The rise of Non-Alcoholic/Alcohol Free craft beer has been meteoric in Australia over the past couple of years. At the start of 2020 your N/A beer offerings were mostly limited to some German imports and maybe a Carlton Zero. Heineken followed shortly after, before a wave began in June/July 2020 that we’re still riding to this day. One of the brands to launch in July 2020 was Melbourne’s own N/A focused brewery; Upflow Brewing.
Upflow Brewing is the brainchild of Julian Sanders. If that name sounds familiar it’s because he’s been the Managing Director at Spark Breweries & Distilleries since 2013. Spark have designed almost 50 breweries of all sizes for Australian craft brewers & believe they are responsible for more brewery builds in Australia than any other manufacturer (You can read more about them here.). It was on one of these brewery installs when the idea came to Julian to start an N/A brewery.
Brewery Type
Gypsy
Brewed At: Various
Region
Inner Suburbs
Tasting Room
None
A function of Julian’s role at Spark involved visiting new breweries, often in regional locations, for days at a time to install the equipment he’s designed. What do you do when you visit a regional town for a number of days? Often the answer is drink. Seeking a healthier lifestyle, Julian began thinking about whether you could make the flavour of beer he was looking for without the alcohol. Having an engineering background, it quickly became a challenge for him to work out how it could be done.
Julian leant on the contacts he’d made in the brewing industry to help make this happen. Like most N/A producers they are a little coy around their processed, however they do use one of the yeasts that doesn’t assimilate maltose & only ferments simple sugars. The rest of the process involves carefully watching mash temps & being fastidious with salt additions to acheive the body and flavour profile they’re looking for. Rumour has it that there were over 65 test batches before they were happy with the process!
Upflow originally planned to start selling in the UK & even visited the Mindful Drinking Festival in London in early-2020. The beers were well received and stock was on the way to the UK. But then, COVID happened… After regrouping the team decided to launch in Australia, a less developed N/A market but where they were brewing & in all likelihood stuck for a while.They belatedly launched in time for Dry July 2020. The UK’s loss has been Australia’s gain!
At this stage Upflow have no plans to own their own brewery, although a taproom isn’t out of the question according to Chris Menichelli (best known as Slowbeer’s Founder & Owner), Upflow’s Brand Manager. There are some technical difficulties with an N/A taproom, namely beer freezing, that needs to be worked through – although with Julian there I would back them to be able to work through them in the fullness of time.
Stout was one of Upflow’s early releases, a way of differentiating themselves from other N/A producers. When I had this the first time I had to double check it was a) indeed a 0.5% beer & b) a four ingredient beer. Staggeringly on both fronts, it is. The body is seriously impressive for the ABV without using lactose/other thickening agents. Flavourwise you get plenty of roast, with coffee & chocolate notes, whilst there is enough hop bitterness to balance. It’s a really good option, in my eyes, if you’re looking to cut down on alcohol for whatever reason but still want that beer taste.
Remember it’s always Beer O’Clock somewhere in the world!
