In 2012, for Sydney Craft Beer Week, Jayne Lewis from Two Birds headed to Sydney to brew a collaboration with the crew at the recently opened Young Henrys brewery. The resulting beer was Otaku, a Japanese-inspired green tea and seaweed altbier. Ahead of the same event in 2013, brewer Jayne made the same trip to the same brewery, only this time it was to collaborate with the other brewing company that calls Young Henrys home; Grifter Brewing. Clearly not wanting to mess with a winning formula, the two decided to continue on with a similar Asian beer and food theme as the previous year by pairing coconut with everyone's favourite Japanese hop, Sorachi. Then they popped them both into a not-so-Asian American brown ale recipe.
And so we have the Kokonatsu brown ale; a pretty malty number with a fruity hop hit and the requisite coconutty finish. On the latter, it was, in Grifter brewer Glenn Wignall's own words, a 'nightmare sourcing enough flaked coconut and it came down to the wireâ?. By that he means staying up until 1am the day before the brew and toasting all the coconut by hand in his oven at home (so when you see 'hand crafted in Sydney' on the Grifter label, that's the sort of stuff they're talking about). In true collaborative style, the less than 20 kegs of Kokonatsu were split between the two brewing companies with the Grifter share pouring in Sydney and Two Birds taking their share south to Melbourne. NO
Published November 1, 2013 2013-11-01 00:00:00
