Sailors Grave, Bruce Pascoe and Ryefield Hops launch Dark Emu beer

South coast’s Ryefield Hops has joined a collab between best-selling author Bruce Pascoe and Orbost’s Sailors Grave brewery to create the uniquely Australian Dark Emu beer.

A south coast company has collaborated with best-selling author Bruce Pascoe and Victorian brewery Sailors Grave to create a unique tasting beer using native Australian plants.

Ryefield Hops’ Jade McManus said the Bemboka farm’s use of their Saaz and Fuggle hops in the new Dark Emu brew, named after Mr Pascoe’s best-selling 2014 book of the same name, has been a passion project.

The Orbost brewery worked alongside Mr Pascoe’s team at Black Duck Foods to create the dark lager using roasted mamadyang ngalluk and burru ngalluk grass seed, harvested on the banks of the Wallagaraugh River.

South coast's Ryefield Hops has joined author Bruce Pascoe (right) and Sailors Grave’s Chris (left) and Gab Moore to create unique Dark Emu beer. Picture: Sailors Grave

“The collaboration is just an awesome thing in terms of the concept,” Jade said.

“The fact they are including Aboriginal heritage and using native ingredients is awesome. We’re excited to be included and supply south coast ingredients, because it’s a really significant product.

“Bruce told us he’s excited because our hops is grown in the local area.”

Jade first read Mr Pascoe’s book, which takes a deep dive into indigenous Australian agriculture, aquaculture, food storage and preservation before colonisation, while working in Alice Springs, and said it is good to see issues in the book break into the mainstream.

Art for the unique can was created by artist Terry Hayes.

They said the brew will soon be available from selected stores along the south coast.

Sailors Grave owners Chris and Gab Moore said the book inspired them to try something new, as they look to expand the brewery with a bigger multimillion dollar brewery in nearby Marlo.

“When we first read Bruce Pascoe’s Dark Emu we suddenly felt that we were seeing the true Australian landscape first time,” they said.

“Over the last 200 years we have been cloaking the environment with layers in our own image, to make us feel safer and more comfortable in what can sometimes be an unfamiliar land.

“We have since been on a sometimes deeply personal journey ‘looking over our shoulder at the past’ and as Bruce says so eloquently ‘you can’t eat our food until you can swallow our history’.”

Ryefield Hops’ Karen and Morgan Taylor and Jade McManus. Picture: Ryefield Hops

The Sailors Grave team said the art on the unique can was created by artist Terry Hayes, who also harvested the grain used in Dark Emu.

“We thank Uncle Bruce Pascoe and family for entrusting us with this project and we pay our respects to ancestors and Elders past and present of the lands in which we dream, learn and live,” they said.

“We’re privileged to share and walk this special country together, the worlds oldest continuous culture and we’re committed to honouring this history and knowledge through our work at Sailors Grave.

“In the future grain will potentially be sourced from other regions and communities, which is just the way we like it at Sailors Grave, we’re not making a commodity we’re telling a story about place, people and time.”

A percentage of the proceeds from the sales of the beer will go to support the studies of local indigenous students in Orbost, Mallacoota, where Mr Pascoe lives, and Eden on the south coast.