Giving this Brewery Classic Ingredients is “Like getting Beyoncé  to cover Aretha Franklin”

Opening a taproom in Melbourne should be an exciting time for a young Brisbane brewery such as Range Brewing. But as we know, 2020 had other plans.

During the Independent Beer Awards 2020, co-founder Gerard Martin was still in Melbourne, watching the rest of his team celebrating, as the brewery picked up three gold medals, two silvers, three bronzes and four trophies. It capped off the night with the final trophy: Champion Beer. 

The Indies ceremony was a mixture of virtual, and smaller state-based parties dotted around the country. While the team partied in Brisbane, not far from its original Newstead home, Martin looked on from the Fixation incubator in Collingwood (Melbourne), a stones throw from the new Range taproom. He needed to stay in his seat due to COVID restrictions while his colleagues and friends hugged and high-fived on the big screen.

“It was a weird time. I was down in Melbourne in lockdown, and it’d been a brutal few months, me not being in the brewery,” Martin says. “[T]here was times where it felt like ‘are we doing the right thing’. Once we started winning awards it really helped pick up the attitude of the whole brew team and brewery...It was kind of quite surreal to see them on the other screen, my colleagues, being ecstatic and going crazy,”

However that didn’t dampen the overall spirits when they continued stacking trophies.

“It was really exciting. It lifted us for sure,” Martin says. “I would’ve loved to be there, but it solidified the decisions we made to push on as a business.”

The prize for winning Champion Beer was two tonnes of Weyermann Pilsner malt, fifty kilograms of Amarillo hops, and 10kgs of Safale US-05 yeast courtesy of Bintani. Dale Meddings, Bintani Director, says they chose those ingredients for a reason. Each of them have played a big role in modern craft beer and most breweries are familiar with them.

“We wanted to deliver the classics,” Meddings says. “There’s no brewer in the country that hasn’t used them, and whoever wins it will be able to make use of it.”

He says presenting the prize to Range was “Like getting Beyoncé to cover Aretha Franklin.”

“They’re new kids on the block and are just kicking goals from everywhere. To put these classics in their hands I thought it was a nice completion of the circle. They make some bloody good beer up there.”

Bintani has been a major supporter of the Indies and the Independent Brewers Association for a number of years, and Meddings says it’s important for the company to do so each year.

“When you create something it’s nice to get recognition when you excel,” he says. “These awards are important for brewers because there aren't endless opportunities for them to walk away with a big prize and have something to put up in the pool room.

“The IBA, and the Indies and the awards are all just ways that we can provide value in supporting the industry.”

To learn more, and to enter the Indies, click here. You can read about what Range did with another of its prizes here.