When Eddie Brook, founder of Cape Byron Distillery invited us to collaborate on an experimental project, we were absolutely thrilled!  As close friends of Brookfarm, we’d been waiting patiently for any opportunity to work with the distillery, their latest project.

Inspired by the local distillery’s dedication to rainforest regeneration and use of native botanicals during distillation,  a small crew began working closely with Eddie. Carefully planning how their idea would come to fruition, the team exchanged secrets of their crafts, initial visions while experimenting with flavours and taste testing a few breakfast gins…

Lip-puckering and thirst quenching, the kettle soured beer has added botanicals of Juniper berries, crushed coriander seeds and lemon peel… Collectively dubbed the Gin Sour, due to it’s tart, refreshing and cocktail-esque qualities, our collab Pilot Batch beer is now out of tank.

To celebrate the release of our moreish collab brew, Brookie’s Dry Gin and Stone & Wood, are holding a fundraiser “When Gin Meets Beer” Sunday 21 May at the Cape Byron Distillery. The arvo will kick off at 1pm, with the Stock Pot Kitchen firing up the BBQ and our latest Pilot Batch, Gin Sour pouring from the taps.

All ticket sales and profits from the day will be donated to those affected locally, by the recent floods through the Mullumbimby and District Neighbourhood Centre. Tickets are $15 and can be purchased via Eventbrite. So, join us in the rainforest….to celebrate the release of this unique brew and support a cause close to our hearts.

Our annual pilgrimage to the Hop harvest in Tassie is about honouring quality ingredients, appreciating those who grow or work with them, and championing their effect on the finished product…

Whilst we are a brewery, and beer is our thing, each year while in Tassie the Tour of the Galaxy crew takes time to explore other crafts – those with an equal passion for handcrafted practice and quality ingredients…

Year after year we are drawn back to our old friends at Lark Distillery – the home of Tasmanian single malt whiskey. Established in 1992 by the ‘godfather’ of Australian whiskey, Bill Lark, the distillery continues to use only the purest Tasmanian ingredients and traditional, time-honoured methods to produce prized whiskies…

This year’s Tour of the Galaxy crew including Stone & Wood Head Brewer, Caolan Vaughn toured Lark’s Cambridge site led by Toni and Head-Distiller, Chris. The team exchanged stories of their crafts, learning about each other’s similarities and differences, celebrating wins, and of course, trying a few of Lark’s finest!

We sat down for a chat with Chris and talked about his passion, Tasmania’s perfect climate for producing whisky, the 150 year ban on craft distillation, and the synchronicity between brewing and distilling.

Talk us through how your interest in distilling came about?

I really fell into the distillation industry. I was at Uni doing a science degree and got a job on the Lark Distillery bottling line. It didn’t take long for me to start brewing and distilling and I just fell in love with the industry, the company and the whisky making process. It’s been 10 years since I started, and I’m still so excited to get to work and make whisky.

Are you born and bred Tasmanian?

I’ve been here for 23 years of my 31 years…almost local.

Why is Tasmania’s unique climate the perfect conditions for whisky?

There are really two answers to this question. The first one is that Tasmania climate is a perfect for the dynamic maturation of whisky. We have constant temperature and pressure swings that force the whisky into and out of the casks wood, resulting in big flavoured whiskies. The second reason is that in Tasmania we have a fantastic culture of helping each other, whether it be the wine, beer, cider or distilling industries we all hang out and share knowledge.

What stopped people from producing whisky in Tasmania?

Craft distillation was outlawed in Tasmania in 1839 and remained that way until Lark Distillery founder and godfather to the Australian whisky industry Bill Lark had the laws changed to start Lark Distillery in 1992.

Describe the importance of hand made copper stills? 

We are so lucky to have master craftsman and Still maker Peter Bailey living in Hobart, hand making amazing Stills. Our Stills are 100% copper, which helps to remove sulphur notes that aren’t desirable in whisky.

Do you have a favourite stage of the process…Ageing the cask? Pouring the first glass?

Well you can’t go past sampling a few whiskies! But overall, I do have a real passion for fermentation and in particular sour secondary wild fermentation.

Where is your favourite place to enjoy a whisky and why?

It’s not really a place, but the answer is with friends! Whisky always tastes best when shared with good people!!!

A heads up…last year our friends from Lark Distillery may have loaned us a few sneaky barrels for one of our most exclusive limited releases yet. The barrels aren’t quite ready to be cracked yet…for that to happen it’ll need to be the thick of winter, where darker brews are required to keep the cold at bay.

Have you ever heard the tale of the Murwillumbah Swamp Beer?  It’s a story that’ll make you smile and thirst for a beer.

