From the inside, looking out.

Welcome to my first blog. For some reason, I always feel the need to explain myself. I guess there’s nothing wrong with that, but for the fact that where others might veer off on a tangent or two during their tale, my story is all tangent. That is to say, I intended on writing a few paragraphs about the cask ales that we’re pouring at the moment, thought it might need a bit of context, and ended up with the following novel. 

Ingredients and process

At Bendigo Brewing, we place a lot of emphasis on the quality and provenance of ingredients. You simply can’t make good beer without high-quality grain, hops, yeast, and water, but there’s more to it than that. Knowing the story of where, how, and by whom these products are cultivated continues to challenge, transform, and enrich my understanding and appreciation of beer by anchoring it to place, time, and community. That one’s for a future blog!

Another investment we make that is just as significant to quality is in our brewing processes. Usually time-consuming, technically demanding, and requiring specialised equipment, traditional practices such as decoction mashing, top cropping yeast, and cask ale have faded from use in modern brewing in favour of techniques that are more time and resource efficient, and less dependent on the vagaries of individual human skill and experience. 

The reason that archaic brewing methods survive at all is not because of their efficiency or utility, and never solely for the cultural significance of the tradition itself, but because old ways of brewing uniquely shape the way beer looks, tastes, smells, and feels in ways that are not replicable by modern methods. They are methods of brewing that are better understood by their impact on flavour and culture, rather than in columns on a balance sheet.

Cask ale

Cask ale or ‘real ale’ is a British tradition that is widely respected by brewers around the world, and lamentably under-appreciated by consumers in its homeland. Beer is brewed with British malt and (usually) English hops, and fermented by a British ale yeast (of which there are dozens of unique strains). After the yeast is ‘cropped’ from the surface of the beer near the end of fermentation, the beer is racked into a container called a ‘cask’ (looks a bit like a fat keg), and the beer is sent to a pub where it finishes fermenting in the care of a cellar master. There is a lot that goes into looking after casks of ale in a cellar, and it’s not only the quality of the beer that determines how appetising the pint will be, but the skill and dedication of the cellar master. While ale can be poured directly from the cask, it is usually connected to a hand-pulled beer pump that brings beer from the cellar up to the bar and into your glass. There is sometimes a device called a ’sparkler’ on the end of the beer spout that forces the beer through tiny holes, generating a fine, creamy foam. Beer served this way is at cellar temperature (9-12ºC), warmer than draught beer (0-4ºC), and with less carbonation. 

If I were to brew two beers with all the same ingredients, one with closed fermentation and served from keg through a draught system, the other as described above, the beers would have certain elements in common but would also be very different - in flavour, aroma, texture, and even appearance. The point here is that how it’s made and served, rather than just what it’s made from, makes a big difference. If you’ve been to the UK, you may have noticed that many of the beers we commonly enjoy in Australia and even the vernacular around them (pale ale, bitter, stout) have been borrowed and adapted to local conditions. Naturally, draught beer won the arms race in Australian pubs some years ago - it’s all well and good to drink a lightly sparkling 12ºC pint of bitter on a drizzly 19ºC summer’s day in London, and quite another to attempt the same feat on a 40ºC day on the banks of Bendigo Creek.

On the banks of Bendigo Creek

I could go on. But the drain my words are circling is this: why make cask ale in Australia, especially given the local conditions, general lack of knowledge and interest in cask ale, and all the extra effort required?

One reason is that there aren’t many brewers in Australia doing cask ales. It may be true that if you know where to go, it’s not especially difficult to find a hand pump in Australia. More often than not though, the beer being served on it is being served from a keg. I’ve alluded to some of the reasons why this is significant above and, sadly, the teaching of cask handling skills in Australian pubs probably died out sometime in the mid-20th century. Due to the lack of requisite skills and equipment in Australian pubs, cask is not a format that has a wholesale market in Australia. That’s why you’re unlikely to find any of our cask beers outside the Bendigo Brewing taproom.

Another reason is that, while there are British-style beers being made in Australia to a high standard, many of them brewed entirely with ingredients imported from the UK, I saw an opportunity to make beers that might be described as British-inspired, but using Australian grain and hops (well, sometimes NZ hops too). Rather than being disappointed that our local malt isn’t just like the Maris Otter grown in Norfolk, I saw a fun opportunity to learn how a Australian barley strain like schooner, malted to similar specs as an old-world classic, would perform under similar conditions. Unsurprisingly, beers made with our local ingredients are different, yet delicious. My farmer and maltster are a phone call away, their products are fresh, and they’ve only had to travel a few hours down the road, compared with weeks on a boat from the other side of the world.

