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Since Day One at Stone & Wood, connection to community has always been a driving force for our business. Each year, we receive enormous support from the close-knit communities that surround us, here in our home base of the Northern Rivers, in Queensland and across the country. Because of this, we’re always looking for grassroots ways we can get involved and give back.

Likewise, we’ve always aimed to keep the environmental impacts of our brewing processes as minimal as possible, as we believe nurturing and protecting the environment that surrounds you is an integral piece in doing good business.

The B Corp certification provides guidelines and standards of what it means to be a great business and helps us to keep returning to these principles.

 You’ve probably noticed the B Corp symbol popping up on more and more of the things you love lately. But what exactly is it ? Let us help you break it down.

SO, WHAT’S A B CORP?

A B Corp is a company that is certified for meeting high standards of transparency and accountability, as well as excellent environmental and social performance across all aspects of the business.

The B Corp movement exists to inspire businesspeople to balance purpose against profit and to empower consumers to make ethical choices.

So how do we incorporate these guidelines into our aim to use beer as a force for good?

We engage in best environmental practices in our day-to-day through our Green Feet sustainability program and we connect to our communities through our not-for-profit arm, the inGrained Foundation. inGrained is where we work with local charities at a grassroots level to help improve the lives of those around us.

 After all, helping out our mates is in our company’s DNA.

WHAT IS A B CORP CERTIFICATION?

B Corp certifications are issued by a not-for-profit organisation called B Lab, whose mission is to harness the power of business to impact the world for the better.

Around the globe, there are approximately 5,000 B Corps like Stone & Wood that lead the way to achieving this mission by embracing a ‘we over me,’ mentality.

WHAT DOES A B CORP CERTIFICATION MEAN FOR BUSINESS SUSTAINABILITY?

A B Corp certification is not just recognition, but rather a symbol of ongoing commitment towards sustainability and ethical practices. And there’s no time for sitting on your laurels – B Corp certifications get reviewed every three years!

To get re-certified, B Corps are provided with a roadmap to aid them in identifying key areas of improvement and setting new targets.

At Stone & Wood, we were able to improve our score from 82.1 to 83.7 when we were last recertified, with our results underlined by a strong performance in the environment category.

We were stoked to see the actions we’ve taken in innovating our manufacturing process to reduce our use of water and electricity and output of waste has us on the right track.

Overall, we’re pumped to keep improving our practices and furthering our impact for years to come!

WHY STONE & WOOD BECAME B CORP CERTIFIED

We knew that getting our efforts formally acknowledged by BLab could help Aussie beer drinkers make informed decisions that aligned with their own values.

It was a no brainer for us as B Corporation certification is so closely aligned with what we value most; our community, our people and the natural environment we all rely on.

JOINING THE B CORP COMMUNITY

We’re extremely proud to be recognised as part of the outstanding B Corp Community and to be continuing to push for even better scores in the future.

Now that’s something to raise a glass to!

Shop our full range of ethically-produced products, all available to purchase online.

We’re thrilled to announce six local not-for-profits have been awarded a Northern Rivers Large Grant, with a total of $115,180 being divided between the organisations.

After receiving a strong pool of outstanding applications from many people doing great work in our community, the inGrained Foundation Grants Committee and Board are pleased to announce the successful recipients for the 2021 inGrained Northern Rivers Large Grants Program are:

AGAPE OUTREACH

Agape Outreach Inc is a street-level organisation actively working to alleviate poverty and homelessness in the Tweed Heads area and beyond. Since COVID, they have seen a 468% increase in client numbers needing support. Agape will be putting their grant towards ongoing support and outreach services for people in need.

BANGALOW KOALAS

Steadily building the koala, wildlife and reforestation corridor around Bangalow, Bangalow Koalas are looking to plant over 4000 trees in the area by August 2024 regenerating land and protecting the local wildlife for years to come. Their grant sees a key section of the wildlife corridor progressing within the next 12 months.

BYRON COMMUNITY CENTRE

The Byron Community Centre are at the forefront of the region’s homelessness crisis. Currently renovating the Fletcher Street Cottage to reopen late this year, BCC will be using their grant to help provide the homeless and disadvantaged community with shelter and support in extreme weather events.

COMMUNITY OWNED RENEWABLE ENERGY MULLUMBIMBY (COREM)

COREM installs solar systems on community organisations for free, which is then paid back by the savings made on the electricity bills. The solar systems are provided interest-free and when paid back, the funding is re-purposed for the next installation. COREM’s grant is going towards a model of delivery that allows them to sustain this great work.