Good Friday 2001 – a day that will go down in history for the community of Murwillumbah, and the birth date of the infamous Murbah Swamp beer.

At 2.00 a.m a truck carrying over 40,000 bottles of beer ran off the road and crashed into a river along Tweed Valley Way. The load of beer was cut loose to pull the truck from the water but the salvage operation was postponed by police due to the heavy Easter traffic along the highway.

As the word spread across town, the locals of Murbah took the clean up into their own hands with a mission to rescue every last beer that entered their river. The amateur rescue operation consisted of anything that floated; canoes, bodyboards, boats, eskys and jetskis to surface and save the beers. By the time the police salvage divers came to the crash site, there was not a beer to be seen, and the small town of Murbah celebrated the Easter long weekend over many cold brews and stories about their involvement in the great Murbah beer salvage.

The news made national headlines putting the town of Murwillumbah on the map. The mini doco above features key characters of the Murbah community telling the story of the greatest event to hit the small Northern Rivers town.

Here at Stone & Wood, we love a good story, especially one that brings the community together. So to celebrate the epic occasion, we’ve brewed an exclusive Pilot Batch to commemorate the Murbah Swamp Beer which will be tapped at our Murwillumbah Brewery Open Day, March 4.

Come along with the family to the Murbah Open Day and support the community’s charity of choice, The Wedgetail Retreat and Tweed Palliative Support with a gold coin entry donation. Enjoy brewery tours, entertainment (Dos Loona, Holly Tapp and Tim Schou), food (JR’s Smokehouse, The Backyard Chef, Keith Coffee & Barber) drinks ($5 beers, water and soft drinks) and some fun for the kids. Gates open from 11am-5pm (NSW time). We’ll see ya there!

Check out our Murwillumbah Open Day details.

Get along to our Murbah Open Day on 4 March and support the community’s charity of choice, The Wedgetail Retreat and Tweed Palliative Support.

As Murwillumbah’s local brewer, we can’t wait to re-open the brewery’s gates to the community…Our family friendly Open Day will run from 11-5, with entertainment, food, drinks and some fun for the kids, sorted!

We’ve lined up live tunes from Dos Loona, Holly Tapp and Tim Shou, a jumping castle and, Murbah Brewery tours running every half an hour, explaining our story, the brewing process and a few of our sustainability initiatives.

Food trucks JR Smokehouse and The Backyard Chef, two of the region’s best, will be pulling up to keep bellies full and Keith Coffee Shop and Barber will be making sure the crowd stays caffeinated…

Now lets talk about beer…. and not just any beer. We’ve brewed an exclusive Pilot Batch just for Open Day. Why is it so special? It’s an ode to the infamous ‘Murbah Swamp Beer’. A legendary local tale, where back in 2001, a semi trailer carrying pallets of beer ran off the Pacific Highway. Cartons of brews fell into the Tweed River…and the locals wasted no time in diving in to salvage what they could (some were still icey-cold). Check out the Murbah swamp beer video.

Our tribute ‘Murbah Swamp Beer’ will be tapped at Open Day alongside a few of our other refreshing brews. Beers will be $5 and there is a gold coin entry fee with all profits raised donated to the Wedgetail Retreat and Tweed Palliative Support, so they can continue their amazing work helping the community.

Lock in the date, Saturday 4 March, and get along to our second brewery’s Open Day to support an epic local cause.

Watch – ‘Murbah Swamp Beer’ explained…

Influenced by the laid back lifestyle of our hometown in the Northern Rivers, our sessionable Garden Ale is best enjoyed with friends in a beer garden or a mate’s backyard, while kicking back and appreciating the simple things in life.

For us, this time of year is about making the most of the warm weather and long days, enjoying epic food, listening to live tunes, playing a few beer garden games and drinking sessionable beers….

In light of this, for the next three months we’re throwing Garden Parties across the country. So get along and join in on the good times, everyone’s welcome!

Garden Party Event Listing

Brisbane & Surrounds

2 Apr | Wooly Mammoth
Garden Parties in the Wooly Mammoth’s Garden Bar, DJ’s, lawn games and prizes, every Sunday from 26 March to 2 April.

2 Apr | Fitzy’s Toowoomba
Garden Ale inspired menu and live tunes, every Sunday throughout April.

16 Apr | Vielle Branche
Garden Ales, live Gypsie bands and food by Emilie & Solange Fromagerie, every Sunday from 16 April – 7 May.

Northern Rivers

31 Mar | Hotel Brunswick

CANCELLED DUE TO WEATHER

Kick off the weekend at The Bruns…delicious food trucks, Siguenos Mexican, JR Smokehouse and Yami Felafel will be joining us, alongside local musos The Lyrical and Dj Yakis, sessionable ales poured from our beer truck Clyde from 4PM!

