What Beer Style Would Be Considered Classic Australian

[white.grant]

I'm plumping for Sparkling Ale.

As Peter Symons told it on the Jamil show podcast, the early colonial beers were attempts at recreating the popular styles of the old country using ingredients bought over on ships. In 1864 Coopers used english malts and goldings hops and quite a lot of sugar was also used as shipping the barley was pretty expensive. The source of the ingredients changed over time the ingredients changed as malt and hops became locally available, if arguably inferior to the english product, if did create a new flavour and effectively a new and distinct style of beer.

Pale was initially introduced as a lighter Dinner Ale in 1961 to complement the heavier sparkling ale.

cheers

grant

 

[floppinab]

I read the BYO article in the Aussie themed issue some weeks back with some interest. Putting aside your very valid argument bum about whether there is indeed a defining style I think a few of the earlier posts in this thread look for some clues in pre-2nd war brewing. I think that's why most people point to CPA as it given it's obvious links with the old country and the liklihood of it being produced in some sort of similar form (along with many other similar brews from producers around the country) pre-war, knowing that these types of Ales probably would have been the dominant brew of time (prolly turn of the century to 2nd WW) prior to lagers really gaining a hold (I think) post-war.

I'm not sure if I just haven't looked hard enough but I'm surprised how little information there is around about Australian brewing pre-war. I'd love to get my hands on a "History of Australian Brewing" 16 chapter 300 page volume but I don't think there is anything like it out there..... is there????

 

[Gavo]

:icon_offtopic: But relivant IMO. I wonder with all the grains and hops available to the brewer would it not be possible to pioneer a new uniquely Australian style of beer? I wonder if there is an opening between all thestyles to come up with something?

Chappo

Inter-galactic ale? 100% BB galaxy, 100% galaxy hops, cooper bottle yeast

Interesting to see this thread. I was just toying with the idea of an Aussie Pale for a house summer ale. Some guides say POR hops only. Others say fruity. Was thinking of BB pale and BB pilsner with a single Galaxy addition at say 60min. Yeast would be from a coopers culture.

Cheers
Gavo.

 

[Scruffy]

The way I see it is that the difficulty you guys are having trying to decide which is the definitive Aussie style is the actual answer: there isn't one.

This country is much too young. We don't have a unifying culture. We don't have a distinctly Australian architecture. We don't have a definable cuisine. No national dress. Fark, we can't even agree on a code of football for Christ's sake! For the last half of our existence we've been nothing but a collection of borrowed fashions - sometimes with our slight twist imposed. That, if anything, is as close as anyone will get to an answer for generations - the Australian style is to bastardise someone else's style.

Time to start one then...

A mini comp, brew only what grows in a radius of 100km local to you...

Brisbane does produce a little barley (somewhere), so it's a start...

 

[PostModern]

I'm not sure if I just haven't looked hard enough but I'm surprised how little information there is around about Australian brewing pre-war. I'd love to get my hands on a "History of Australian Brewing" 16 chapter 300 page volume but I don't think there is anything like it out there..... is there????

I had the good fortune to borrow a copy of that for some months and read it cover to cover. It seems that in the gold rush years, there were several breweries in most major centres. They all attempted to brew English styled ales and porters. Most failed, most batches brewed were infected because of the lack of knowledge about sanitation, yeast management and fermentation temperature control. Still, a lot of sour infected beer was drunk by the gold field workers, because there was nothing else available to them. Early to mid 20th century brewing was all about larger breweries setting up and the markets were divided by religious lines. Tooheys for Catholics, Tooths for protestants and such nonsense. The beers were all basic ales until mechanical refrigeration came along and allowed the brewing of lagers.

It was some time ago that I read the book, so I can't recall all the history or details, but essentially the early brewers made what they could, sold what they could get away with until industrialisation and scale took over to make the bland lagers we all know and love today. Interestingly, I think it was an Australian co that made the first mechanical chillers for breweries.. From wikipedia:

... James Harrison from Scotland began operation of a mechanical ice-making machine in 1851 on the banks of the Barwon River at Rocky Point in Geelong, Victoria. His first commercial ice-making machine followed in 1854 and his patent for an ether liquid-vapour compression refrigeration system was granted in 1855. Harrison introduced commercial vapor-compression refrigeration to breweries and meat packing houses, and by 1861 a dozen of his systems were in operation.

