2 Brothers Brewery

I hope the Kooinda boys have been to 2 Brothers Brewery. It really showcases how to make the best of a warehouse space.

Divided pretty much down the middle, the bar acts as a separator between the social area and the brewery, a series of towering, polished fermenters. Although cloaked in darkness, the fermenters remain clearly visible behind the bar, if only because they're so shiny and new-looking, reflecting and amplifying the lowest light rays right back to your eyeballs.

The social area, a series of tasteful couches and modern art, runs along the left-hand side and the length of the looong bar, before expanding at the rear.

As 2 Brothers Brewery is only open for business two nights of the week, I expect it's something of an occasion for the locals, who, on the night of my visit, occupied it very much like any local pub or bar. (The location, hidden a fair way south of Melbourne city in Moorabbin, probably deters a lot of visitors from making the trip.) A few security guards stand ready to eject any rowdy louts, stumblers, or the curious from crossing the Holy Line of Demarcation between bar and brewery. In that sense, it's probably the least brewery-esque brewery I've visited.

Which isn't to warn anyone away due to my general distaste for the common douchebag. 2 Brothers Brewery occupies a space between a local hangout and classic brewery that can form a bridge akin to that between mass-produced lager and the finer things in life, and I've already recommended it to some friends.

So, the beer! Have to say, I was a bit disappointed in this area. Not specifically in terms of quality, mind, more that there were only three brews on tap.

If you've spent any time moving about Melbourne's venues, you've probably at least seen the 2 Brothers Taxi Pilsener and the 2 Brothers Growler, their two mainstays. These beers too bridge the gap, containing a very serviceable level of complexity and quality while remaining highly sessionable.

So the only tap remaining belongs to a single seasonal, which I can certainly cope with as long as that seasonable is anything like the 2 Brothers James (Belgian) Brown.

I was first introduced to the James Brown at one of the Federation Square Microbrewery Showcases in 2010. Already heavily interested in exploring dark and Belgian beers, it sounded right up my alley. While certainly good, this batch of the brew was more an interesting curiosity. Very heavy on banana, it was something I imagined I could revisit, but only on odd occasions.

This time, however, James Brown was truly the right kind of funky, with the banana dialled back and the alcohol making it pop just that bit more. Very nicely done.

Still missed The Guvnor, though...

Did your heart grow fonder?

Wow, I have been quiet, haven't I? There's been a whole bunch of stuff happening and I just haven't had any time to blog or write.

What kind of stuff, you ask? Well, I guess the big thing is that I recently turned thirty. (Woo! Congrats to me for not dying so far!) I had, without a shadow of doubt, the best party of my thirty years. It was at a little place you may have heard of called The Local Taphouse. Everyone really enjoyed themselves, plenty non-beer-drinkers were trying things – the aunties especially found a friend in the Bridge Road Chevalier Saison – the food was great, of course, and I'd just like to thank the Taphouse publicly, even though they made away with a fair amount of my money and that's probably all the thanks they were looking for. Ha!

Scored some amazing beer-related gifts, one in particular I will have to write all about in the coming month and a half.

I would be remiss if I didn't throw in an almighty plug for the The Beer Lover's Guide to Australia 2011. As well as being the only reference to Australia's breweries and venues you'll surely ever need – until next year's edition – it features a piece by yours-truly! It's also nicely designed and looks pretty. You like things that look pretty, right? It's the result of a lot of hard work by people who are not me, and I'm very proud to be published in it. I'd be very keen to hear what anyone thinks of my piece if you care to spend the time.

Oh, and please excuse my photo on the contributors page. There was actually a Little Creatures Pale in that photo somewhere. I promise from now on I'll use this one. I always wanted a photo of me with a beer, leaning on somethingorother. Oh yeah.

Actual blog soon.

Ring, meet hat.

He of the intimidating surname, Matt Kirkegaard, editor-in-chief of Australian Brews News, earlier this year posed the question, What is ‘craft’ beer? He has also recently dedicated an episode of Radio Brews News to the question.