2 Apr | Lennox Hotel

Live tunes from The Lyrical, sessionable ales and epic food.

8 Apr | Sun Bistro

Live tunes, epic food and sessionable brews, Sunday 8 & 22 of April.

Gold Coast

2 Apr | Calypso, QT

Live tunes, competitions, prizes, beer games and epic food. Every Sunday from March 19- April 9.

Sunshine Coast 

1 Apr | The Sanctuary
Botanical Garden Party, Garden Ale inspired menu, local gin, croquet and live tunes.

NEW SOUTH WALES STOCKISTS

QUEENSLAND STOCKISTS

VICTORIA STOCKISTS

AUSTRALIAN CAPITAL TERRITORY STOCKISTS

TASMANIA STOCKISTS

SOUTH AUSTRALIA STOCKISTS

UK STOCKISTS

A fair bit’s changed since the three boys first sat around the kitchen table, dreaming up what would be the original and handcrafted Pacific Ale, back in 2008. What hasn’t changed are our values, being proudly independent, being ingrained in our communities and our focus on treading as lightly as we can on our Earth.

It’s funny to think, that despite us capturing the day-to-day to share with you all on in our online communities, it took a collective effort to pull together this timeline for our tasting room wall, showing the milestones of our shared history…

Into 2017, we will continue striving to be a good business defined by our actions and we will not forget our humble beginnings.

Early 2008

Ross, Brad and Jamie get the keys to an old soft drink factory in the Arts and Industrial Estate, Byron Bay…

September 2008

Shiny new tanks arrive all way from Prince Edward Island in Canada, the brewery starts to come together

November 2008

Stone & Wood’s first keg of beer (Draught Ale) goes on tap in the local pubs…

April/March 2009

First Stone & Wood Lager bottles rattle down the bottling line…

September 2009 

First batch of Stone Beer brewed

March 2010

Draught Ale released in bottles

November 2010

The original Pacific Ale is born, Draught Ale is renamed to Pacific Ale

April 2012

Jasper Ale first brewed…

July 2012

The Mash Collective is born …

Summer 2012/13

Garden Ale released as a summer seasonal

May 2013

New site settled on to build a bigger brewery in Murwillumbah

September 2013

First employees become shareholders under our employee ownership plan

May 2014

Bonnie the caravan joins the Stone & Wood family and goes on her first road trip to Newcastle

July 2014

We open our second brewery in Murwillumbah…

Cloud Catcher released as a celebration beer, inspired by the brewery’s backdrop, Mt Warning (Wollumbin)

March 2015

Clyde the beer truck joins the Stone & Wood family and goes on Surfari!

Stone & Wood hires its 50th employee, growing from three staff to 50 in under seven years

Installation of 100kw of solar panels on the roof at Murwillumbah to reduce our footprint…

March 2015

Beers of the Earth Released, six traditional styles brewed in six tanks side by side…

November 2015

Our lager rebranded to Green Coast, reflecting the green hills that roll down to meet the Pacific Ocean…

November 2015

Pilot Brewery installed at Byron Bay….

February 2016

Festival of the Stone goes on Tour….

April 2016

Big Scrub joins Beers from our Backyard Range as a limited release…

November 2016

Beer as a force for good, Stone & Wood brewing Co. accredited as a Certified B-Corp Corporation!

2017 and beyond…

Independent local brewer, brewing handcrafted beer in the Northern Rivers of NSW.

Cheers to the good times ahead!

In Byron? Join us for a tour and check out the Timeline now on display in our Byron brewery’s Tasting Room.

Often when people think about the Northern Rivers, Byron Bay’s lighthouse, beaches and iconic pubs are what they imagine. Surfing those breaks, walking up through the bush track and taking in that aspect of Australia’s most Easterly point and enjoying our beers around town is epic but what a lot of people from out of town don’t realise, is that there is so much more to this special part of the world.

We’ve asked our crew to share with you what they like to get up to, so if you find yourself in our backyard and you’ve already dropped into our brewery, here’s a couple of other ideas to help you explore the Northern Rivers of NSW, one of the greatest places on Earth!

GEORGIA BROWN 

Georgia (left) drinking Garden Ales at last year’s Laneway Festival

Georgia grew up on a macadamia farm in Lindendale, near Lismore. After finishing her degree in Environmental Management in Brisbane, she was stoked to land a job back home in the beautiful Northern Rivers. The past year she’s been working as a Production Cadet, which means she moves around the business learning the different areas of production, including logistics, engineering, sustainability and quality analysis. She is super exited to be embarking as a brewer for the next six months.

