Small World

In these enlightened times, to discuss beers from overseas shouldn’t be some sort of holiday reverie when stockists are being shirt fronted by customers about the changing taste of their favourite lager from Europe. In fact, I was recently corrected by a brewery head when referring to them as imported beers when the ‘correct tagging’ is international beers. Apart from the bloke who wants to re-live a vacation experience, customers in the bottle shops are a savvy bunch who knows what they like and how they like it. So when the major breweries of Europe start brewing their products here in Australasia, the question of taste is expectantly put under the microscope.

We thought the best way to tackle the issue was asking the brewers themselves about why the likes of Heineken, Becks, Kirin Ichiban, Stella Artois, Tuborg, Carlsberg and Kingfisher are either brewed here or in New Zealand.

All the brewery reps we interviewed showed a straight bat in declaring the freshness of the product angle as the prime reason for brewing in Australia, and followed up with the inevitable ‘globalisation process’ typecast comment. But from the numerous emails I’ve received from loyal punters, the simple fact is that their favourite beer tastes different and they want to know why.

Brewmaster for Lion Nathan Australia Bill Taylor was somewhat bemused stating “I thought we addressed these issues in May of last year when we announced joint ventures with both Heineken and Becks with Lion Australia to bring the companies together in sales and distribution deals, involving the option to brew company brands in existing Lion Nathan Australia breweries by 1 July 2004.

The Heineken brewed in Australia is identical to the Heineken brewed in 90 countries across the world, and is unchanged to what has been brewed since Gerard Heineken perfected it in 1873.

The consistency of brew is possible because Heineken uses a proprietary brewing process, using special Heineken brewing equipment imported and installed here in Australia, a unique recipe which requires that all ingredients are imported, and are the same as those used in Holland, and of course the patented (and secret) Heineken A-type yeast.

The yeast used in Australia has been grown from exactly the same culture that has been used since 1873. Interestingly, the yeast was discovered by a pupil of the famous Louis Paster. It is the yeast that gives Heineken its flavour, but the yeast itself does not end up in the final product. The only ingredients in Heineken are a blend of four summer variety European grown hops, malted barley and purified water.

To ensure the process is strictly adhered to, a Dutch Mater Brewer works beside the Australian team who themselves have been fully trained in the exacting art of producing perfect Heineken. And to make absolutely certain, every local brew is sent to Holland for testing by Dutch Master Brewers before being released to the market. To date, every brew has exceeded the Dutch Master Brewer’s expectation of the taste of Heineken.

Locally produced Beck’s is brewed according to the German Purity Law of 1516 and using the same Beck’s approved malt, hops from the world famous Bavarian Hallertau region and, most importantly, the original, over 100-year-old cultivated Beck's yeast strain. Local water carbon filtered to the same purity standards that Beck’s use in Germany is also used and Lion Nathan have installed equipment to enable their brewers to faithfully reproduce the Beck’s process requirements.

Every brew of Beck’s made in Australia is dually verified and approved for sale by the Master Brewers in Germany and the Master Brewers here in Australia (who have worked beside their German counterparts to ensure consistency of product).To date, Lion Nathan’s systematic taste profiling systems have ensured all Beck’s brewed locally is absolutely consistent with the ideal Beck’s formulation and taste profile.

So why the beer would taste different? According to Bill Taylor, “Maybe the drinkers aren’t used to drinking fresh European beer. A beer that is a bit older can sometimes have a deeper flavour, less crisp, slightly oxidized taste profile the customer may have become accustomed to. In the end it’s an emotional response based on customer’s desire for authenticity. Beer drinkers have the right to choice and are entitled to buy what they want, but price doesn’t reflect how much it costs to produce.”

The Malt Shovel Brewery has been making Kirin Ichiban for a few years now after their James Squires Amber Ale began to be brewed at the Tooheys Plant in XXXXX, and a ‘gap appeared in the production/bottling run schedule allowing the Japanese dry lager to take up the slack. As Chuck Hahn explains it hasn’t been totally smooth sailing and adjustments have to be made, not a pleasant thought with the summer season upon us. “It takes up all my tanks for a month. The secondary fermentation needs to be held at 8 degrees for 10 days and cuts back our capacity leading to brew house inefficiency. Plus, it costs me a $1000 a month to send back samples!”

We asked Jamie Cook, General Manager Premium & Specialty Beer of Foster Australia about brewing InBev favourite Stella Artois here in the Abbotsford, Victoria brewhouse. "Foster's Australia has been brewing Stella Artois draught for over 10 years, and we recently moved to local production of Stella Artois in pack.” Foster’s Australia moved to local production for two main reasons: First, brewing locally means we can deliver to consumers the best tasting, freshest Stella Artois available. Second, local production enables us to keep up with continued growth in consumer demand." Producing Stella Artois locally delivers to consumers the best tasting, freshest Stella Artois available. Foster's Australia has been producing Stella Artois draught for over 10 years. The same brew that is used in draught beer is used in Stella Artois in pack, so there is guaranteed taste consistency. The same brewing recipe is used locally as the imported product. Any noticeable difference in taste between previously imported and locally produced beer is because you are now being delivered fresher beer. Local production means we can keep up with consumer demand.