Did I mention our house yeast, Venus? An ideal top-cropping yeast, she loves our open fermenter and is well-adapted to making cask ales. I’ll tell you more about her another time.

There’s a lot I could write about the special equipment and tools we had to invest in to do cask ales properly, but I’ll keep it brief: it’s a much more tactile experience putting beer into casks and getting it out compared with kegs. And by tactile, I mean that it involves hitting things with a large and heavy mallet. Depending on what else has been happening in my week, that can be a deeply therapeutic experience.

Recent, current, and coming up casks

I’ve recently embarked on a program of really small-run beers - one to two casks only, or up to four in a series with small variations. This approach is highly experimental (meaning that not everything is going to work out as expected) and aims to keep products changing over regularly to keep things interesting. 

We recently ran an event at the taproom called ’Stout Season’ that involved four stouts, two of them served from our hand pumps. The cask stouts  - Long Nights - were both made from the same ‘base’ beer, with one featuring coffee beans from local roaster Dancing Goats and the other featuring Daintree Estates cocoa nibs and Archie Rose stringybark smoked single malt whisky. 

They were interesting beers - intensely flavoured, and both surprisingly fruit-forward. Both coffee and cocoa undergo fermentation prior to being roasted for consumption, and those fruity notes shone through brightly. The whisky was present but subtle, and not as smoky as I was expecting. It was an interesting experiment in terms of how much of these types of adjuncts are required in a mere 41 litres of beer. Probably a bit heavy-handed on this first attempt.

Right now, we’ve got two new casks on: Sunday Morning #2/2 and Long Nights #3/4. The second of two Sunday Morning casks is a hazy rye IPA conditioned with a dry hop of NZ Riwaka ‘Amplifire’ oil. The first edition used Nelson Sauvin oil, and I definitely think #2 is the winner. The flavours of Riwaka are softer and work better with the other hops in the beer (Azure and Galaxy), it’s like drinking pillowy soft citrus and peach. The third instalment of Long Nights has been conditioned with a dry hop of NZ Cascade hop oil. I thought the Cascade would be more prominent - the citrusy-floral hop notes with the chocolatey stout can create quite a nice jaffa flavour, but instead it’s quite a subtle top note on the nose. Very pleasant to drink nevertheless, with a lovely texture coming through the hand pump.

Next up when those ones are done, we’ll finish off the Long Nights series with the Motueka dry hop edition, plus a very special cask I tucked away last year - 12 month aged St Kilian’s Draught Stout. The latter (formerly know as Dark Road) is normally on our nitro (think Guinness) tap, so I’m excited to see how it has held up and what it’s like on the hand pump. Might be no good, might be life-changing. We’ll know soon enough.

What’s on tap

New beers!

'Beyond the Coast' is our 8.5%, copper-coloured Double IPA. It’s big, punchy, and made with all-Australian ingredients; leaning heavily into a citrus and pine hop profile with lashings of berry and tropical fruits. A robust bitterness and elegant, bready malt background provide the scaffolding for big hop flavour and high ABV.

It’s been brewed entirely with Riverina-sourced malted barley, including 88.2% organic Cape, 7.4% organic Chit, 2.9% Dexter, and 1.5% Voodoo. Rather than deploying a traditional step or infusion mash, we have used a double decoction process to bolster the bready malt flavours without sacrificing drinkability. The two mash boils, along with the main kettle boil have also worked to deepen the colour to copper without relying on oxidation-prone crystal malts. 

The hops used are all-Australian. Ryefield Cascade was used in the mash, during lautering, multiple boil additions, and whirlpool for its smooth bitterness and pithy grapefruit, pine, and floral notes. Vic Secret was also used in the whirlpool for its signature flavours of pineapple and pine. The beer has fermented with Eclipse Spectrum extract, with our house yeast amalgamating, contributing, and transforming complex citrus, tropical fruit, and floral flavours from interaction with malt and hop-derived elements in the wort. The second dry hop was post-fermentation with Luna (56%), Vic Secret (33%) and HPA-065 (11%) at a rate of 10g/L.

Beyond the Coast pours bright copper with a dense off-white foam. Hoppy pine, grapefruit, orange zest and raspberry dominate the nose, opening up into more pine, mandarin, grapefruit, spice, sweet malts and alcohol warmth on the first taste. A firm bitterness builds mid-palate and lingers pleasantly.

’Sandhurst Stout’, our cool-weather limited release is back. Come and get your roast.

Thanks to everyone who has stopped by the taproom for a beer or pizza, or enjoyed our products somewhere else. Until next time!