Outside of work she said that she loves attempting to surf and calls herself the Mick Fanning of Stone & Wood (joking!). She also enjoys attending weekly dance sessions at No Lights No Lycra. Her dream is for there to be a daily dance-break at the brewery.

What’s your idea of the perfect day?

A chilled Sunday would include Lismore Car Boot Markets: amazing food (favourite is a Masala Dosa from the Dosa guy (see below), second hand clothes, plants and local produce. After the markets I take my dogs to their favorite beach (7 mile) and after that, have a beer on the point.

If you had a friend in town where would you take them?

If I’m in Murwillumbah, I’d stop in for a coffee at Keith Coffee and go to the Tweed Regional Gallery – they get great exhibitions! Another great place to bring visitors is the Pinnacle Lookout in the Border Ranges National Park.

Where is your fave place to enjoy a few Stone & Wood beers?

Definitely Thursday pizza nights at the Clunes Store. Grab a beer from the bottle shop next door and soak up the atmosphere over a delicious wood fired Il Carretto pizza.

Watch Chapter 1 of The Slow Road, where we brew a beer with local winemaker Jared.

So it is no secret that Terase from Taste Byron Bay is a massive fan of all things Stone & Wood AND particularly our Pacific Ale, plus she loves finding any excuse to write recipes that showcase local produce!

This recipe is super easy to make, however you will need an ice cream machine (or you can use a Thermomix).

INGREDIENTS:

1200 ml pure cream
16 egg yolks
330ml Pacific Ale
300g caster sugar

METHOD:

• place the internal cylinder of the ice cream machine in the freezer for a min of 24 hours
• pour your Pacific Ale into a small sauce pan – bring to the boil then simmer until the liquid has reduce to 100ml – strain and place in fridge to go completely cold
• gently warm the cream in a non stick sauce pan DO NOT allow to boil
• meanwhile – beat the egg yolks and sugar until super light and fluffy
• pour the warm cream into the egg yolk mixer ONLY adding 1/3 of the warm cream at a time – using a whisk to make sure the cream and egg mixture is well combine – this is now your “anglaise”
• wash and dry the saucepan you used to heat the cream
• set up a double bowl – with ice in the bottom of one bowl and place another bowl on the top – you will need this ready to go for when the  anglaise is ready – place a fine sieve over the top bowl – ready to pour the mixture through when ready
• add the anglaise mixture back into the original cream saucepan – place on a low / medium head
• using a silcone spatula – continually stir the anglaise to ensure you maintain an even temperature throughout the mix – paying special attention to the bottom and corners of the saucepan – you don’t want any of the anglaise to ‘catch’ which will result in a scrabbled egg mixture
• once the anglaise has thickened i.e. you can trace your finger down the back on the spatula and the line where you finger was stays separate to the liquid then your anglaise is ready!
• pour the anglaise through the fine sieve into the top bowl
• using a whisk – whisk the anglaise over the bowl of ice until it is cool – it is important to whisky until the liquid is cool as you don’t want the heat to stay in the mixture i.e. you will get scrambled eggs!
• once cool – pour the mixture into a container and put in the fridge to go completely cold
• set up your ice cream machine – pour the mixture into the machine (read your machine instructions first) leave enough room at the top of the machine for the ice cream to churn efficiently
• churn until thick and fluffy
• using a clean spatular – scoop out the ice cream into a large mixing bowl – add the reduce Pacific Ale ONLY 1/3 at at time – ensuring you completely incorporate the reduced beer before adding the next batch
• once fully combined – bearing in mind you need to work quickly so the ice cream does not melt – transfer the beer ice cream to containers that are suitable for freezing and ensure the lid is a good fit – freeze until fully set

TIPS:

• be careful not to boil the cream
• make sure you stir the anglaise constantly to ensure it does not scramble
• set up your double bowl with ice before you start stirring the anglaise – this is super important – as you will need it set ready if the anglaise gets to hot you’ll need to be able cool it down super doper quick
• using a non stick saucepan makes this recipe really easy – unless you are confident, I wouldn’t attempt using a regular saucepan
• make sure you use a container that the lid fits – so the ice cream does not get any freezer ice crystals on / in it
• you will likely have some left over anglaise – if you do simply finish the first batch by adding the reduce Pacific Ale and then churn the second small batch and keep as vanilla ice cream soooooo good

SERVING SUGGESTIONS:

• pretty darn awesome just on its own
• enjoy with a bottle of cold Pacific Ale
• serve with the Easiest Apple Tarte Tatin Ever!

This is an awesome recipe for you to enjoy with family and friends OR a great way to get young kids in the kitchen and build some kitchen confidence.

Let us know how you go!  And if you’ve enjoyed this recipe, check out Taste Byron Bay for more!