To finish up, I think the days are numbered for big breweries around the world to import their beer, and the ones that do will remain expensive and hard to find. A major plus for beer vs. wine debates is the fact you can relocate a brewery with relative ease. Water can be chemically altered to replicate the taste of any city in the world, while malts, hops and yeast can either be shipped cost effectively or reproduced locally.

Michael Comerton, The Words, Pictures and Directions Guy for Matilda Bay Brewing Co., was also a former employee of Guinness in Ireland. He related an interesting situation that arose for imported Guinness to the USA town of Denver which became known as ‘The Denver Effect’. The basic problem was that the atmospheric pressure in Denver is low due to the high altitude causes the stout to come out of the tap differently frothing (foaming) up all over the place. Now the gas in the Guinness kegs is a mix of nitrogen and carbon dioxide to give it that creamy dense head on the beer but because of the frothing, the gas mixed had to be altered. An interesting titbit to help us understand that local conditions can dramatically change your beer

Seasonal & Limited Release Beers

When I’ve queried brewers as to why we don’t see more new varieties of beer on the market, they inevitably blame the marketers who don’t want to waste their tight budgets on questionable products. This stiff upper lip mentality is softening with the success of specialty and limited edition premium beers. It provides an opportunity to test the waters without committing to a large advertising campaign. Without doubt seasonal and special edition beers are a favoured method of sales by small batch micro breweries, but the bigger boys are catching on to the benefits of short sharp beer launches.

A classic example of testing the market has been the summer seasonals by the Malt Shovel Brewery in Sydney. A Belgian styled white ale was launched in February 2000 called Summer Wheat. An orange and coriander flavoured wheat beer that had an amusing label and six-pack carton design which featured a duck flying overhead with an orange up it’s bum. Ten months later they changed the packaging under a Mad Brewers White Ale logo which featured an Australian white pointer shark. The Belgian whites achieved a fairly respectable sales levels, but not enough to halt another change, and two years later in November 2002 Malt Shovel announced their summer special James Squire Colonial Wheat, a German weizen styled wheat ale featuring banana and clover characters. As is the case of limited edition ales, another change occurred two years later, James Squire Summer Ale, this time an English styled ale. First brewed at the Portland Hotel in Melbourne, Golden Ale is 30% wheat with a good dollop of Amarillo hops late in the boil providing a stone fruit aroma and restrained bitter finish. Sales figures this year have been impressive but whether the Summer Ale will be around in 2005/2006 who knows. During the chilly season why not give their Australian Strong Ale a go. According to Chuck Hahn “ Last year we thought the brew was a bit to dark so we’ve gone back to the original recipe to include some carapils and dark crystal malts plus some fantastic Tasmanian Hallertau hops. The result is a smooth well balanced ale and at 6.8% A/V has no ethanol finish, almost to smooth.”

The Matilda Bay Brewing Company is another brew shop to catch the seasonal bug in a bottle. This winter look forward to a special Brewers Reserve six pack including three bottles of Alpha Pale Ale and Dogbolter Dark Lager. Alpha Pale Ale, along with Beez Neez honeyed wheat beer, has remained a part of the family since it’s origins at Sanctuary Cove, Queensland. This American styled pale ale is all about big cascade hopped flavour. Well balanced with a big citrus hop aroma, full malt character with a big bitter finish. “The Dog” has been an Aussie dark beer icon since it’s creation over in Freemantle in 1987 during the defence of the America's Cup when Matilda Bay was brewed at the Sail & Anchor Pub Brewery. Dogbolter is certainly a winter warmer with heaps of German Munich dark lager malt and Hersbrucker hops. Adding a subtle floral hop aroma. Look forward to their experimental ESB Sticklers English styled bitter in a bottle later in the year,
This year also marks 21 years in the business and a birthday bash will be something special according to Head Brewer Brad Rodgers.

