Strathbogie Brewing Company is a name that most will not be familiar with. The Brewing Company is the work of husband & wife team Dave & Sandy Joyce, a dream that has taken them almost 30 years to realize. Strathbogie Brewing Company is throwback to breweries of a century, or even more, ago. To my knowledge they are the closest thing we have in Victoria to a true farm brewery!
The story begins when Dave and Sandy bought their farm outside the lovely village of Strathbogie in the early 90’s. They spent the next few years commuting from Melbourne, whilst building a house, sheds & most importantly the lifestyle they craved before finally moving permanently in 1998. Dave had been a keen homebrewer since his 20’s & his passion for brewing & their shared passion for growing things lead to them experimenting with different crops in the early 2000’s that could hopefully one day be used to make their own beer.
Brewery Type
Physical
Region
High Country
Tasting Room
None
It was this passion that lead to numerous visits to the Hamilton Seed Bank to try and resurrect crops from areas with similar climates to Strathbogie. This has led to them growing Rouge de Bordeaux Red Wheat & Maris Otter (the English Brewing grain, which they grew up from a 20gr seed sample to a full crop in 3 years), whilst they also grow barley, oats & corn which they use in their Cream Ale. They’ve got the hop side of things covered to with Saaz, Chinook, Tettnang, Golding, Fuggles, Pride of Ringwood & Willamette all grown on site.
Whilst not certified organic, they believe in doing things as naturally a possible. This extends to using an old Massey Ferguson tractor & turn of the century corn sheller! The last step in the process to have a fully farm produced beer is a way for them to malt their own Barley. Given the challenges they’ve overcome to this point, I don’t see any reason why malting can’t be part of the Strathbogie Brewing Company going forward!
It took until about 2010 for the couple to start setting up the brewery, with their first beers coming off the line in March 2014. Better late than never as they always say! It would have been much earlier, if not for the local council & various Victorian Government regulations not favouring the establishment of small, particularly rural, breweries in the late 90’s & early 2000’s.
The main reason I think most won’t be familiar with Strathbogie is it’s size. The brewery is one of the smaller ones out there, with a batch size of around 200L, although plans are afoot to double this. Almost 90% of their product is sold at Farmers Markets in the local area (Nagambie, Violet Town & Euroa) whilst stock can also be found at the local footy club & a couple of cafes/delis nearby. They also don’t have their own cellar door/tasting room.
Most of their beeg is sold in these wonderful heavy dute 500ml bottles, pictured above. They’re painted bottles, similar to the old Stone Brewing ones that used to be a fixture of every bottleshop in Melbourne. As you can see I sampled the McQuinns Brown Ale some time ago, thankfully I took reasonably good notes! It was a lovely Brown Ale full of malt character with deep caramels, dark fruit & even a hint of coffee roast coming in at the backend. In the true English style the carb is on the lower end & only balancing bitterness.
Remember it’s always Beer O’Clock somewhere in the world!