As others have said, we don't have a unique classic Australian beer, apart from the Coopers style beers, as the population is so happy with crappy thin lagers. With a nod towards Barons, I think we're only just starting to develop them.

 

[Bribie G]

Interesting to see this thread. I was just toying with the idea of an Aussie Pale for a house summer ale. Some guides say POR hops only. Others say fruity. Was thinking of BB pale and BB pilsner with a single Galaxy addition at say 60min. Yeast would be from a coopers culture.

Cheers
Gavo.

:icon_offtopic: I've done a couple of BB Pale Pilsner and 20g Superpride 90 mins (a bit cleaner and more AA than POR) done with a simple lager yeast and they are excellent. When I've got my Aussie Pale Ales settled down for the competitions I'll return to this recipe but put in a kilo of rice as well, and do it on Galaxy Malt (not the hop) for a more golden colour and maltier taste. Noice.

 

[bum]

With a nod towards Barons, I think we're only just starting to develop them.

While I very much enjoy the local approach they bring to their brewing I think even they'd be disinclined to agree that their products are changing the national beer identity.

Very interesting about the religious division/brand loyalty. I wonder if Ford vs Holden began on the same principle?

 

[floppinab]

I had the good fortune to borrow a copy of that for some months and read it cover to cover.

I was kinda joking that such a thing existed PoMo. Can you post any details.

 

[gap]

I was kinda joking that such a thing existed PoMo. Can you post any details.

I have the book at home. Will post details tonight.

Regards

Graeme

 

[Cortez The Killer]

I recently found a copy of

Beer, Glorious Beer : Cyril Pearl (1969)

Which has a fairly lengthy examination of beer in Australia from the first fleet to current (ie 1969...)

Very interesting read

Grab a copy if you can

Cheers

 

[HoppingMad]

Believe at one stage beer writer Michael Jackson held Coopers Sparkling Ale up as the prime example of a uniquely Australian Beer. That was about two decades ago.

Someone mentioned Tony Wheeler's article on Coopers in the Australian edition of BYO magazine. If you read that you will get a lot of information not just about Coopers Brewing History but some of Australia's early brewing history. The likes of Coopers and the beers by the Fosters Bros were made in a response to our hot climate and need for something lighter than the heavy darker english ales. The advances in refridgeration and lagering also played a role. We took the British example of beer and made it our own. The Fosters Bros came from the US and brought with them their own innovations in the earlier part of the century. Later on, the development of Pride of Ringwood hop by CUB occurred and began to be used by other breweries as well. With all this evolution we started to add a distinctive flavour to beer from our part of the world. We went from drinking other countries styles of beers, to hybrids, to something that is more our own.

We tend to malign our Pride of Ringwood hop and brewing with high amounts of cane sugar but that's what our 'classic' Australian style is in mainstream drinking Australia. We use these ingredients because POR grows well here, and we produce a load of cane sugar so it makes sense to make stuff with ingredients that are freely available.

Agree that Baron's have some great beers with wattleseed and the like, but they are yet to become classics. To do that you have to stand the test of time.

Drink a beer around the world blindfolded and you will know it is an Aussie by these two characteristics (POR & Cane Sugar). Except maybe for XXXX that uses a bit of Cluster (I think). Those two things are very distinctive. Coopers use the POR too.

Hopper.

 

[tcraig20]

Interesting to see this thread. I was just toying with the idea of an Aussie Pale for a house summer ale. Some guides say POR hops only. Others say fruity. Was thinking of BB pale and BB pilsner with a single Galaxy addition at say 60min. Yeast would be from a coopers culture.

Cheers
Gavo.

More seriously, I recon that 100% galaxy would be a cracker with a Kolsch yeast.

