The Schloss Shanahan team has the Red Hill Brewery Café on its must-visit list. It’s located amongst the vineyards on Mornington Peninsula. And apart from brewing what appears to be a range of distinctive beers, it grows its own hops.

I’ve not heard of any other Australian brewer doing this, though I know of one that’s being planned in Tasmania.

The flower of humulus lupus is, of course, the only seasoning element in the vast majority of beers brewed on this planet. And it comes in many varieties, added at various stages of the brewing process to provide aroma, flavour and bitterness.

Dried hops flowers – as opposed to compressed pellets – are prized by many brewers. But, apparently, it’s very difficult to secure regular supplies and unless you happen to brew in the right latitudes you can’t grow your own.

Mornington sits on the edge of this band and, according Red Hill’s website, they currently grow five varieties: Hallertau, Tettnanger, Golding, Willamette and Pride of Ringwood, harvested by friends in mid-March each year.

The brewery offers Golden Ale, Wheat Beer, Scotch Ale and occasional seasonal specialties – currently the 8 per-cent alcohol ‘Temptation’, model on the Belgian strong-ale style.

See www.redhillbrewery.com.au

Copyright © Chris Shanahan 2007

One of Sydney’s enduring pub breweries – the Lord Nelson – now offers a couple of its brews online and in a limited number of bottle shops.

The Lord Nelson – located in Kent Street, The Rocks, and built of convict-hewn sandstone – claims to be Australia’s oldest continuously licensed pub. But its modern fame comes from beers brewed on site, good food, great location and unique ambience.

And it’s a watering hole for the wine industry, thanks to the involvement of Yalumba proprietor, Robert Hill-Smith. This connection gives the packaged beer effective distribution, too, reaching all the way to Canberra and the south coast, albeit in a limited way.

Like all craft beers, the Lord Nelson brews are best enjoyed on draught a few metres from the fermenters. But from the one bottle tasted here in Canberra, the idiosyncratic style survives packaging and transport intact.

The beers can be found at Plonk, Manuka, Café della Piazza, Civic and, down the coast, at Mogo Village Cellars and Narooma Cellars.

The Lord Nelson also offers two brews — Old Admiral (a full malt, high alcohol ale) and the tangy pale ale, Three Sheets — online for $59.90 a slab of 24 X 330ml bottles, plus delivery.

See www.lordnelsonbrewery.com.au

Copyright © Chris Shanahan 2007

Grolsch Premium Lager $3.99 473ml swing top
Fancy bottles invariably push our BS metre up. But Grolsch impressed, both for stunning freshness (rare in imports, especially in green UV-admitting glass) and individuality. In one sense it’s mainstream lager. But there’s a distinctive and appealing pungent, herbal, hop character that carries from aroma, to rich palate, to dry, refreshing finish.

Curim Celtic Wheat Beer $7.99 $500ml
Carlow Brewing, established in Ireland’s Barrow Valley in 1998, brews this and a number of other beers including, of course, stout. But the Irish can brew wheat beer, too. In Curim it’s an appealing fruity, round, soft style — as beguiling as an Irish brogue, if a little tired from its long journey.

Copyright © Chris Shanahan 2007

Richard Watkins, brewer at Canberra’s Wig and Pen, returned from the UK recently, inspired by a mild ale that won the Great British Beer Festival’s champion beer award.

The Wig’s version of this easy-drinking style, modelled on the winning ale, should be on tap in a few weeks, says Richard. It’s in the pot now, brewed on 16 October.

But Richard’s three-week tour fell a little flat. He reckons that real ale appears to be struggling in London where mass-produced lagers like Fosters, Fosters Extra Cold, Stellar Artois and Carlsberg seem ubiquitous.

He said that he struggled, ’even finding a good London pub that looked after its beer’.

Richard tasted 311 beers in visits to five breweries and the Great British Beer Festival – and awarded only twenty-eight of them a score of four or more out of five – a depressingly low figure from the land that led the ale revival thirty years ago.

Copyright © Chris Shanahan 2007

How important is water in brewing? And what are we to make of beers that spruik the virtues of ‘pure spring water’ and the like?

There’s a hint in Malt Shovel brewer, Chuck Hahn’s answer when asked about his water source some year back.  ‘Camperdown springs’, he replied.

So, if some of Australia’s most successful craft beers use tap water – albeit filtered and suitably adjusted – maybe the ‘spring water’ thing doesn’t matter too much.

This simply demonstrates the quality of modern town water and the ability of brewers to add minerals on demand to subtly influence beer styles.

The demystification is demonstrated clearly in England’s Burton-on-Trent.