Speaking of commemorative brews, Carlton & United Beverages has gotten into the swing of things by celebrating the introduction of Victoria Bitter 150 years ago when Thomas Aitken founded the Victoria Brewery in East Melbourne. VB Original Ale is reminiscent of the taste and look of beers from around the turn of the 19th Century. The brew itself was inspired by the Victoria Brewery’s 1894 award-winning Bitter Ale, while the old-style bottle shape and label design closely resembles the VBs of yesteryear. “No other beer can boast the heritage of VB and we wanted to celebrate our rich history,” said Matt Keen CUB’s GM of Regular Beer. “In doing so we’ve delved into our archives and studied early beer making methods and ingredients. The result is Victoria Bitter Original Ale – it’s as close as you’ll get to the beer your great-grandfather enjoyed, but it’s been produced to meet the expectations people have of a great beer today. “We used malt instead of sugar because brewing sugars were really hard to come by in the late 1800s,” said John Cozens, CUB Master Brewer. “We added a touch of roasted barley to give it a toasty flavour as well as its rich amber colour which, when poured, is topped with a compact creamy head. Its lingering bitterness, a result of traditional kettle hopping methods, is balanced with a subtle fruitiness. VB Original Ale will appeal to those with a hankering for heritage and who savour a good brew,” Cozens added.

The Tasmanian breweries have also found seasonal and special release beers beneficial in demonstrating their diversity and craftsmanship. I made reference before about changes to Cascade’s range of beers including the loss of this year Winter Warmer from their Four Seasons seasonal beer range. Well, they still aren’t prepared to tell all about the new beers, but at least they’ve provided another round of First Harvest Ale, now in its fourth edition. We asked Master Brewer Max Burslem what we could expect from this year’s brew. “The purity of taste has been improved with the 2005 release. This year’s First Harvest Ale shows greater balance due to the hops being sourced from a single location. The hops for the 2005 brew were harvested from Bushy Park, located in the Derwent Valley in Tasmania, and travelled only two hours to the brewery, making this year’s brew one of the most freshly-made beers in Cascade’s history. In 2004, hops were sourced from locations four hours from the Cascade Brewery in Hobart. A rich burnished orange/amber colour, the beer has lemon/citrus aromas with a well-balanced hop character and mouth feel. Cascade First Harvest Ale uses Willamette and Cascade hops, brewed in small kettles while still ‘wet’, green and rich in flavour. Pale malt, Cascade’s signature yeast cultures and the purest water in Australia complete the recipe.

J.Boag & Son produced a limited edition 1881 Pale Ale in May of 2002. Its success led to the release of a Honey Porter in June of 2003. The new bottling system installed last year prevented another go; but another Honey Porter has crossed the shores in June 2005. Boag’s Honey Porter is brewed with uniquely Tasmanian ingredients, most notably Leatherwood honey and Van Diemen hops. One and a half tonnes of Leatherwood honey is used in the brewing of Boag’s Honey Porter, all of which is sourced from the Stephens family apiary in north west Tasmania. With such an in demand product, the question arises, “Why isn’t it available all the time?” Master Brewer, Tim Penton, explains “We would love to make Boag’s Honey Porter on a permanent basis, but we are restricted by the supply of the crucial ingredient, Leatherwood honey. The honey supply varies each year depending on the weather conditions and this means that there are times when we just can’t get enough to make the beer”.

Brew Masters

With the Galaxy of beers available, the truly bright stars fall into the Premium and Boutique beer category. We’ve seen meteoric sales for our wine and RTO (Ready to Drink) markets, but with beer it’s only humdrum same old same old. Part of the problem is inherent in the drink. When we think about beer we think boring stuff like consistency and tradition. Beer doesn’t have a spectacular epicurean entry like the Sommelier offering a sniff of the cork and approval first taste, or the bartender with his swirling twirling dervish dancing performance when mixing a cocktail. No, this is an alcoholic beverage where the pizzazz is in the product, and an understanding attentive barperson, but breweries can still learn a lot about presentation and the leaders in this direction have come from the small breweries and premium product producers.

In part, the pleasure of grape grazing in the wine districts of Australia is the ‘winery experience’. The scenic ambience, guided tours of the grounds, plus top class snacks and meals is a heady experience that results in important ‘cellar door’ sales. Some small breweries have caught on to this and are reaping the rewards, while the big guys have learned that creative packaging of unusual styles of ale is quite profitable. Here are some of the stars to look for in your bottle shops and beer tour guide books.

Out west, two breweries showing the way are in Fremantle, Matilda Bay Brewing, at the old Ford Motor complex, and Little Creatures along the wharf. Little Creatures has spent more than $10 million to develop a first class brewery and bottling plant. Included in the plans is an ample tasting room and restaurant which spills to the upstairs balcony and out onto the deck overlooking the bay. Only two of their beers are available Australia-wide, being their Pale Ale and mid-strength Rogers Ale. Both are well crafted ales with the accent on hops and more hops. Matilda Bay Brewing has been around for two decades producing such Aussie classics as Redback Wheat and Dogbolter dark ale. With the popularity of mid-strength beers, CUB has had the pleasant problem of selling more beer than a brewery can produce, so along with the closing of the Masthead brewery at Sanctuary Cove, Queensland, Matilda Bay is combining the best products from both breweries. Available in bottle along with Redback is Beez Neez, an amber honeyed wheat beer, and Bohemian Pilzner, a Czech styled lager with plenty of saaz hops for a spicy floral aroma and flavour. Dogbolter and their Alpha Pale Ale are presented as part of their ‘Brewers Reserve” a series of specialty ales on tap at designated locales. If you’re down Margaret River way, why not stop in to the Bootleg Brewery to experience one of the very best country/winery style watering holes in Australia, and in Perth stop in to the backpacker style Wentworth Hotel on Murray Street to sample some Nail Ale.