GREEN HEROES

Recently rescuing three loggerhead turtle nests from the Fingal and Pottsville areas, Green Heroes built a makeshift incubator and successfully hatched and released over 150 baby turtles with a 96% hatch rate. Their inGrained funding will help them to build a proper and permanent incubator to continue to revive these endangered sea creatures for many turtle hatchings in the years ahead.

HUMAN NATURE ADVENTURE THERAPY

Through their Activ8 Outdoor Youth Mentoring program, Human Nature Adventure Therapy offer immersive outdoor counselling services for teens in need in our community. Their inGrained grant will support the delivery of many more one-on-one outdoor counselling sessions building mental health and resilience.

We at Stone & Wood and the inGrained Foundation are stoked with the results of this year’s Grants Program. We congratulate each of the successful applicants and look forward to seeing their projects come to life, and thank all the organisations who took the time to apply this year.

inGrained’s work in the community continues throughout the year with the help of Byron locals and visitors to our Byron Brewery. For every beer sold over the bar, $1 goes towards supporting additional local grass roots charities.

To learn more about the inGrained Foundation, its Grants Program and this year’s recipients, visit the inGrained Foundation website, sign up to the newsletter and follow @ingrainedfoundation

Sustainable goals are coming into fashion. In a world where we hardly have the chance to sit down and smell the roses, we have even less time to look at what’s in our own wardrobes.

Not many of us consider how our clothing gets from the field to our backs, and you’d be among the majority if you didn’t know all the processes involved in landing a singular piece of apparel on the shelf. Clothing production is a huge problem for the world and just like the challenge we’ve undertaken to move our beers to a high standard of sustainability, we’re also determined to take all the steps we can for our range of sustainable merchandise as well.

WHY IS SUSTAINABLE FASHION IMPORTANT?

Over 65% of all clothing is currently made from synthetic materials, derived from crude oils and fossil fuels. On top of this, the dyes used to colour cheaply made fabrics are often toxic to the environment and harmful to the labourers who breathe them in.

As if pollution wasn’t bad enough, the craftsmen and women making these fabrics may be working in sweatshop-like conditions with little pay and no consideration to their health or wellbeing.

But there’s emerging hope, and it rests in the hands of forward-thinkers within the growing trend of sustainable fashion and management. A new wave of ‘consumers’, including people like you are seeing greater value in responsibly sourced apparel and merchandise.

WHAT IS SUSTAINABLE FASHION?

Sustainable fashion is the act of producing clothing and accessories while paying attention to its environmental and socio-economic impact. This means more natural dyes, fabrics, and ethical working conditions.

The best way to get there is to be educated on making the most of our clothing, rather than purchasing the newest seasonal trend. If anything, 2021 has opened our eyes to many issues happening both globally and in our communities, making it more important now than ever to have these conversations.

Responsible brands are looking to make sustainable fashion not just a trend, but a permanent fixture in the industry. Sites like Good on You are leading the way in sustainable merchandise and fashion education, offering a directory full of brands and information on how their products perform in terms of sustainability. Well-known names from Asics to Zara are up for scrutiny as Good on You provides all the details on what it takes to be an informed fashionista.

We also know how important the earth is to us and are making our own mark by our own Green Feet Initiative. Through this program, we have brought in sustainable practices that recycle water usage, increase our use of efficient energy systems, and have introduced innovative waste management programs, within our brewing process.

But this initiative extends past our main operations, as we’re also working to promote sustainable fashion in Australia through our beer clothing range. These are an exclusive collection of Stone & Wood-branded products just as clean and refreshing as a cold beer on a summer’s afternoon.

HOW DO WE MAKE OUR SUSTAINABLE MERCH?

There are so many reasons to focus on sustainable habits in and out of fashion. Not only is it great for the planet, but it helps every seamstress and craftsman along the supply chain make a living wage in working conditions that see them as more than just human sewing machines.

The best fabrics for sustainable fashion are natural, biodegradable, and easy to recycle. Materials like organic cotton, linen, recycled polyester, and spandex yarn are some of the many fabrics used to make our merchandise.

Not only are they good for the environment due to their ease of access, lack of chemicals in production, and recycling measures, but they look good too! This means you can both look and feel good while wearing your purchase of eco-friendly merchandise; knowing it is also supporting smaller communities to create a more incredible earth. We’re also working towards introducing packaging that is chemical-free, plastic-free, and made with less water and energy than ever before!

