A few weeks ago we brought you news of the collaborative brewing venture that had been kickstarted by Australia’s Northdown Craft Beer and Danish gypsy brewer Christian Skovdal Andersen of Beer Here. At the time, the beers they were brewing were being released under the Northdown/Beer Here moniker. Now, however, the pair have announced their new brewing company – Edge Brewing Project – and this week released the first beer as such.
We popped up a listing for that beer – the Waldo berry saison brewed in collaboration with Bridge Road – at the start of the week and also caught up with Adam Betts, the founder of importer and distributor Northdown, which brings the likes of Moylan’s, Amager, Evil Twin, Baird and Croucher to Australia as well as distributing for Ballarat-based Red Duck, to find out more about his move from homebrewing into the commercial realm.
“The recipes are a combination of ideas from the two of us,” says Adam. “The main focus is to use local malts and hops and that’s where Christian’s knowledge falls short as he doesn’t have access to Australian hops in Europe. Some recipes will be based on each of our ideas but will always be developed in collaboration.
“We’re just making it up as we go along. We’re not setting any boundaries. We will have common themes but were not planning on tying ourselves into anything.”
Early signs for the pair are promising. The first beer they released in Australia, the Cool Hops lager brewed at Southern Bay, has been receiving rave reviews since the first batch was released. A new batch of the beer will be the next cab off the rank, due for release under the Edge brand in April. It will be followed by a Kiwi tweak to the Victoria’s Secret hoppy wheat beer that was their second Aussie release – with this one launched at the Great Australasian Beer Spectapular in May.
The plan for June is to release a roasted wattle seed stout, with July promising to bring a new batch of the RyeFix beer that was originally only released in New Zealand to the Australian market. Adam will be overseeing all of those brews, wherever he can find brewing capacity it seems, with Christian due to return to Australia again in August. That said, Christian will be contributing his idiosyncratic hand drawn artwork for the labels.
Looking further ahead still, Adam says that he would consider opening a brew pub, but not under the Edge brand.
“Edge is designed to always be a contract gypsy brewery,” he says. “Basically, it’s an excuse to travel!”
Keep tabs with Edge Brewing Project via their website.