What’s a discussion of South Australia without mentioning the perennial Aussie battler, Coopers Brewery? The re-branding and packaging of their draught lager now includes their new brewery location Regency Draught, and their Premium Ale has been replaced with Heritage Premium Ale, a ‘chill-filtered’ dry lager’ish styled pale ale with a pleasing hop aroma from late hopping and crisp finish with moderate back bitterness similar to European imported beers. Add to that a clever outdoor advertising campaign in Victoria and New South Wales “If it’s not at your local, sell your house” and you have a stylish modern approach that signifies the marriage of Coopers with Premium Beverages including Budweiser is operating on all cylinders. The sales figures around the country reflect this assessment on average; sales nationwide are between 40-50%, with a whopping 152% in the Northern Territory. In Adelaide?, why not stop into The Port Dock Hotel and Pub-Brewery to taste test their award winning ales including the country’s best milk stoat.

In Tasmania the best brewing bragging rights continues the North vs. South family feud. According to J. Boag & Son Director of Sales & Marketing Lyndon Adams, “James Boag’s Premium Lager is now the second largest selling domestic premium beer and we aim to consolidate this position with a new marketing and promotional activity including a new television commercial will be released mid-year. We will be looking to release another Limited Edition beer following the successful 1881 Traditional Ale in 2002 and Boag’s Honey Porter in 2003.” Mr Adams also said, “The popularity of the company’s latest tourist venture, the Boag’s Centre for Beer Lovers, has far exceeded expectations, welcoming over 10,000 tourists in its first year of operation.” “Feedback from our visitors has been very positive, meaning that we are not only spreading the “Boag’s word” nationally and internationally, we are contributing to growth in our beer business as well”. Mr Adams continued, “We are also excited that the Boag's Centre for Beer Lovers has gained accreditation in the National Tourism Accreditation Program that endorses best practices in the tourism industry. Accreditation provides the consumer and the industry with an assurance that our business is committed to quality practices and professionalism.” Meanwhile the southern Tasmanian tiger Cascade has undergone an upgrade of the new six-pack and carton design featuring imagery that reinforces purity and Tasmanian heritage. The bottles now have a foil neck label that finishes just below the bottle lip to stop any grating on the lips while slugging back a stubby. Cascade Premium took top honours at last years Australian Good Taste Beer Awards, plus their highly successful ’ Four Seasons’ Limited Edition beers will continue to challenge the epicurean palate.

Australia’s ‘King of Beers’ Crown Lager continues its amazing run as the number one premium beer for fifty years. Crown Lager was the best kept secret of diplomats and visiting dignitaries, until 1953 when CUB officially launched it to the public to celebrate the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. ‘Crownies’ cone-shaped bottle and foil label haven’t changed much over the years, so the cosmetics are slight highlighting a bolder red and gold crown. The packaging artwork and point of sale changes should start to appear in the bottle shops in April.

Chuck Hahn’s gang from the Malt Shovel Brewery have made a quiet entrance into the hotel industry with the opening of their James Squire Brewhouses in Melbourne and Sydney. At the Portland Hotel in Melbourne, some quality in-house brews are on tap including the award winning 3 Weissmen dark wheat, the Craic stout, and Portland Pale Ale. Word has it that the Craic and Portland Pale will make an appearance at the new Sydney Brewhouse at King Street Wharf. Malt Shovel continues to offer seasonal beers such as the Colonial Wheat and the winter warmer Australian Strong Ale, and to add to drinkers education, they offer beer and food matching nights titled ‘Ales & Tales’. All this has helped them achieve in increase of 40% in total sales last year.

Other breweries to keep a look out for are Grand Ridge Brewery from country Victoria with their 9 award winning ales and newly opened Blue Tongue Brewery in the Hunter Valley in New South Wales. Grand Ridge has made significant in roads in New South Wales and Queensland this summer with their Natural Blonde wheat beer proving very popular. Its flavour profile of orange and coriander is very refreshing on a hot day. Blue Tongue has hit the ground running with Bondi Blond & Red brewed under contract, a budget beer Brewery Bitter, an in-house pilsener and a Ginger Beer.