After raising more than $35,000 for Fight MND with their first Beer March fundraiser, the team at Brewmanity is preparing to go again. The Melbourne-based brewing company headed by former Melbourne FC captain David "Neita" Neitz and Jamie Fox is working with venues across the East Coast throughout March as it closes in on raising $250,000 for the charity founded by the former's old footy coach Neale Daniher.
In a change from 2018's Beer March, where teams were encouraged to visit as many participating venues as possible, this year the duo has plumped for a "choose your own adventure" style approach in which bars and hotels decide how they want to support the cause.
"March is that magical month where there's a couple of long weekends and it's still good weather," says Jamie.
"And febfast is over," adds Neita with a grin.
They're officially launching this year's drive at the Melbourne BeerFest in St Kilda this Saturday (March 2), where attendees will be able to cool down with Brewmanity's ice-filled dunking machine. Aside from that, there will be a range of events at around 30 venues – mainly in and around Melbourne but also in Albury, the Beer DeLuxe venues in Darling Harbour and Sydney Airport plus Riverland and The Plough Inn in Brisbane – each of whom pay $1,000 to be part of Beer March with many then seeking to raise further funds throughout the month.
Brewmanity launched in 2015 with fundraising as part of its ethos – "We make beer for goodness sake" as they put it – and combines major fundraising events like Beer March with donations from every can of Social Beast or Tango & Splash sold.
"We sort of set ourselves to get to $1 million – that seemed a good number to get to," says Neita of their plans for Fight MND. But their aims go beyond that too, with a search for their own brewpub-style venue around Melbourne started in earnest last year.
"We'll hopefully get our own place and then we can start looking to support local causes," says Jamie, describing their hunt for a "unicorn" – "The right location with the right landlord and the right landlord."
On the beer front, their focus now – aside from keeping an eye on a small batch sweet stout due out in a few weeks – is on Tango & Splash, the "Juicy Lager" they debuted in 2018.
"We wanted to create a lager that's different and expanded the category of lager," Neita says, while admitting they initially swore they'd never brew one. "Then we started thinking differently ... If we're going to play in the lager space let's try to make an impact."
The result is a beer that's fruitier than your common or garden lager – hazier too – with a touch of Vienna lager like sweetness, plenty of melon, stone fruit, citrus and soft pineapple flavours and aromas derived from Huell Melon, Mosaic and Vic Secret hops, yet little in the way of bitterness that might otherwise push it into IPL territory.
"More people want to come into craft and we need to open more doors for them," Jamie says.
If you'd like to get involved in this year's Beer March events keep an eye on Brewmanity's website and Facebook page.
James Smith launched The Crafty Pint in 2010, two years after moving to Australia from the UK. He was taken to Mountain Goat within weeks of landing in Melbourne, joined their indoor cricket team, and is still navigating the rabbit hole that is craft beer to this day.
The beers that turned you on to good beer:
- Watching pints of McEwan's 80 Shilling settle when visiting family in Edinburgh.
- Pints of flat Bass from the jug at the Cap & Stocking in Kegworth.
- A first Paulaner Hefeweizen when working in Munich in 1998: “This smells of bananas!”
- Castle Rock Harvest Pale – how could a 3.8 percent ABV beer be so good? (It turns out it was an early example of the three Cs – Cascade, Centennial and Columbus – in an English bitter).
- Dogfish Head 90 Minute IPA poured through hops at the Sunset Grill in Cambridge, MA, in the company of a man who turned out to be the Beer Nut (while we were both covering a double murder case at the time).
- Ordering a Mountain Goat Hightail on my first day as an Aussie resident as it was local and I’d never heard of it; “A dark Australian beer; well I never…”
- Murray’s Icon 2IPA at Beer DeLuxe Fed Square, recommended by a guy I’d not long known who's now the main man at Fixation, served by Mik Halse, now head of sales at Hawkers. How could an Australian beer smell as good as that?!?
You've got three beers to turn someone else on to good beer; what are they and why?
- Any really good, fresh and balanced West Coast style IPA. Punchy hop aromatics are the most obvious way to capture someone's attention and these IPAs, done well, present the key components in beer (if you're sticking to just water, malt, hops and yeast) in harmony yet with the volume turned up.
- Saison Dupont. Arguably a selfish choice here as I bloody love the broad saison style and dearly hope it will finally take hold in Australia one day. Given a choice, I'd probably crack one enlivened with Brettanomyces like Molly Rose Matilde for myself but, when it comes to turning on someone new, you've got to go with the classic.
- Rodenbach Caractère Rouge. Because if you don't enjoy or can't appreciate this beer, I'll never win you over. And because Filip, the fruit and wood specialist at Rodenbach that designed it, is a beautiful human.
The last beer you enjoyed:
Fixation IPA at The Incubator.
Three things that represent you:
- The Soft Bulletin by The Flaming Lips
- Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
- Golden Plains
NB All articles written by James in the first eight years of the site appear as By Crafty Pint. Today, that's used for collaborative efforts by the wider team.
