Beer News - 'Brew Love is from the Art' (Murray's)
Brew Love is from the Art
(SUE BENNETT, Daily Telegraph, 7 February 2007)
"As a teenager, Graeme Mahy was the only member of his group of mates who rocked up to parties with home-brewed beer. The legal drinking age was 20 in his New Zealand homeland but the then 16-year-old was already passionate about making ale. Nothing has changed since.
A civil engineering career took over for 20 years -- although he never stopped brewing. Then 18 months ago, Sydney real estate agent Murray Howe made him an offer too good to refuse. Mahy was handed an open book with the simple instruction to "not make beer everyone else makes but to experiment and push the boundary".
He was joined in the task by assistant brewer Shawn Sherlock, who began brewing in 1990, "getting more and more obsessed" as he worked as an academic at Newcastle University. Suddenly he, too, was given the chance to make professionally the sorts of beer he'd been making at home.
In something of an understatement, Howe says: "They know they are very lucky." Their workplace at Taylors Arm is pretty special, too. Murray's Craft Brewing Co. is at the back of The Pub With No Beer, made famous by country singer Slim Dusty and set in lush rolling hills at the back of Macksville on the NSW mid coast.
Mahy and Sherlock oversaw the installation of two magnificent copper tuns, or tanks, imported from the Czech Republic. They sit beside a series of stainless steel tanks (more are on order) and an automated bottling line that was made to order in Italy and required five visits by a London-based engineer before it was fitted and working correctly.
Howe bought the pub 3 1/2 years ago, after seeing it advertised in a newspaper. He'd grown up nearby, at South West Rocks, and made the purchase without a visit. When he made the trip, he found "a mess" and not quite the place he remembered from 20 years earlier.
So began millions of dollars in investment. The pub has been updated, a large restaurant has been added and an excellent chef, Gavin Shepherd, installed. The walls are lined with memorabilia about the region's timber history, tributes to Slim Dusty, who was born nearby, and country music pioneer Gordon Parsons who wrote the hit song A Pub With No Beer.
Howe, who spent 10 years as sales manager with building company Meriton, began his quest to make outstanding craft beer about five years ago. "I was at the Sierra Nevada brewery at Chico in northern California. It was a bit of an epiphany. The beer was probably the first really successful micro beer produced in America, a pale ale," Howe says.
"It was so full of flavour and aroma that it hit you in the face.
I could not believe it. I thought if I can do better than that I could create a craft beer culture in Australia. I mulled it over for 12 months -- would I, wouldn't I? -- then I really decided to jump into it."
Bland is a word Howe uses often to describe much mass-produced beer and it's a feature he detests. He's also learned to express such an opinion is to launch a lively debate.
"I want to be unconventional," he explains. "I don't want to make beer just for the sake of it and to sell it easily. I want to make the beer we love to drink. I felt there was enough of a market to sell to.
"I don't think Murray's will ever be a mass producer of beer. The brewers are as much artists as a sculptor or a painter.
"I'd like to think we can get craft beer to the point where it's accepted as a beer that's a step above what we've been led to believe is a good beer in Australia. "I think I can do it. We will know in five years." It's liquid gold
Eight beers make up the Murray's line-up. They're unpasteurised; no preservatives are used. "It's a new brewery but how we do it is traditional, to ancient processes," head brewer Graeme Mahy says. "We are not true to the style of any beers."
Three are bottled -- Sassy Blonde, Nirvana and the Anniversary Ale. The beers include:
* Sunrise Wheat: A Belgian-style wheat beer, akin to a Hoegaarden but with honey, orange peel and crushed coriander seed.
* Nirvana Pale Ale: It uses Cascade hops and pale malt from the UK.
* Swinging Arm Dark Ale: Roasted malt gives it a smoky flavour. Tooheys Old drinkers love it.
* Anniversary Ale: A wood oaked-beer of which owner Murray Howe admits: "It's a beer most people will not like." A lot of wheat and barley is used, yeast is added twice. It's highly hopped but not bitter. champagne-style. They've made 900 bottles and 300 were bought by three Sydney stores the first day.
* Grand Cru: High in alcohol and sugar, it's great with blue cheese.
* Sassy Blonde: It has a spicy orange flavour and is brewed with a distinctive Belgian yeast and Styrian Golding hops.