It—the question—was prompted by the U.S. Brewers Association, who had decided to provide a strict definition of what craft beer is.

Except that they didn’t. What the U.S. Brewers Association answered is, What is a ‘craft’ brewer? and offered three high-level descriptors—small, independent, traditional—with some lower-level detail for each.

So here’s why the U.S. Brewers Association is a little bit full of crap.

I’ll begin by defining craft beer.

craft beer n. Any beer brewed with an emphasis on craft (i.e. quality, and with skill), with or without the use of traditional methods of brewing, where profit is not an overriding motive of the brewer.

Now that’s a pretty loose definition. If one were to stoop to using dots to distill the essential impacts of this definition, it would look like and mean that:

• It’s all about intention; thus
• A massive, commercial powerhouse brewery is perfectly capable of brewing a craft beer;
• A brewery need only attempt to skillfully craft a beer of high quality, regardless of the end result;
• A brewery need not have to meet any old-school standards when attempting to skillfully craft their skillfully-crafted beer of high skill-level; and
• Although profit is obviously required of all breweries to remain viable, a craft beer is not brewed with a fundamental goal of being as accessible to the masses as possible in order for market penetration to lead to buckets of money.

Now I know dot number two comes as quite a shock to all of us, but it certainly doesn’t mean that said powerhouse breweries are craft breweries, only that they can, if they wake up one morning and feel like making the world a better place, decide to brew a craft beer alongside their regular mass-produced and mass-marketed offerings. For example, Carlsberg has their yearly Jacobsen Vintage, a barrel-aged Barley Wine that, while admittedly massively overpriced, fits the definition.

To define a craft brewery then, I would say:

craft brewery n. A commercial brewery whose output is predominantly craft beer.

Dammit, I went and done did a loose definition again! Prepare for incoming dots!

• A craft brewery should be a registered business with commercial output; and
• A craft brewery’s output should, for the most part—or if you want to get technical, >50%—be beer that fits the earlier definition of craft beer.

I’m not so rigid on that second dot. We can haggle on the percentage, but I know that it has to be more than fifty percent.

But now we have a problem. What happens when a craft beer starts to see true market penetration and starts appearing in mainstream pubs and bars and the brewery is now dedicated to outputting a certain volume of the exact same recipe to satisfy their monetary requirements through growth and the expectation of regular drinkers? Is that beer still a craft beer?

Anyway, I too may be a bit full of crap. I welcome any and all forms of discussion and disagreement.

Good Beer Week: Nathan's Good Beer Week Not-Awards, 2011

Were you to think this was a way for me to be lazy and not have to blog about each individual event, well then, you'd be-- SHUT UP.

---

BEER NATHAN WOULDN'T SHUT UP ABOUT FOR TWENTY-FOUR HOURS

Morning Peninsula IPA

I've already expressed how great I think these guys and/or gals are doing for a new brewery, and I'd heard good things about the IPA, so when I saw it on tap at the Terminus, I launched myself at it and was not disappointed. T'is a fine, sessionable IPA to be sure, and I wouldn't stop yakking about it. And I see now it also got a Silver medal from the AIBA. Nice one.

BEER NATHAN WOULDN'T HAVE SHUT UP ABOUT FOR TWENTY-FOUR HOURS HAD HIS BRAIN NOT BEEN FRIED BY THIS POINT

TIE: Holgate Beelzebub's Jewels/Orkney Dark Island Reserve

On Friday evening, we went along to the Gold Medal Tasting at Purvis Beer in Richmond. Although the samples were smaller than previous tastings and some people just didn't know how to move out of the way once they'd had their latest poured, there were both interesting and fantastic beers on offer. Essentially, the idea was to have a previous Gold medal winner and then move to a worthy challenger, courtesy of the Purvis lads. As it happened, there were two tables. The left-hand had the lager and paler styles, and the right-hand had the darker styles, and it turned out to be an interesting contrast. Which is to say the left-hand table was mostly rather uninteresting, but as soon as you got to that second table...