OUR COMMITMENT GOES BEYOND MERCHANDISE

The Green Feet sustainability program is our way of making the world better for today, tomorrow, and every day after. We aren’t perfect, but we work every day to lessen our impact on the world we love.

At our brewery events, we’ve introduced reusable cup programs at events that minimise the output to landfill, while our and community clean-up projects are actively involved in reducing the occurrence of waste in the environment. Through the initiative, we’ve even created the first recycled water beer for World Water Day!

From personally separating our waste by hand before bringing it to the landfill to talking with other breweries to raise awareness of eco-friendly and sustainable practices, The Green Feet Initiative ensures do our best to keep you looking your best while drinking the best.

The Stone & Wood team are on a mission to learn about more ways in which we can introduce sustainability and ethical practices while making changes along the way. We will continue to work towards our ultimate goal of providing a 100% sustainable fashion range with an entirely traceable supply chain.

 

 

Check out our range of beer clothing today, and join us as we attempt to be the champions of sustainable merch in the brewing industry. Let’s make our apparel and brewing habits not just a trend, but an established expectation.

We have a story of innovation for you …

You probably know that we don’t like wasting things – especially beer. After all, that’s why we started our Green Feet sustainability program.

When venues around the country closed earlier this year in line with COVID-19 restrictions, many of our customers were stuck with kegs of fresh beer they could no longer sell.

To support them, we took all unopened Stone & Wood kegs back to our brewery and offered credits to our customers for when things opened back up.

Awesome – but then we had enough excess beer to overflow a swimming pool …

Until our good friends up the road at Cape Byron Distillery caught wind of it and devised an unusual plan: they decided to make a ‘beer spirit’ with our excess fresh Pacific Ale. And so, alongside Cape Byron Distillery, we bring you Pacific Moonshine.

Artfully distilled using our Original Pacific Ale, Pacific Moonshine (44%) is subtly salty and bursting with the tropical flavours of pineapple, lychee, passionate and mango, with hints of malt and citrus on the nose and palate.

Get in quick – numbers are extremely limited for this once-only special release!

With community at the heart of everything we do, we will donate $6 from every bottle to our not-for-profit, the inGrained Foundation, to support local grassroots charities in the areas we work and live.

How do I enjoy Pacific Moonshine?

The crew at Cape Byron Distillery suggest serving Pacific Moonshine with cold soda or fresh pineapple juice or try mixing it up with Cape Byron Distillery’s delicious cocktail recipe ideas.

Pacific Moonshine is available in 700ml bottle from our online store from Friday 4th December. Available only while stocks last.

Today is Earth Day 2020, an international day that seeks to inspire the global environmental movement, now in its 50^th year.

While most Earth Day efforts and celebrations will take place online today, many of our crew are busy making beer offline at our Murwillumbah production brewery to ensure beer-lovers around the country can still enjoy a beer safely at home.

A big part of their job is brewing, bottling and packing the Original Pacific Ale, which – from the malt and hops through to the bottle caps and cartons – is 100% Australian-made, most within a three-hour drive of the brewery.

In celebration of Earth Day, we thought we’d take you around our Murbah brewery with our sustainability manager James to learn more about our commitment to reducing our environmental footprint via our Green Feet program, plus the lifecycle of the Original Pacific Ale and its all-Australian ingredients and materials.

• All Pacific Ale ingredients are Australian-made, including the malt, hops and yeast
• All Pacific Ale materials are Australian-made, including the bottle caps, glass and glue
• Our bottles are made from 70 per cent recycled glass
• Our cartons are made from 50 per cent recycled cardboard

Happy Earth Day from our team!

Humans wouldn’t get very far without water – and neither would beer.

That’s why our brewery is observing the United Nations’ World Water Day 2020, on Sunday 22 March, which highlights the importance of fresh drinking water for people and wildlife.

This year’s theme is ‘Water and Climate Change’ in a way to promote more efficient global water use and raise awareness about how climate change will impact our water sources.

Beer isn’t possible without its main ingredient; from the water used to grow and malt the grain, to the water used to make the wort that yeast will convert into beer – this is an invaluable natural resource.

