Aussie Beer Voyage

GABS Festival returns to Brisbane for 2024! This time held over two days, a Friday night and Saturday day session, Adsy and Joel roamed the crowds on the Friday night for some beers and banter.

For years, both Adsy and Joel have loved the West Coast IPA made by Seven Mile Brewing. So when it was finally time to sit down and chat with the creator of this multi-award winning beer, they were pumped!

Watch the episode here - https://aussiebeervoyage.au/episodes/34-brian-from-spangled-drongo/

Pretty excited to catch up with Brian from Spangled Drongo Brewery in Murwillumbah (Adsy even has trouble saying it), as the first official NSW brewery we have visited! Brian is an out and out local, having previously worked for some of the other large breweries in the area. You’ve probably heard of them, being Stone & Wood and Balter Brewing, definitely not small fish in this big pond we call beer. When we visited there was only a single beer being produced, a damn tasty Pale Ale, but a Lager is coming along shortly we were told. With no taproom to sell the beer, you’ll find Spangled Drongo on tap around the place in many pubs and at craft beer events and festivals.

Was great to meet Brian and thanks so much for taking the time out to chat with us. Weather had changed plans for a huge event they were having that night but he still gave us time (and beer, woo!) on the day. 

We love our amazing sponsors Bintani, Konvoy Kegs, Craft Punks Canning, Rallings Labels and CRAFTD. Glass once again, our thanks. As industry people supporting the little guys like us, it’s invaluable what they do for the industry, but also in support of us.

A special thanks also to both Amber Hour App for giving us use of their app, and Beers Illustrated for providing us with our awesome logos and continual support when we accidently delete them!

And it goes without saying, thanks to Hiker Brewing Concern for giving us excellent beer many times a week, and letting run amok in their brewery more times per week than anywhere else.

And special thanks to you, our fans who may have watched or listened to this episode. Essentially, you’re the reason we’re doing this and it makes a world of difference. We could do it without you, but it wouldn’t be as fun and probably not as worthwhile.

The very first location to visit on our Northern NSW Roadtrip and it’s to visit Smokey at Currumbin Valley Brewing! To say we were excited was an understatement. Joel might have been less excited to quickly realise just how much Smokey talks, and paired with Adsy, was going to be recording a lot of information.

Unique to a lot of the places we’ve visited is that Currumbin Valley’s brewhouse is located on Smokey’s private farmland, nestled in the beautiful rainforest of… You guessed it, Currumbin Valley. But, it’s location is not the only unique thing this brewery has going for it.

Meet Thomas the Tank Engine, probably the most unique piece of heating equipment in Australia (not confirmed). Thomas is basically a thermal fluid heater, and there’s even a tasty beer named after said oil, Waste Oil Stout. This heater was sourced by Luke, the other half of Currumbin Valley Brewing. 

We love our amazing sponsors Bintani, Konvoy Kegs, Craft Punks Canning, Rallings Labels and CRAFTD. Glass once again, our thanks. As industry people supporting the little guys like us, it’s invaluable what they do for the industry, but also in support of us.

A special thanks also to both Amber Hour App for giving us use of their app, and Beers Illustrated for providing us with our awesome logos and continual support when we accidently delete them!

And it goes without saying, thanks to Hiker Brewing Concern for giving us excellent beer many times a week, and letting run amuck in their brewery more times per week than anywhere else.

And special thanks to you, our fans who may have watched or listened to this episode. Essentially, you’re the reason we’re doing this and it makes a world of difference. We could do it without you, but it wouldn’t be as fun and probably not as worthwhile.

In this episode, you'll be guided by Joel's dulcet tones as he narrates the entire trip in an overview as we meandered down from Brisbane to as far south as Coffs Harbour. Writing this now, who was Coffs? Anyway, I digress, mostly because I don't to say much in this episode! Some people will likely enjoy that more - Adsy.

We've taken our very first real voyage as part of the Aussie Beer Voyage (ABV) podcast to Northern NSW! We also visited Smokey at Currumbin Valley Brewing, which is really at the butt end of QLD and NSW border region, but who's asking? This voyage was an epic adventure for more than one reason. It's been a dream of both Adsy & Joel to be able to travel further afield than just the Brisbane region, and this trip was all courtesy of our sponsors for making it financially viable. Check them out, they're all legends! 

