suit all budgets and skills, starting with the fresh wort kits where the hard work is done for you, to allgrain brewing which involves time, effort and complex equipment. Fresh Wort Kits Fresh wort kits buy you about 15 litres of wort, the liquid extract produced from the mashing process. Essentially, it is a brew of unfermented beer made by a professional brewery to which you add water and yeast and allow to ferment. It is a cheap and easy option. Kit Brewing Kit brewing is the most common entry level to home brewing (think Coopers packs from the supermarket). The kit includes a can of malt extract syrup which you heat up in water, creating the wort. From there, the mixture goes into the fermenter with some yeast. It’s a simple process which can make some very drinkable beers. Extract Brewing With extract brewing, you have more options and gain a lot more control over the taste of the brew than with wort or kit brewing. Starting off with grains and hops, you steep these in water and then add the malt extract. This allows you to experiment with proportions and cooking times before the brew goes into the fermenter with

the yeast. If it seems a little daunting, there are many good extract recipe kits with simple directions to follow. So far, you can get away with only a fermenter and a pot or two, but the next level of home brewing, allgrain brewing, requires a few pieces of equipment, including a mash tun to break down starches into simple sugars and a lauter tun that allows the now-sugary liquid to drain. You may also need a hot liquor tank and a boiler. For those with limited space, the Grainfather is an all-grain system which combines all of these elements. All-Grain Brewing This is the most involved method of home brewing, but it allows the most flexibility and creativity. All-grain brewing is the closest method to how professional brewers make their beer. The process involves ‘mashing’ (extracting the sugars from grains by soaking them in water) which you then use to produce the wort by steeping with hops, before adding yeast. Brew in a Bag (BIAB) BIAB is a sub-variety of all-grain brewing. Instead of mashing in a separate vessel, it’s done directly in the brew pot, which is lined with a fine mesh bag filled with malt. After the wort is produced, the bag is removed from the pot and the brew continues in the normal fashion. This is a good method for those with limited space and resources. No matter what you choose to do, just remember that every major brewer started out making some very average beers. In the words of the Reverend, “It’s chasing the horizon: you’ll never get there, but you’ll see a lot on the way. It’s bloody fun.” Words by Alex Osborne

“No matter what you choose to do, just remember that every major brewer started out making some very average beers.” Home brew shops Australian Home Brewing 143 Church St, Richmond VIC 3121 Ph: (03) 9429 2066 liquorcraft.com.au Grain and Grape 5/280 Whitehall St, Yarraville VIC 3013 Ph: (03) 9687 0061 grainandgrape.com.au Home Make It 4/158 Wellington Rd, Clayton VIC 3168 Ph: (03) 9574 8222 265 Spring St, Reservoir VIC 3073 Ph: (03) 9460 2777 homemakeit.com.au Keg King 2/33-35 Smith Rd, Springvale VIC 3171 Ph: (03) 9011 1698 kegking.com.au Full Pint 11 Culverlands Street, Heidelberg West VIC 3081 Ph: 0434 026 346 fullpint.com.au The Brewer’s Den 253 Dorset Rd, Boronia VIC 3155 Ph: (03) 9761 1900 thebrewersden.com.au

WHY DRUNKS MAKE THE BEST POETS , OR SHOULD THAT BE THE OTHER WAY AROUND? People tend to think of poets as cafe creatures, a compound of caffeine and nicotine and black skivvies and maybe the occasional slice of sponge. Even the Melbourne Poets Union played into this stereotype when they called for an anthology of poems about coffee, wine and tea. But the association of poetry – and the arts more broadly – with beer and wine is much older than their association with coffee and tea. There are good reasons for having poetry at pubs, not the least for the way it introduces poets to ordinary people, and vice versa. It is true that these ordinary people may often be seen quickly exiting out the door once they discover a poetry reading is taking place, but hey, it’s better than nothing*. I often say that, if you can win over a room of drunks with your poetry, then you’re not doing too badly. That’s true, although alcohol can also have a way of taking wits away, first from the audience, then from the poet, so that the poet has to use up less of what little wit remains to impress their audience. The ancients appreciated alcohol all right; it’s well known that much of the philosophy of Socrates and Plato was cooked up at Athenian drinking parties. Across the Mediterranean, the Persians – when they weren’t attempting imperial wars – brought drinking into their politics in a big way: “It is also their general practice to deliberate upon affairs of weight when they are drunk; and then on the morrow, when they are sober, the decision to which they came the night before is put before them by the master of the house in which it was made; and if it is then approved of, they act on it; if not, they set it aside. Sometimes, however,