With our home in the Northern Rivers, we’re fortunate to have access to high quality drinking water from the ancient caldera of the Wollumbin Volcano (aka Mt Warning), which we manage and conserve through our Green Feet program as one of three focus areas: water, energy and waste.

Our waste-water beer is ready for drinking

As part of our participation in World Water Day, we’re excited to announce our Beer-Water Beer, a 4.6% summer ale brewed using purified wastewater from our Murwillumbah brewery (that is, the excess water used in the brewing process that wasn’t turned into beer) that has been processed through our ultrafiltration and reverse osmosis (UFRO) system.

Installed early 2018, the UFRO system turns brewery wastewater into perfectly usable water by stripping out all impurities, turning the hazy beige wastewater into crystal clear H₂0. At the moment, we only use this reclaimed water for utilities and cleaning, but there’s no reason other than stigma that we couldn’t brew with it – so, we did!

Come and taste Beer-Water Beer at our brewery in Byron

Our Beer-Water Beer will be tapped at our Byron Tasting Room from Sunday 22 March for a limited time only, so we’d love to have people come for a taste!

We think the proof is in the pudding: while we don’t have any plans to use recycled brewery water in any other beers at this stage, Beer-Water Beer points to the possibility for innovation that emerge when we strive to tread lightly on the Earth.

See you Sunday!  

Some of the other ways we conserve water

• We used 3.8 litres of water per litre of beer, while the industry average is 4.6 litres/litre
  
  
• We capture and recycle water from our bottle rinser and pipe it through our refrigeration system
  
  
• We re-use cleaning chemicals recovered through a CIP system
  
  
• We collect rainwater onsite to water our lawn and fruit trees
  
  
• We send some of our treated wastewater for re-use for local farm irrigation

While some companies of yesterday give business a bad name, we believe that in 2019 and beyond we can use business – and beer – as a force for good. We believe it’s our responsibility, like all good businesses, to work for more than profit alone.

What is a good business, then? In fact, in the world of brewing, what is good beer?

For us, ‘good’ means more than the taste of our beer or the quality of the experience at our Tasting Room; it reflects how we fulfil our role as the local brewer and add value to our communities – it encapsulates our whole approach to business.

Some time ago, to help guide this approach, we created something called the Stone & Wood Wheel, a stakeholder model that represents all of the communities that relate to our business and how we work with these in mind. We consider this Wheel our compass that guides us toward true north.

Looking ahead after ten years of Stone & Wood, we thought we’d take the opportunity to share with you something we’ve put together: the ‘Beer as a Force for Good’ Report.

Brief and easy-to-read, the ‘Beer as a Force for Good’ Report captures some of the achievements we’re proud of and how our different communities have helped us reach them – including you, our drinkers.

Whether you’re here for a quick scan or keen to dive deeper into what makes Stone & Wood the way we are, this report is a way of keeping you up-to-date. Thanks for your time and happy reading! Cheers.

As a national not-for-profit, the inGrained Foundation’s mission is to support grassroots, environmental and social charities in the local areas where funds are donated. By fostering long-term partnerships and responding to urgent situations of need, it aims to create sustained positive change by directing funds to support the community where and when it’s needed.

Since 2013, we have operated a community program under the inGrained banner which has raised and donated more than $630,000 to a long list of not-for-profits, grassroots organisations and individuals in their communities.

By establishing the inGrained Foundation, we’ve created a formal separate entity and have made the commitment to annually donate $1/100L of beer brewed to the not-for-profit going forward.

In addition to the annual donation, we will partner with inGrained for our own events, such as our annual Open Day in Murwillumbah (14 April) and Festival of the Stone (9 June), raising funds for nominated local charities in the area.

The Foundation will continue the great work our team have done towards achieving the vision of, helping grassroots organisations make meaningful progress in the community.

Inspired by the idea of being a village brewery and giving back to the community, the act of supporting the people who support us has always been a part of how we do business. The inGrained Foundation will now manage our donations going forward, together with raising further funds to create social change.

The inGrained Foundation plans to be a sustainable not-for-profit, by investing part of the funds in ethical investments.

The foundation will focus on building a pool of funds so that investment income can form a part of future funding streams. This means the community can rely on the foundation to help out future generations.

The inGrained Foundation will partner with aligned charities to create progress in their communities whilst also being able to provide timely support when the local community needs it most. In the future, a granting program will be established to provide a mechanism for charitable organisations to apply for funding.

To find out more and keep up to date with the inGrained Foundation’s developments and community activity, check out it’s official website www.ingrainedfoundation.com.au.