And on that second table, two in particular really stood out for me. Beelzebub's Jewels is a barrel-aged Quadrupel/Abt that weighs in at 12%, and comes from local brewery Holgate, well-known for their ESB and Temptress Porter and who impressed the hell out of me with their Empress Imperial Porter at the previous SpecTAPular. It was, well, it was a Quad, but you were really getting some of that Pinot Noir from the barrel. The Dark Island Reserve is a 10% Barleywine, also aged in barrels, but this time whisky. (Apparently I have a "type".) The bad news about these beers would of course be the price.

BEER NATHAN DID THE BIGGEST DOUBLE-TAKE ON

Yeastie Boys Rex Attitude

My last SpecTAPular I found to have a really good range of interesting styles. Obviously this latest, a Kiwi SpecTAPular, wouldn't quite be the same as the beers weren't specifically brewed for the event. Somewhere in between the Pilseners and the Pales and the Renaissance Stonecutter Scotch ale was this, a "peat-smoked Strong Golden Ale" from the Yeastie Boys, they of the superb Pot Kettle Black (a Black IPA). This was the SpecTAPular beer. Peat-smoked, people, peat-smoked. Give it a shot. I dare you.

NATHAN'S BIGGEST MISTAKE

TIE: Straddling the inflatable palm tree at Mrs. Parma's/Not taking notes!

Sigh. If only that photo didn't exist, and if only those notes did.

NATHAN'S BIGGEST DISAPPOINTMENT

Why no current single batch at Little Creatures?

Seriously. The best part of going to Little Creatures for me recently has been their single batches. I enjoyed their IPA a few times, and then most recently their Märzen, which was more than drinkable, so, to my dismay, when we decided to give Little Creatures a shot... no single batch. During Good Beer Week! Come on!

NATHAN'S FAVOURITE VENUE

The Local Taphouse

What can you say? Even if it wasn't a fantastic venue anyway, for Good Beer Week they hosted the Barley's Angels event, the Brewer's & Chewers dinner and, of course, the Kiwi SpecTAPular. Way to bring it, guys.

NATHAN'S FAVOURITE DISCOVERY

Deco Wine Bar

I'd wandered past Deco with Sharika recently, after an unsuccessful attempt to eat at the Moroccan Soup Bar without a reservation. Looked like a pretty cool place décor-wise, so we filed it for later. Last Tuesday, when Josie and Ali led me there on the Crafty Crawl quest, queue my reaction, "Oh, this place!" So yes, it's a nice-looking quirky bar with that good ambient-light atmosphere and a pile of complimentary blankets near the bar that tells you a little more. There are no taps to speak of, but there is a fridge with a more-than-decent selection of beer, including some Australian crafts, some good overseas crafts like Hitachino Nest, and even the BrewDog Tactical Nuclear Penguin. And we had a great talk with the owner/bartender – I'm sorry, I didn't get your name; I do that a lot – who was full of suggestions and opinions.

NATHAN'S PRIZE TO THE MOST ENTHUSIASTIC CRAFTY CRAWL VENUE

The Rainbow Hotel

EXT. RAINBOW HOTEL BEER GARDEN ENTRANCE - NIGHT

BOUNCER

(bouncer tone)

Sorry, guys. It's one-in-one-out at the moment.

JOSIE

Is it okay if we just go in and come straight out? We're doing the Crafty Crawl and just wanna--

BOUNCER

(suddenly chipper)

Oh! Yeah! Hey! No worries, just pop on in and go up to the bar. They'll sort you out. Cool.

CUT TO:

INT. VERY CROWDED RAINBOW HOTEL BAR AREA - NIGHT (LATER)

BARTENDER

Oh, yeah! Awesome! Hang on, I'll just get it.

(retrieves treasure)

How cool is this? Such a great idea.

After being to a few places and asking bartenders who had no idea what we were talking about or were even a bit annoyed – and please do not take that to mean there weren't of course plenty of venues that were perfectly happy with it – going to the crowded Rainbow and being greeted with that was a great breath of fresh air and I thank them for it.