Across four adventure filled days, we trekked and voyaged ourselves all the way from Brisbane's south down to Coffs Harbour and back again. It wasn't all sunshine and rainbows though. In fact, it was more rain with little sun and a few rainbows. We'd planned this journey down to the minute, and it wasn't until a week before that we (Adsy) hadn't factored in that it was still daylight savings in NSW, which would finish on the Sunday they were away. Thankfully, we (Adsy again) hadn't confirmed an interview time yet with a brewery, and that caught us an hour back on the Thursday morning. Confirming interviews would later come back to bite us...

We love our amazing sponsors ⁠Bintani⁠, ⁠Konvoy Kegs⁠, ⁠Craft Punks Canning⁠, ⁠Rallings Labels⁠ and ⁠CRAFTD. Glass⁠ once again, our thanks. As industry people supporting the little guys like us, it’s invaluable what they do for the industry, but also in support of us.

A special thanks also to both ⁠Amber Hour App⁠ for giving us use of their app, and ⁠Beers Illustrated⁠ for providing us with our awesome logos and continual support when we accidently delete them!

And it goes without saying, thanks to ⁠Hiker Brewing Concern⁠ for giving us excellent beer many times a week, and letting run amuck in their brewery more times per week than anywhere else.

And special thanks to you, our fans who may have watched or listened to this episode. Essentially, you’re the reason we’re doing this and it makes a world of difference. We could do it without you, but it wouldn’t be as fun and probably not as worthwhile.

In March the Royal Queensland Beer Awards (RQBA) were held in Brisbane, where Adsy was a judge and Hendo was the Chairman of Judges! A fancy title to be sure, but what does it mean and what do beer competitions entail? Here we chat about how to judge beer and what goes into the process of the stewarding behind the scenes, judging process and all the other things you might not know. 

We already know so much about Hendo, both as Adsy & Joel’s good mate, but also from our interview last year here. But this time we’re getting down to a beer competition, and how to judge beers and provide adequate feedback, improve knowledge and help grow the industry one beer at a time. For this competition, Hendo didn’t even get to judge beer per se, but was Chairman of Judges with Chris Sheehan (another industry legend), helping to oversee the judging of the competition, helping table captains and judges as they improved their skills.

Any professionally run beer judging competition is dependent on the integrity of the stewards and the judges. It’s a logistical nightmare, but also as Ari pointed out in our last interview, for the right person it’s rather fantastic. The stewards are responsible for categorising the beers and ensuring that the judges do not know the brand or any identifying things about the beer. The judges job is to match the beer against a set of words in a style guideline for which that beer was entered. Simple right? Wrong…

Thanks Hendo once again or sitting down with us to chat about more beer things. This episode is especially worthwhile for any brewery looking to enter competitions. 

We love our amazing sponsors Bintani, Konvoy Kegs, Craft Punks Canning, Rallings Labels and CRAFTD. Glass once again, our thanks. As industry people supporting the little guys like us, it’s invaluable what they do for the industry, but also in support of us.

A special thanks also to both Amber Hour App for giving us use of their app, and Beers Illustrated for providing us with our awesome logos and continual support when we accidently delete them!

And it goes without saying, thanks to Hiker Brewing Concern for giving us excellent beer many times a week, and letting run amuck in their brewery more times per week than anywhere else.

And special thanks to you, our fans who may have watched or listened to this episode. Essentially, you’re the reason we’re doing this and it makes a world of difference. We could do it without you, but it wouldn’t be as fun and probably not as worthwhile.

The Royal Queensland Beer Awards is an important event in the Australian beer calendar for craft breweries around the country. It's one of the first chances they get to receive feedback on their beers and take that onboard for any future improvements and tweaks. Taking home a nice trophy and some medals is also nice!

In this episode, Adsy and Joel (well, mostly Adsy) geek out over some serious homebrewing equipment with Gary from Newera Brewing in Brisbane.

https://youtu.be/3XMTdKfC4bk

Adsy and Joel have been keen to chat with Annelies from Madocke Beer Brewing Company on the Gold Coast for some time now, and they weren't disappointed!

Adsy took some time to drink a beer the other morning and jump on a Zoom call with James from The Crafty Pint to chat about all things Local Beer Day.