 

[tcraig20]

Agree that Baron's have some great beers with wattleseed and the like, but they are yet to become classics. To do that you have to stand the test of time.

I like some of Baron's beers, but Im inclined to call them novelties rather than innovations. I dont think that they will ever have the mass market appeal to become an established 'style'. Much the same as cherry coke I guess.

Time will tell, its easy to dismiss anything new as novelty.

 

[Pumpy]

Define "Classic Australian" first.

Do you mean from the classical period, "typical Australian", "typical modern Australian", "iconic Australian", "symbolising Australian"????

No doubt some of these will encompass Coopers, but also VB, Fosters, NT Draught, and even to some extent, Crown.

Sorry for being ambiguous.
I think most people appeared to understand .
By Classical Australian beer I just meant do we have a style which is specific to Australia
Like the Californian Common eg. the Anchor Steam beer is quintessentially American design.

Pumpy

 

[Bribie G]

I recently found a copy of

Beer, Glorious Beer : Cyril Pearl (1969)

Which has a fairly lengthy examination of beer in Australia from the first fleet to current (ie 1969...)

Very interesting read

Grab a copy if you can

Cheers

That's not Cyril Pearl, that's FatGodzilla in his earlier days, either that or his dad :lol:

 

[Fatgodzilla]

That's not Cyril Pearl, that's FatGodzilla in his earlier days, either that or his dad :lol:

Found out again !!!

Actually the photo isn't Cyril Pearl either me thinks ! Cyril Pearl has a connection with the great Lennie Lower (if you haven't read "Heres's Luck" you just aren't Australian) which now I'll have to go and find.

Sad as it may seem, the megaswill is the classic Australian style. It differs from english, european or american pales in it has minimal malt flavour or hop aroma / flavour. Drink it cold, fast and furious. Made for Australian conditions and conditioned to Australian palates.

For those brought up on Heinikens, Budweiers etc. Aussie megaswill is uniquely Australian.

 

[muckanic]

the Australian style is to bastardise someone else's style.

An argument could be made that the entire Western new-world style is the same. I would concede the US has a couple of classics that have been rescued from obscurity, but it still bugs me that stuff like American brown ale, stout and wheats have become competition categories. Talk about revisionist history. For that matter, with the rather large exception of Guinness, the Irish with all their history don't seem to have performed much of a preservation job either. And if anyone mentions red ale at this point I will scream!

My introduction to interstate brews occurred back in the 70s. That was when the brewery workers went on strike every Christmas and Melbourne got forced to drink somebody else's beer. As I recall, there was a distinct pecking order, with the bottom of the barrel almost universally regarded as Southwark bitter. To my young and uneducated taste buds, it tasted a bit like vegemite, which nowadays I would associate with autolysis but back then more or less meant anything that wasn't an insipid lager. I wonder if it was actually an ale at that point? My memory may be failing me, but it certainly seems to have become progressively more bland. Despite that, I still know some Adelaide locals who refer to it as "the green slime". I guess the point is that even though there had been some major brewery consolidation that wiped out regional differences by the 70s, there was even more to come in the next decade when the cowboys like Bond and Elliott got control.

 

[bum]

I would concede the US has a couple of classics that have been rescued from obscurity, but it still bugs me that stuff like American brown ale, stout and wheats have become competition categories. Talk about revisionist history.

Yeah, but that's them all over, isn't it? I mean, many of them believe that American is a language and even the less moronic accept American English as a genuine dialect (rather than the symptom of a recalcitrant child acting out against its parents).

 

[DennisKing]

Here in the UK we only see Fosters and Castlemaine. Mayby thats why homebrewing seems bigger in Auss.

 

[gap]

I was kinda joking that such a thing existed PoMo. Can you post any details.

hello floppinab,

Book is "The Breweries of Australia A History"

Author Keith m Deutsher
Lothian Books
Thomas C Lothian Pty Ltd
11 Munro Street
Port Melbourne Victoria 3207
ISBN 0 85091 986 X

Regards

Graeme