they are sober at their first deliberation, but in this case they always reconsider the matter under the influence of wine.” Herodotus, The Histories. This laudable approach – to consider decisions once while sober, and once while drunk – commends itself to modern politicians, of whom the tipsy Churchill, the yard-glass skolling Hawke, and the whisky-tippling FDR stand out as sterling modern examples. Speaking of politics, it is hardly any coincidence that many Melbourne pubs are named after politicians: the R J Hawke, The Curtin, there is even a hotel with an apparent American political name (The Lincoln). The Dan O’Connell, too, is named after a politician – the 19th-century Irish political leader known as “The Emancipator”. You can see his picture on the wall of the pub. Go into an Australian pub and you’ll find the architecture of the place cosying you into poetry, debate, conjecture, inebriated arguments. There are tables and enclaves for small gatherings and conspirators huddled over their drinks. (Whenever I see a group in a pub I instinctively feel they are fomenting another rum rebellion, even if they are actually discussing what happened on Hot Seat last night). There are rooms for separate parties and gatherings – in the bigger hotels, there are rooms on rooms on top of other rooms leading down to more rooms; Young and Jackson in the city is a good example of this. And even if you don’t find writers in pubs, they’ll find you - especially if you’re buying the next round. Lenny Lower wrote in Sydney pub The Criterion; Henry Lawson and members of the Push met in other Sydney hotels. Pubs

and sly grog shops were our original latte set; before the kaffeklatsch was the bierklatsch. Melbourne developed its own poetry culture; Shelton Lea read at the Perseverance and the Dan; the prophetically named Drunken Poet attracted readings, too; the first Passionate Tongues readings began at the Cornish Arms before moving to the Brunswick Hotel. Babble was at Bar Open before it (Babble) closed (the bar remains open)... Which takes us to the present, with the 22nd year of consecutive readings at the Dan O’Connell Hotel, every Saturday from 2-5 pm, and about time too, because after all that I need a drink. (Hey, typing is hard work). *Overheard outside the Brunswick Hotel one night: “It had better not be fucken poetry night.” Yes, it fucken was. Words by Timothy Train Illustration by Rocco Fazzari

BEER BALLADRY

Consternation By Timothy Train

Potation Potation Potation Potation Imbibulation Drink inhalation Potation Potation Collation Collation Collation Collation – Sensation. FRUSTRATION. Stirring from arctic refuge Calm contemplation – Realisation – Sensed from afar approached pursued Complete conturbation! Small congregation, Captured in bare hands cold against skin Clear communication, No-fuss oration Veil removed leaning toward intentions clear Sensationsensationsensationsensationsensationsensation Full approbation Aromas unleashed wilderness reaching out for alternate connection Quick visitation To the location I consume For utilisation – Occupation! Feel the presence (Frustration!) Occupation! Now together (Indignation!) Occupation Organic ruby fragments wash through golden hues an amber alliance Plus Regurgitation Tribes of essence And… Faecalisation. (Saxon exclamation!) Sensationsensationsensationsensationsensationsensation…. Quick cogitation Outside location Beer! It nice! It much good thing! For utilisation Make man happy! Make man sing! Quick relocation – Make man cry! But cry man good! Occupation Man in touch with feelings should! By small population Man drink beer – stay close at bar. For copulation. Him not drive home – him crash car. FRUSTRATIONFRUSTRATION Man keep friend – drink Coke – that sad Sensationsensationsensationsensationsensationsensation But man drink beer crash car THAT BAD. Utter desperation Man drink beer – discover – FIRE. Short meditation, Fire good – flame burning higher! Realisation – Man drink beer more him go jump-jump Unpeopled train station Flames burn botty him go thump-thump. DETERMINATION Man drink beer – discover fission No hesitation Atom split make much ignition! Quick relocation – Make good firework, man think – Some trepidation. Then go chunder in bar sink. No population? Man drink beer talk-talk with friend: No copulation? Discover way all war to end. No observation? Man drink beer more sleep then wake With animation Forget it all but head much ache. Depantsification Why man drink beer, wise ones say? From Earth and sky Libation libation Have fun more productive way! Planted Elation elation Beer cause problems problems wrong Cultivated Libation libation Wrongness bad bad last TOO LONG. Reanimated Elation elation Beer cause public health big debt – LOUD ULULATION Malcolm Turnbull much upset – Cracked and Busted Sensation Man choose work or education Internally combusted Sensation More fun than inebriation! Hot and Broken Sensation Beer mystic – ancient – also old. Chemically reacted Cessation. Tale begin in times untold. Previous form redacted What beer really, wise ones think? Awaiting reconstruction Utter negation. Who what when too much to drink? Complete termination. Beer! It nice! It much good thing! Gravity pulling towards me Gratification. Make man happy! Make man sing! Originally and finally Make man cry! But cry man good! Ready SUMMATION: URINATION. Man in touch with feelings should! For that liquid love

AN ESSAY ON BEER By Timothy Train

Raspberry Beer By David McKellar

Gravity Love by Sarah White

FROTH CRAFT BEER MAG

2 35

N WITH LUM O U C

WORTY LE NC

BAD ADVI CE

THE FROTH FUN PAGES

Dear Uncle Worty, So I went on a date with a guy who liked craft beer and he took me to a craft beer bar and I didn’t know what to say it was really embarrassing. Can you give me some tips on what to do to make this guy like me? Embarrassed, Eltham