We are stoked and excited to announce that we will be eliminating single use cups from the Mullum Music Festival this year with the launch of our new cup exchange. The Cup Exchange will be launched this weekend at the Festival’s 10 year anniversary, the first for the Byron Shire.

“After years of searching for a solution, we are thrilled to partner with Mullum Music Festival to introduce re-useable cups through our Cup Exchange,” says Sarah Blomkamp who looks after community partnerships for Stone & Wood.

“The amount of hours we have dedicated to this conversation around viable alternatives has been crazy! We’re just stoked to be able to trial it with at the festival and hopefully be able to integrate this solution at more events in the future,” she said.

SO HOW DOES IT WORK?

It works as a circular economy, closing the loop on a cup’s lifecycle, meaning it will never end up in landfill. Drinkers will be able to purchase their cup with their first drink. The cup can then be taken home to be used again and again or returned for a refund.

For those drinkers wishing to have another beer they can exchange it for a fresh cup for no extra cost. All cups will be removed from the site and commercially washed to Australian Food Safety standards. The cups will then be returned for us to use them for future events!

The benefits of using The Cup Exchange are:

• Reduces the number of cups used. By re-using the cups we reduce the number of cups required for events as opposed to using a single-use alternative.
• The best waste – is no waste!
• Our cups will never end up in landfill and will never need to be recycled in commercial recycling centres as we send all cups to be 100% recycled back at our cup manufacturer and supplier Globelet
• Globelet cups are made of polypropylene #5 which is BPA free, tough and durable and made to withstand high heats ensuring our cups will last 100s of washes or years of events.
• It encourages a circular economy
• We work with the DCA to wash our cups, employing people that may not be able to be employed elsewhere
• The wastewater produced by the Globelet washing procedure is non-polluting as we use a washing solution that is environmentally friendly and created by ECOSTORE.

We are hoping to implement The Cup Exchange at all of our local events as well as across the country in time.

If you’re around the Northern Rivers come say hi, enjoy a cold frothy, listen to some great music and grab a momento of the 10 anniversary of the Mullum Music Festival happening this weekend. We’ll be parked up at the festival pouring cold beers from our beer truck ‘Clyde’. Be sure to give our Red Russian Gherkin beer a try, brewed especially for the Mullum Music Fest with our mates Dustyesky!

#ForCupsSake

Recently we became a certified B-Corp, affirming that our philosophies of brewing good beer for the community and supporting the people who support us, while always looking at new ways to tread lighter on our Earth, are on the right track.

So, what is B-Corp?

B-Corp is an independent accreditation for profit businesses that meet rigorous standards set around governance, workers, community, environment, and business impact models. It certifies companies that are concerned for their communities and the environment.

What it means for Stone & Wood is that we’ve joined a growing global community of companies dedicated to being agents of positive change, including Patagonia, New Belgium Brewing and Ben & Jerry’s. These businesses have all proven that they meet high standards of social, economic and environmental accountability and transparency.

 When we refer to brewing good beer, of course the quality of our product is our highest priority but ‘good’ goes beyond the rational attributes of our beer. It’s about what we do through our Ingrained (community), Green Feet (environment) and Brewlife (people) programs. We believe it is our responsibility, as the local brewer, to positively impact our communities.  

We’re humbled to join a community of like-minded companies determined to set a new standard for how business can be used as a force for good.

Check out the B-Corp website to learn more about our report and find a community of like-minded companies determined to set a new standard for how business can be used as a force for good.

Our two breweries in Byron and Murwillumbah have seen considerable growth over the past 18 months and as we continue to produce more beer than ever before our sustainable initiatives are front of mind.

We celebrate the idea that this is the only planet with beer, a solid reason and one of many to protect and preserve the beautiful environment that we live and work in day to day. As part of our role as the local brewer in our community we must constantly be looking for innovative ways to ensure our practices are sustainable and that we will see generations in the future enjoying our beers in an environment that has been looked after.

Green Feet is a company-wide initiative, a couple of years old that is focused on minimising our footprint. We’re stoked to announce its next step… the installation and operation of plastic baler, which is effectively recycling and reducing our contribution to landfill at the Murwillumbah site.

After being awarded the NSW state’s first rebate for a baler through the help of a collective from the Northern Rivers called Northeast Waste, we immediately set about locally sourcing a twin chamber baler.