This uniquely mineralised water, ideal for ale brewing, is emulated around the world and gave rise to the term ‘Burtonised’. These days, a former Bass brewer told me, even Burton water is de-Burtonised to make lager, then re-Burtonised to make ale.

Copyright © Chris Shanahan 2007

The emergence of lager is often linked to the history of Urquell – the golden, bitter beer from Pilzen, Czech Republic.

But it seems that lager brewing developed in Bavaria, Germany, centuries before the technique (of low-temperature, bottom fermenting) transformed the beers of Pilzen, from 1842, into global style models.

In concise timeline of beer history Professor Linda Raley, of Texas Tech University, dates German lager brewing from 1420.

Lager brewing seems to have improved during the 1820s and 1830s, to have spread over Europe and to have reached Pilzen in 1842.

There, in combination with the soft water, pale malts and aromatic Saaz hops, Urquell developed the pale-golden, rich, aromatic and refreshingly bitter beer style that was ultimately imitated around the world.

These derivatives often sell as ‘Pilsen’ or ‘Pilsener’. Amongst craft brewers the name usually signals a lager of greater richness, aroma and lingering bitterness than we find in popular commercial lagers.

Copyright © Chris Shanahan

The strong, dark beer style we know today as Bock originated centuries ago in Einbeck, northern Germany.

Over time, the Bock family proliferated in Germany before emigrating. Today it’s made throughout the world in a diversity of styles – within a generally dark, high-alcohol, malty, low-bitterness framework.

These are generally nourishing, winter warming beers packed full of malt sweetness, with interesting variants like the more concentrated Dopplebocks and highly alcoholic Eisbocks.

And in the USA, Samuel Adams brews a viscous ‘triple Bock’ that smells and tastes like vegemite and weighs in at a port-like eighteen per cent alcohol. to my palate it’s more curio than drink.

More approachable by far is Sydney’s Redoak Bock, brewed by David Hollyoak. The combination of dark Munich malts, Hallertau hops and Bavarian lager yeast creates a smooth, rich, malty beer with a refreshing hops edge. It’s available on tap at Redoak or in bottle. See www.redoak.com.au.

Copyright © Chris Shanahan 2007

As pop beers grow ever less bitter, there’s a smaller but vigorous move in the opposite direction as boutique makers crank up the hops component of their brews.

And the hops expression varies enormously thanks to the use of many different varieties added at varying stages of the brewing process.

Wonderfully named hops variants such a fuggles, amarillo, goldings and saaz each inject their own character to a wide spectrum of aromas and flavours and to the bitterness of a brew.

Before hops made its way into brewing beer was probably sweeter than it is today. And makers used a variety of botanicals, including herbs, spices and tree bark, to offset this.

However, only the flower of humulus lupulus, a rapidly growing summer climber, provides the complex mix of resins, alpha and beta acids, oils and polyphenols that profoundly influence the structure, aroma, flavour and bitterness of modern beers.

Copyright © Chris Shanahan 2007

At the Australian International Beer Awards some years back we discussed the differences between ‘porter’ and ‘stout’, the commonest names for dark, malty beers.
We had on the judging panel several experienced stout makers and a mix of lager-focused but well-travelled brewers as well.

The distinction between the two styles, we decided, was not clear and that there was considerable crossover – for the simple reason that both stout and porter come in a spectrum of styles.

Dr Tim Cooper, now head of Cooper’s Brewery, Adelaide, but at the time its chief brewer (and an accomplished stout maker) summed up the discussion: ‘if you can see through it, it’s porter; if you can’t, it’s stout’.

Tim’s throwaway line captured the beer’s three-hundred year history: it appears that porter came first, probably in the early 18th century, and that stout was a more robust version of it and originally called ‘stout porter’.

Copyright © Chris Shanahan 2007

The sudden death last week of English beer guru Michael ‘the beer hunter’ Jackson prompted memories of his visit to Australia a few years back.

He’d been brought here to judge at the International Beer Awards in Ballarat.

Michael’s fellow judges — and I was one of them — quickly learned that he held little truck for bland or boring brews. While we slogged on through the lager classes Michael held court with the press.

After the judging Michael visited Canberra, hosting a well-attended tasting at Vintage Cellars Woden. To his surprise and delight one of his old journalist mates — Bill Goodall, long-serving Canberra Times Sunday editor – showed up.

But it was a visit to our Wig & Pen brewpub that finally put a smile on Michael’s face. No amount of feting, it seems, could match the simply pleasure of drinking beautifully made, interesting ales. It was a highlight of this trip to Australia, he said.

Copyright © Chris Shanahan 2007