“Blame the Yeastie Boys!”
Could this be the craft beer world’s equivalent of the Monopoly “Get Out Of Jail Free” card? Certainly, it’s a cry we expect to hear a lot more of when Good Beer Week rolls around, and it’s the reason Jade Flavell from Adelaide’s The Wheaty is giving for the rapidly approaching festivities at her pub that will see them host brewers and beer lovers for a series of events over five days, in a kind of spin-off from the festival at which it was conceived.
“It grew from the first Good Beer Week,” says Jade. “I caught up with the Yeastie Boys and they invited themselves over, as they do. We thought we’d just do two or three special events in a concentrated period of time, but then you find other people want to do stuff and it develops a life of its own.”
The “it” in question was the first Good Beer Wheaty, a mini festival that ran in the few days leading up to Good Beer Week last year. Designed to give those South Australians who couldn’t make it over to Melbourne some high-quality the events of their own, it was such a roaring success that it’s back this year even bigger and with guests drawn from even further afield.
“You create a monster once you come up with an idea like this,” says Jade.
As such, the “two or three events” has turned into eight events over five days, running from May 16 to May 20. The Yeasty Boys are back and are joined by brewers from 8 Wired, Brooklyn, Renaissance and Birra del Borgo as well as a number of local and not-so-local Aussies. There are tap takeovers, an event focusing on sour beers, the return of the Contract Brewers of the World Unite concept and even a collaboration on the pub’s own pilot system.
“The most exciting one for me is the public collaboration with Leo [from del Borgo],” says Jade. “It was going to be called My Anchovia as, being The Wheaty, we wanted to design a beer based around a cheesy pun. I got chatting to Kerrie [from Birra Italiana, which imports Leo’s beers] and asked if there were any ingredients that his region of Italy was renowned for. She listed them off and then mentioned anchovies. At the time we were drinking My Antonia [the del Borgo / Dogfish Head collaboration] so that was that.
“I had to try and design a beer around anchovies so narrowed it down to two options: it could be a gueuze or a stout – a bit like an oyster stout. In the end we went for stout because it’s more robust – more places to hide! Then we had to work out how many anchovies to add, how many grams per litre…
Yeastie Stu’s pants – a legend in their own lifetime…
“Kerrie mentioned it to Leo. He thought it was ridiculous but would love to be part of it. He spoke to Sam at Dogfish Head and he kind of liked it. We had a Twitter conversation with Sam – that was rockstar material!!! – and he was very gentle if somewhat sceptical. He suggested we might just want to put some in the glasshopper [the venue’s "hopinator” through which beer can be poured before hitting the glass] first. But he can’t talk as he puts crazy stuff in his beer⦠Sam wasn’t that keen on us going with the name My Anchovia, so we’re going with Our Anchovia. Thankfully, Leo has approached it with a great sense of humour."
You can access the full Good Beer Wheaty program online here, although it’s not the only celebration lined up for South Australia’s leading craft beer venue this month. Just days after the crew return to Adelaide from Good Beer Week, they’ll be celebrating their 10th birthday. To mark the milestone, they travelled to Hobart last month to hook up with two of their favourite Aussie brewers – Moo Brew and Mountain Goat – to brew a hoppy black pilsner that is going by the name Schwartzhopf – black hop – that was dreamt up by Goat’s Dave Bonighton.
“It’s become a tradition for Moo and Goat to come to our birthday,” says Jade. “We go way back with them – they were the first two breweries that I stalked for beer. We’ve done Moo versus Goat before so when we were sitting around recently decided to do a three-way brew for our 10th birthday. OJ [Moo’s head brewer] wanted to get us down to Tassie and the brewers gave us carte blanche with style and concept. We came up with the beer as a homebrew and then OJ and Dave refined it.
“We wanted it to be a lager as I believe Moo brew the best lagers in the country and it had to be hoppy because it’s representing The Wheaty. Also Moo can be shy of hops so we were keen to push that and take them out of their comfort zone. Similarly, Goat don’t brew lagers very often so we would be taking them out of their comfort zone.”
The result is a 5.8 per cent, 60 IBU black pilsner featuring all European hops (Saaz and Hallertau) that Jade says has turned out “smooth and resiny, bitter but sessionable”. Most of it will be staying at The Wheaty, although the two breweries will get some too, with the first keg being tapped at 6pm on May 29. Moo and Goat will be in the house, along with the Wheaty Ukelele Collective and some fine food trucks.
If that’s not enough to be going on with, The Wheaty hopes to have its own brewery in place by the end of the year (or early next) too. No word yet on the kitchen though…
