Collaborating with Robbie Brown's
Spotty Dog Brewers x Robbie Browns - Voyager Session Ale
Collaborating with Robbies - words by Justin (Brewer, Spotty Dog)
When Klimt told me Robbie Brown’s were keen on doing a collaboration beer, I was pretty excited straight off the bat. In true Tassie fashion, I went to college with Brett, one of the Robbie’s co-owners, and we moved in the same social circles. 6 degrees of separation? Better make it 3…
It also meant we get to brew with our good friend Stu Grant up at Miner’s Gold Brewery in Beaconsfield again, which is where we’d been brewing our limited releases as of late. Ironically, I play in a band with Stu’s brother-in-law… Yep, that’s Tassie for you!
The design brief for Voyager was pretty open; the team at Robbie’s put their faith in us to come up with something that would work, so we got straight to work designing a recipe. We knew Summer was just around the corner and with Robbie’s being right on Kingston Beach, we knew it need to be smashable, something you could drink a pint of then have no reservations about ordering a second. This, for us, meant keeping the ABV, bitterness, malt and hops all in check, so we honed in on a “Session Pale Ale” recipe that would be delicious, didn’t fatigue the palate and was, yep, smashable.
We decided that the ABV should sit between a mid-strength and regular pale, so we targeted 4.4%, which we thought had a nice ring to it. Bitterness should be present, but not fatigue someone that isn’t used to 99IBU DIPA monsters, so we targeted 28IBU. The malt bill should be relatively simple; something to let the hops shine through, but still retain good mouthfeel for a “low” ABV beer and keep the signature Spotty lacing. We ended up with 87% Pale Malt, 5% Light Crystal, 5% Carapils and 3% Acidulated Malt, mashed at 68°C. As for the hops, Klimt had mentioned a while back that he wanted to do a lower-ABV beer with Vic Secret & Amarillo, and although we’d used that hop combination in other pilots, albeit with very different yeast and malt bills, we thought that combo would work perfectly for this beer and should bring tropical fruit, melon and citrus vibes.
I got to work brewing the pilot beer, and a few weeks later I was on my way down to Robbie’s with a growler full of a fresh session pale ale for a tasting session with Brett and the venue manager, Liam. Half a glass in and we all knew that we had nailed the recipe first go; all the recipe targets had been hit and it was the perfect beer for the venue.
“Justin is being humble here. When he gave me a taste of the first pilot and asked what we should do to improve it I laughed. I told him to take it straight to Robbies, but not to talk it up to much or be offended if they didn’t like it. Mainly because I was more than happy to keep the recipe for ourselves and release it!” Klimt.
We locked in a brew day as soon as we could, and I headed North the afternoon before, got a trail run in with Stu around Trevallyn Reserve, then got up bright and early for brew day at Miner’s Gold Brewery (MGB). The brew went pretty much perfectly; Stu is really dialled into their system at MGB so we hit all the targets and got great efficiency. I left Stu to babysit the beer, which basically means monitoring the fermentation, making adjustments as necessary, dry-hopping the beer at the right time, conditioning the beer then packaging, which of course he executed like the pro he is.
We put this beer into kegs and cans, and the response was great! So good we decided to not keep this as a limited run beer, and will re-brew it in the future so we can all enjoy it year-round.