As a bit of a background, waste, especially plastic takes up a lot of space contributing to landfill and also carbon emissions by the increased number of times a garbage truck needs to go to and from the tip.

Our sustainability coordinator Tom O’Reilly makes the point, “[…] landfill is a hole somewhere full of our rubbish. It doesn’t just disappear. If we don’t change our doings we’ll end up with more holes of rubbish and less habitat and land to grow food.”

Compressing the waste minimises the space it would usually require and this is achieved through using a baler. However, Instead of sending it to the dump, we truck it up to Plastics Worldwide, a recycling merchant on the Gold Coast.

The addition of the baler to the Murbah site has meant we now recycle 97% of our waste making a realised difference to our contribution to landfill.

“At the start of this project I wouldn’t have expected that we’d get so close to the prospect of becoming a zero waste brewery.”

That for us is just as important as brewing beer that’s good to drink.

WORKING WITH A LOCAL SOCIAL ENTERPRISE TO UPCYCLE OUR WASTE

This year’s Stone Beer that’s bubbling away in the tanks, waiting for when the days are short and the nights are cold, was brewed with eleven different malts. That’s a whole of lot of 25kg grain bags (which is always the case when we use specialty malt for our brews).

For us, it’s always been a question of how we can re-use these bags, rather than send them to landfill. We usually give them to local environmental organisations to assist them in cleaning up the local beaches or to collect plastics from businesses so that they can properly recycle it. We even took to the sewing machine to make cushions with them!

For us, this is how we roll as a business, working continually towards reducing our foot print. This falls under Green Feet, our company wide sustainability initiative that strives not only to reduce, reuse and recycle but also exploring innovative practices by reimagining the ecology of brewing.

Earlier this year, we met Lisa Flower from Waste to Resource who worked with our Sustainability Coordinator to install a baling unit at our Murwillumbah Brewery. The unit compresses cardboard and plastic waste from the packaging line into 75kg bales to be recycled. Compressing this waste means less truck movements and our plastic is now recycled and not contributing to landfill.

Through meeting Lisa, we connected with a local not for profit group call Sort Recycling that she also works with. This social enterprise, based all over Australia, provides skills and training through practical Work for the Dole activities around Australia. Each community-based facility recycles waste close to its source and returns its value directly back to that community.

Through recycling computers, bikes, timber and plastics right through to habitat protection. The organisation creates new jobs, training and economic opportunities for disadvantaged individuals and families.

“We work on-the-ground, in remote, regional and urban communities around Australia. We canvass donations of obsolete computers and other eWaste, wooden pallets, discarded bikes and other things with wheels and plastic items from local households and businesses. We show participants how to fabricate new products from them and then they sell the products in both real and online retail environments.”

The centre based in Murwillumbah has been taking our grain bags and up-cycling them into bags and bunting for us to use at the brewery. This has given a handful of participants the opportunity to develop skills in design and also sewing. We’re looking forward to continuing to work with Sort to come up with ways to not only recycle but upcycle our ‘waste’ into products that are useful for our communities.

For more info about Sort Recycling, check our Murwillumbah’s page https://www.facebook.com/sortmurbah

Our Sustainability Coordinator Tom (third from left) and our Engineering Manager Nick (end right) with the team from the Murwillumbah Sort Recycling Centre – cheers for having us guys!

Celebrating we’re the only planet with beer

Striving for good beer means looking after our Earth. We make the most of the natural ingredients that are available today and they’re expressions of the environments from which they originate. Think clean water, nutritious malt, botanic hops, ambitious yeast: Good environments make for a good beer, it’s as simple as that.

To celebrate our Earth, we’re releasing six new limited release Stone & Wood beers, a London Porter, Czech Pilsner, Belgian Saison, German Hefeweizen, Antipodean Pale Ale and an American IPA, that pay homage to each of their humble beginnings and the influence the environment has on brewing.

Over the years, beer styles have intimately co-evolved with their environments. Be it the roasted malts and bicarbonate rich water of the UK that inspired great dark beer styles such as the Porter to the aromatic love affair between malted wheat and Bavarian top fermenting yeasts that has left us all gasping for more Hefeweizen. How about the ales of the US, Australia and NZ that have been cultivated by new world hop gardeners and brewers together in their lust for pungent fruity hop botanicals.

The ritual of coming together and sharing a few brews is grounded in our world’s history and these beers are a tribute not only to beer but this amazing planet.

