Prancing Pony, Hawkers: champion brews raise the bar
Move over Germany, Czech Republic and, ahem, England. The best beer in the world this year is an Aussie craft brew.
Of all the prevailing Australian myths, the claim that the continent produced the best beer in the world was clearly the most ignorant. How blessed we weren’t to live down here, where boring cold lagers flowed tasteless and relentless!
Were one to suggest the same about the quality of local beers today, however, they would be on firmer footing. News filtered through from the old country in recent weeks that Prancing Pony’s India Red Ale was crowned the supreme champion beer at the International Beer Challenge in London. The little Adelaide outfit can now boast that it produces “the best beer in the world” as measured by the judges.
The good news for local drinkers did not stop there. Melbourne’s Hawkers Beer was awarded supreme champion brewer at the same awards. Never heard of it? Fair enough; the brewery sold its first beer early last year and is widely available locally but has only just started to move into South Australia and Tasmania.
If you haven’t heard of Prancing Pony you just haven’t been paying attention. Beer Goggles came back from the 2014 Adelaide Test singing the praises of the Mount Barker outfit and made special note of the India Red Ale. Back then we called it the brewery’s show stopper, noting “this enormous beer comes in at a challenging 7.9 per cent alcohol, is a dark ruby-red colour and is bursting with aroma thanks to a generous dry hopping regimen”.
The International Beer Challenge attracts entries from more than 30 countries and is hotly contested, but the South Australian beer stood out among all the gold medallists.
“It was evident from the judging that the standard was exceptionally high this year because on several of the rounds I observed judges working on they really struggled to find a winner because the level was so high, and that carried forward to the trophy judging at the end of the day, where it was extremely difficult to separate the beers. I am certain we found a worthy supreme champion,” awards chairman Jeff Evans said on announcing the big winners.
Prancing Pony chief executive Corinna Steeb is over the moon. Most craft brewers are hop-obsessed; the Pony’s attention to the malt base of the beers makes it reasonably unique. “The India Red Ale is the best example we have of the balance between our grain bill and hop bill,” Steeb says. “All our beers concentrate on getting that balance right and aim to have a long, lingering flavour finish.”
With the first Pony beer sold in November 2012, the brewery started to distribute nationally early this year and had just started to sell small amounts in London.
“Our London distributor is an Adelaide boy and he suggested entering the beer in the awards,” Steeb says. “We thought it was a good idea as we wanted to know how our beer travelled and thought that if they won medals it was proof they were arriving in good condition. We were overwhelmed to learn we’d won a gold medal and then to learn we won the big award was something we never ever expected.”
Jon Seltin is head brewer at Hawkers, a brewery that came about through the strange pairing of Lebanese brewer Mazen Hajjar and renowned chef Joseph Abboud. Hajjar opened his 961 Beer brewery in the middle of the Lebanon war in 2006. Abboud began to import his beers as a show of support and soon a friendship began between the two. The brewer came to Australia and the pair decided to start making beer here. Travelling Australia to do some market research, they met Seltin at Bright Brewery in northern Victoria and all three hit it off. The pair made the brewer an offer he couldn’t refuse.
“I had a great job at Bright and it was really hard to walk away from it … but they offered me carte blanche to build a hi-tech brewery from the ground up,” Seltin says.
Hawkers located itself in Melbourne’s Reservoir, launched the pale ale at the Geelong Craft Beer Festival and picked up its first award that week.
The brewery makes a pilsener, American pale ale and saison, but presently has a limited edition barrel-aged imperial stout that you would be well advised to snap up if you can.