Ekim founder Mike Jorgensen is reeling off the beers he brews: After Battle Pale Ale; Viking IPA; Berserker Amber IPA; Hell Black IPA.
“It’s fair to say you’re a brewer who likes hops then.”
“I do respect all styles of beer,” he says. “But I certainly like to brew that American style of beer.
“I brew what I want to drink and it sits well with the market. I brewed an English style dark beer/stout earlier in the year and I loved it, but I couldn’t wait to get away from it in the end.”
A love of hop forward styles seems to be proving a route to success for New South Wales' burgeoning craft brewing scene, with fellow breweries such as Riverside Brewery and The Grifter Brewing Co not shy in showcasing their love of US-inspired beers and reaping the rewards. That said, Ekim predates many of them – it celebrated four years in October – yet started from humbler beginnings. It’s only really been in 2013 that production has been ramped up.
Before starting out on his own Mike trained as an assistant at another brewery, gaining experience but also realising that working for someone else – especially on assistant brewer’s wage – wasn’t for him. Thankfully, through a somewhat circuitous route involving a brother-in-law, a business partner and someone’s cousin, he was introduced to a guy called Colin Larter, who had set up the tiny Happy Goblin brewery in Sydney.
“I knocked on his door a few times, we shared a few beers, and he said he thought I should brew. I’d done a few homebrew competitions and had done quite well, so he said I should get my beer out there. I couldn’t do it on my own, so he invited me to use his brewery,” says Mike.
Since then, while Mike says some people see them as an odd match, they’ve dovetailed into an effective team. While Colin has no great desire to expand his brewing, he plays a handy supporting role in the brewery as Ekim grows; Happy Goblin only brews every two or three weeks, but Mike has reduced his landscape gardening business to one day a week, allowing him to spend five in the brewery.
His very first release was the Viking IPA, a beer that he now claims to look upon with “disgust”, but which he intends to reinvent and relaunch with a new recipe in 2014. Instead it was the second beer that really saw Ekim take off.
“The After Battle Pale has been a huge success and has been the dominant beer for me. I changed a lot as a brewer then too,” he says of a time when he took stock, began reading more books on brewing and took on board advice from Matt Brynildson of Firestone Walker about keeping things simple.
More recently, his cause has been helped by the patronage of Peter Lalor, the cricket writer who also pens occasional pieces on beer for The Australian, including an annual end of year Top 20 Aussie beers. He has been a big fan of Mike’s beers for some time, featuring them in the paper whenever the opportunity arises.
“When you get blokes come up to you and say they love your beers, it’s great,” he says. “When Peter Lalor said he wanted to do a story on me, it was an honour. I still can’t even believe it.”
As for the brewer’s life: “You have to do it because you love it. I was with four brewers the other day, including a friend who I did my training with who now brews at Ballast Point in the States. He does exactly the same 60 hours plus every week, but we love it.”
Mike’s biggest challenge now, like every good brewer across Australia, is trying to meet demand. His beers are available relatively widely across Sydney, with some in Brisbane too. He’d love to hit up the Melbourne market, but finding the time and the beer is proving tricky; all of his beer is pre-sold before it’s brewed and anyone wanting a keg now will have to wait until the New Year, despite the fact he recently upgraded to a 1,000 litre brewery and installed a couple of new tanks.
“We have such momentum now,” says Mike. “I put two 1200 litre tanks in in August and they are running flat out already. I’ve already got Cassie [Potts, a beer blogger, graphic designer and marketer who’s handling much of the non-brewing side of the business for Ekim] asking what I’m going to do.”
Mike with Cassie Potts
While he works that out, Brisbane-based Cassie has been knocking the rest of the business into shape. She first came across his beers when sent a mixed pack to review by Mark Mead of Warners at the Bay; Mike liked her writing style, made contact and now they’re a team, with Cassie rebranding Ekim and designing the eye-catching labels.
“[When we first got in touch] she said, ‘Your website sucks and your labels suck’,” says Mike, and thus the partnership began.
As for the beer, the best places to find Ekim on tap around Sydney include Manly’s Hotel Steyne (“The licensee is very forward-thinking and took me under his wing almost two years ago”), the Forest Lodge, the Quarrymans and the newly crafty Welcome Hotel in Rozelle (“I have a great relationship with the owner Liam O'Keefe, who’s always after my beers”).
If you’re reading this in Melbourne, there is a chance to sample Ekim on tap for the first time this week. A keg of Berserker, his Amber IPA collision of mountains of malt and hops, has made it – after a few frantic calls with the courier – to The Alehouse Project for this week’s Hopfest.
“I was inspired by the Red Rocket from Bear Republic – when I drank that it was one of those moments. Lots of layers of different flavours – and that was the catalyst for the Berserker.”
But while that is the latest release, what about the very start: the name Ekim and the Viking symbology.
“We were round the Christmas table and my aunt said to me, ‘How about Ekim?’,” he says. “I didn’t get the Mike backwards for quite some time, but went back to it later. She said, ‘What’s Google and what’s Coles?’ and I got her point. Then the Nordic theme came from my [Danish] background.”
So there you have it. All you need is an aunt with ideas, a forthright blogger, a cousin of a friend of a brother-in-law’s colleague’s dad’s dog’s walker (or something like that) and a cricket writer and the road to brewing stardom opens up for you. Simple!
The photo at the top was first used in one of Peter Lalor’s articles in The Australian and was supplied by Ekim.