Dear Embarrassed,

What are you – 15 years old? Did you not realise that this publication isn’t the beer equivalent of Dolly magazine and that I have absolutely no interest in who your latest crush is, even if it is Leonardo DiCapricciosa? Relationship advice, heck I’ll give anything a go… Was it really because of the craft beer bar that you didn’t know what to say? Or was it his dreamy eyes? Was it just because you are awkward in social situations? I often find myself on dates with women (well, I am a highly sought-after specimen) who don’t seem to say much and I mostly assume they don’t want to mention that there’s a chicken wing stuck in my beard or soup down the front of my Aran knit. Or maybe it’s just because

I can’t stop talking about myself and how I write a monthly column for a magazine soon to be bought out by News Corp (was I not supposed to say that?) Where am I going with this? Nowhere so let’s cut to the chase. Here are some of my favourite lines that women have said that impressed me: “The beer is better in America” “Why does the house brew here taste the same as most of the other house brews going around?” “Diacetyl? Diacetyl? You wouldn’t know what diacetyl is if someone spilled Crown Golden Ale and popcorn all over you in Gold Class!” “This beer tastes like Enya” “Has anyone ever told you you look like Dave from The Terminus?” “Hey look, it’s Dave from The Terminus!” Hope that helps, Worty

MOSTLY BEER QUIZ

5. According to the popular song written by Merle Travis, if you loaded 16 tons, what would you get? 6. Which Queensland brewery took out the People’s Choice award at the Melbourne GABS festival in May? 7. Mismatch Brewing made an IPA for GABS which was inspired by which classic cocktail?

1. Which country does Sriracha hot sauce come from?

8. What does balter mean? a) to dance artlessly, without

2. Which country is Renaissance Brewing from?

particular grace or skill b) to buy and sell horses b) to tip out

3. Before starting BrewCult, what kind of product did brewer

the dregs in your beer glass c) to make bad jokes while drunk

Hendo make with his brother? a) raspberry kombucha

9. What is the word for the scummy layer which forms on top

b) vinegar c) apple cider d) knitted baby clothes

of some beers during fermentation? a) pellicle b) peloton

4. Boatrocker Brewing made a Belgian Style Spiced

c) pelican d) Cardinal George Pell

Blonde Ale called Epice, which means what in French?

10. In which country did fortune cookies originate?

F R O T H W O R D CRAFTYCOMIC

Artwork by Michael Alesich (Instagram: @ironoak) Pick the brewery and beer pictured for the chance to win a prize! Email your answer to frothbeermag@gmail.com The winner will be drawn at the end of the month. 25 Bowral brewery named for porcine aviation (4,3) Down 1 Australian colloquial term for a hospitality worker who collects glassware (7) 2 Larval pest which attacks 4-down (6) 4 Popular alternate brewing grain, especially in Germany... (5) 5 .. and the container those Germans would drink from (5) 6 Melbourne brewery run by Mia Piechocinski, _ Green (6) 8 Cider made by Kaiju! brewery, Golden _ (3) 11 Strongly hopped style of pale ale brewed for the subcontinent (1.1.1) 13 Beverage container that some complain alters the taste of the beer (3) 15 Common promotional item distributed by breweries to be worn by enthusiasts (6)

17 Scottish actor with more than one beer named after him (7) 18 Bar promotional event, where female patrons pay less, immortalised in song by Kool and the Gang, _ night (6’) 19 Animal whose prized excreted coffee beans have been used in brewing (5) 20 Plural noun for a group of ale brewers (5) 21 Video game system that featured the game Tapper, in which you play an overworked bartender (1.1.1)

ISSUE 7 FROTHWORD ANSWERS Across 1 Blackmans 7 Curtin 8 Stouts 11 Hallucinogens 12 Storm 14 Heman 16 Policeofficer 18 Radios 20 Jewish 21 Eightball Down 1 Bacchus 2 Aprilfoolsday 3 Kaiju 4 Nos 5 Deusexmachina 6 Lysis 9 Tooth 10 Bigfoot 13 Micro 15 Narwhal 16 Parma 17 Fleet 19 Ski

MOSTLY BEER QUIZ ANSWERS

Across 1 Reusable large personal beer container (7) 3 Another name for beer jugs (5) 7 Beer with a darker coppery tone (5) 9 Brewing project in West Melbourne (4) 10 The process by which solids settle to the bottom of kegs and bottles (13) 12 European scale used to indicate colour in malts and beers (1.1.1.) 14 Chemical that emerges during fermentation that produces a fruity flavour (5) 16 Anchor brewing company acronym (1.1.1.) 19 John Candy’s final film, in which he kicks off a war with Canada by insulting their beer (8,5) 22 Victorian brewery based in Willunga (4) 23 An Icelandic brewery recently produced a smoked beer containing this part of a male whale (8) 24 American wheat beer produced by NZ’s Garage Project featuring a raccoon on the label, White _ (5)

FROTH CRAFT BEER MAG

37 35

Brewing 7 Negroni 8 a) to dance artlessly, without particular grace or skill 9 a) pellicle 10 The USA 1 Vietnam 2 New Zealand 3 b) vinegar 4 Spice 5 Another day older and deeper in debt 6 Bacchus

DEVASTATINGLY GOOD VICTORIAN BEER K A IJ U B EER . CO M . AU