* Icon 21PA: A hybrid of Imperial and American India pale ales. "
(SUE BENNETT, Daily Telegraph, 7 February 2007)
"As a teenager, Graeme Mahy was the only member of his group of mates who rocked up to parties with home-brewed beer. The legal drinking age was 20 in his New Zealand homeland but the then 16-year-old was already passionate about making ale. Nothing has changed since.
A civil engineering career took over for 20 years -- although he never stopped brewing. Then 18 months ago, Sydney real estate agent Murray Howe made him an offer too good to refuse. Mahy was handed an open book with the simple instruction to "not make beer everyone else makes but to experiment and push the boundary".
He was joined in the task by assistant brewer Shawn Sherlock, who began brewing in 1990, "getting more and more obsessed" as he worked as an academic at Newcastle University. Suddenly he, too, was given the chance to make professionally the sorts of beer he'd been making at home.
In something of an understatement, Howe says: "They know they are very lucky." Their workplace at Taylors Arm is pretty special, too. Murray's Craft Brewing Co. is at the back of The Pub With No Beer, made famous by country singer Slim Dusty and set in lush rolling hills at the back of Macksville on the NSW mid coast.
Mahy and Sherlock oversaw the installation of two magnificent copper tuns, or tanks, imported from the Czech Republic. They sit beside a series of stainless steel tanks (more are on order) and an automated bottling line that was made to order in Italy and required five visits by a London-based engineer before it was fitted and working correctly.
Howe bought the pub 3 1/2 years ago, after seeing it advertised in a newspaper. He'd grown up nearby, at South West Rocks, and made the purchase without a visit. When he made the trip, he found "a mess" and not quite the place he remembered from 20 years earlier.
So began millions of dollars in investment. The pub has been updated, a large restaurant has been added and an excellent chef, Gavin Shepherd, installed. The walls are lined with memorabilia about the region's timber history, tributes to Slim Dusty, who was born nearby, and country music pioneer Gordon Parsons who wrote the hit song A Pub With No Beer.
Howe, who spent 10 years as sales manager with building company Meriton, began his quest to make outstanding craft beer about five years ago. "I was at the Sierra Nevada brewery at Chico in northern California. It was a bit of an epiphany. The beer was probably the first really successful micro beer produced in America, a pale ale," Howe says.
"It was so full of flavour and aroma that it hit you in the face.
I could not believe it. I thought if I can do better than that I could create a craft beer culture in Australia. I mulled it over for 12 months -- would I, wouldn't I? -- then I really decided to jump into it."
Bland is a word Howe uses often to describe much mass-produced beer and it's a feature he detests. He's also learned to express such an opinion is to launch a lively debate.
"I want to be unconventional," he explains. "I don't want to make beer just for the sake of it and to sell it easily. I want to make the beer we love to drink. I felt there was enough of a market to sell to.
"I don't think Murray's will ever be a mass producer of beer. The brewers are as much artists as a sculptor or a painter.
"I'd like to think we can get craft beer to the point where it's accepted as a beer that's a step above what we've been led to believe is a good beer in Australia. "I think I can do it. We will know in five years." It's liquid gold
Eight beers make up the Murray's line-up. They're unpasteurised; no preservatives are used. "It's a new brewery but how we do it is traditional, to ancient processes," head brewer Graeme Mahy says. "We are not true to the style of any beers."
Three are bottled -- Sassy Blonde, Nirvana and the Anniversary Ale. The beers include:
* Sunrise Wheat: A Belgian-style wheat beer, akin to a Hoegaarden but with honey, orange peel and crushed coriander seed.
* Nirvana Pale Ale: It uses Cascade hops and pale malt from the UK.
* Swinging Arm Dark Ale: Roasted malt gives it a smoky flavour. Tooheys Old drinkers love it.
* Anniversary Ale: A wood oaked-beer of which owner Murray Howe admits: "It's a beer most people will not like." A lot of wheat and barley is used, yeast is added twice. It's highly hopped but not bitter. champagne-style. They've made 900 bottles and 300 were bought by three Sydney stores the first day.
* Grand Cru: High in alcohol and sugar, it's great with blue cheese.
* Sassy Blonde: It has a spicy orange flavour and is brewed with a distinctive Belgian yeast and Styrian Golding hops.
* Icon 21PA: A hybrid of Imperial and American India pale ales. "
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