While we only ever use four ingredients to brew our beers, many other resources play their part in delivering beer to our drinkers. Energy, glass, cardboard and fuel are a few examples of the other things that come from environments to support the journey from grain to glass.

We acknowledge the reliance we have on our Earth to enable us to produce good beer so it is our responsibility to tread a path towards sustainability through our Green Feet program.

Green Feet is a company wide program we’ve been working on for a couple of years now. It’s about minimising our foot print on the Earth through striving not only to reduce, reuse and recycle but also exploring innovative practices by reimagining the ecology of brewing.

We have a number of initiatives that are already underway or implemented including:

• The instalment of 480 solar panels at our Murwillumbah site. This system will significantly reduce our grid-based electricity demand (by at least 40%). This reduction is the equivalent to the electricity used to power 20-25 homes.
• The instalment of LED lighting in workspaces. Lighting now uses a quarter of the energy, equivalent to taking 7 cars off the road.
• The instalment of a baling unit which compresses cardboard and plastic waste from the packaging line into 75kg bales to be recycled. Compressing this waste means less truck movements and our plastic is now recycled and not contributing to landfill.
• Our water to beer ratio (water: beer) is fantastic. Whilst the industry average is 5:1 our ratio is 3:1 (it takes 3L water to produce every 1L of S&W beer.). This can be attributed to not only our beer being handcrafted but we also maintain our brewery and packaging line by hand, ensuring we have control over the amount of water we use.
• Our water to beer is soon to become even better since we are poised to install infrastructure to harvest the water used to rinse bottles before filling. This rinse water will be collected into tanks so we can use it in other areas of the brewery for tasks such as cleaning.
• Our grain bags are up-cycled into bags and bunting by the community based recycling organisation SORT.org

… And with us continually working towards being sustainable, this makes our beer now even easier to drink!

 So raise a glass and celebrate we are the only planet with beer!

The Beers of the Earth are going on tap and landing on shelves across the country from 30 March – here is where

BEERS OF THE EARTH – TASTING NOTES

 

 London Porter

Porter is the original urban ale, getting its name from the 1700’s equivalent of white delivery van drivers who loaded and unloaded the ships, moving goods around the city. Its silky charms made this dark brew the pint for the people.

Toasted and roasted malt with a fruity aroma of prunes & raisins and earthy English hops, followed with a dry and satisfying finish. 5.1% alc/vol 25 IBU.

Czech Pilsner

After the brewers of Pilsen watched helplessly as their barrels of contaminated ale flooded the streets, they enlisted the help of a Bavarian brewer and his lager yeast. Throwing in Saaz, the most noble of hops, a new light coloured beer was born that would become an international favourite.

Rich sweet malts, balanced with lashings of Czech Saaz hops adding a soft yet assertive bitterness. 5.0% alc/vol 40 IBU.

 

American IPA

The American IPA emerged on the West Coast during a 1980’s beer renaissance. Using strains of hops that imparted a more fruitier, resinous character than their English equivalents, this style of beer has influenced a whole new generation of hop heads from the States and abroad.

Deep marmalade colour from the American ale & crystal malts. Upfront citrus with a piney aroma from US hops that deliver an outrageous bitterness. 8.2% alc/vol 75 IBU.

German Hefeweizen

In 16th Century Bavaria, the local royals allowed the use of wheat in addition to barley despite the restrictions of the Reinheitsgebot. The aromatic cloudy Hefeweizen became a favourite Summer quencher.

The German yeast creates the cloudiness and the fruity banana and spicy characters typical of this style. Delicate yet complex with a refreshing acidity. 5.4% alc/vol 12IBU.

Belgian Saison

A farmhouse ale brewed seasonally in Autumn through to early Spring, revitalized the weary who worked under the searing summer sun, satisfying their thirst. A true utilitarian beer and an ultimate refresher.

Golden in colour with the complexity of yeast spiciness, white pepper and citrus. Firm bitterness and very dry finish. A thirst quencher. 6.8% alc/vol 36 IBU.

Antipodean Pale Ale

Whether it’s grabbing a six pack for a backyard BBQ or meeting your mates at the pub to watch a band after a surf, this refreshing ale, brewed with a new generation of Antipodean hops is the quintessential beer for a Southern summer.

Lush tropical floral aromas created by blending NZ & Australian hops lead to a clean malt & refreshing dry bitter finish. 5.1% alc/vol 42 IBU