Winds of Change

Over the course of the next few months you might notice a difference in the way that Van Dieman beers are packaged. We've just about exhausted stocks of our current cartons, 6packs and labels that we've been using for the past 18 - 24 months and wanted to bring all of them up to speed with one another.

We've taken the decision to go into four packs because we believe it offers a better choice for you the consumer, as well as reducing the overall cost of the beers. As the beer drinker becomes ever more discerning, we believe that a 4 pack better suits the evolving nature of the Australian beers scene.

New labels will also begin to be filtered out into the trade. They'll hopefully be easier to spot at your drinking spot of choice as well as looking damn fine.

As we go forward into this stage, there will be the inevitable crossover period which we will try to minimise time wise, so that any inconvenience is minimised. We'd love your feedback on any of the new packaging or the beers at any stage either by Email, Twitter  or Facebook . Cheers

Meet the Brewer - 23rd June, The Aproneers, Hobart.

Come down the The Aproneers in Lindisfarne, 145 East Derwent Hwy, between 12pm and 2pm this Saturday for a meet the brewer session, taste some of our beers and get a entirely street legal and 100% refillable 2 litre growler with some delicious Jacobs Ladder Amber Ale off tap. 

Pint of Origin - Tasmania

Next week marks Good Beer Week in the calendar and as part of the festivities, The Courthouse Hotel in North Melbourne will be pouring Tassie brewed beers all week.

Van Dieman will have some TPA - Tasmanian Pale Ale, a wet hop harvest ale, and our Hedgerow Autumn Ale, a barrel aged sour beer on tap, with a "Meet the Brewer" session with yours truly on Tuesday 15th May from around 6pm for a casual tasting session.

Make sure you pop in for a pint or two at some stage during the week showcasing the best of Tassies' growing craft beers. Also on tap will be MooBrew, IronHouse, Seven Sheds, Two Metre Tall and newcomers Morrisons' brewery.

More Info: The Crafty Pint or Good Beer Week


The Courthouse Hotel, 86-90 Errol St, North Melbourne, Ph: 9329 5394

Attn all Double IPA obsessed canines

Via Beerpulse.com

A Warning about Dogs and Hops

 Posted on April 30, 2012 at 11:32 amby Adam Nason   

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Sponsored Guest Post:

Here at Northern Brewer we love dogs just about as much as we love brewing (maybe more). For many years, dogs accompanied their owners to work at Northern Brewer and freely roamed our offices. And for many of us, brew day is a wonderful opportunity to spend time with our canine friends. So when we heard about a customer’s scary experience after their dog consumed hops we were shaken and wanted to help. For wider education on the issue, we would like echo a very serious warning about dogs and hops.

Though research is not extensive, ingesting hops can be highly toxic to some breeds of dogs (Golden Retrievers and especially Greyhounds have been documented). There are many scary stories on homebrewing forums about dogs eating hops after unsuspecting brewers left unused hops out in a place accessible to their dog, or dumped their kettle trub and hop sediment into the yard, or had a hop plant in their yard that dropped cones on the ground. Some dogs that ingest hops rapidly develop a condition called Malignant Hyperthermia, in which the body temperature rises uncontrollably. This can be very harmful or fatal to the dog. Some symptoms are restlessness, panting, vomiting, abdominal pain, seizures, rapid heart rate, and high temperature. If a dog has possibly ingested hops and exhibits symptoms, they should be taken to an emergency pet hospital immediately for treatment.

This abstract from the National Institute for Biotechnology Information represents one of the few scientific confirmations of the issue, and this page has a record of one homebrewer’s experience (their dog was fortunately saved).

Keep your dogs safe!

Hedgerow Autumn Ale 2012

The basis of the recipe is the same as the 2011 hedgerow brew, six UK malts, German brewers gold, UK Bramling Cross and Slovenian Bobek hops are used as aroma and for dry hopping.   Hawthorn berries, sloe berries and rose hips were then added to the conditioning tank and the beer was allowed to sit for a 12 weeks on this mix, developing the subtle fruit flavours.

A further portion of the beer was aged in two, local vineyard, Moores Hill pinot barrels for a period of 16 weeks, with it being brought back into the main hedgerow beer and racked off. It was then conditioned for 6 months before release.

The beer pours an off-white head laced with a subtle berry aroma. There are certainly some aromatic French oak qualities coming out on the nose, as well as a few spicy notes.  The initial sip is quite sour and sharp, but as you work through the beer a ripe sweetness begins to develop and reflects the original hedgerow beer exhibiting a toasty malt character underlies the subtle seasonal fruit flavour.  Hints of peppery spice result in a semi soft and dry palate finish of this autumn ale, the barrel aged element brings that funky edge to the beer as well as the imparted tartness.

A style very rarely seen in Australia.

A keg or two of the 2012 release will make its way to the Courthouse Hotel, North Melbourne for Pint Of Origin as part of Good Beer Week 2012

The Crafty Pints' take on the beer here

TPA - Tasmanian Pale Ale update

TPA - Tasmanian Pale Ale, a harvest brew brewed exclusively with fresh Tasmanian grown ingredients. A new cultivar of barley, Macquarie, was grown on a cousins property at CampbellTown in the 2011/12 season that exhibited excellent malting qualities, perfect for this harvest beer. The barley was malted by Tasmanian malting officiando Roger Ibbot and his team at Cascade Brewery, where we managed to snaffle a few hundred kegs of the precious malt *thanks guys.

Hops were sourced from the last family owned hop field in Tasmania, we're we collected 25kgs of fresh Super Pride hop flowers, threw them in the back of the van and rushed back to the brewery to brew with *the most aromatic journey ever taken. Super Pride is a variety of hop normally associated with commercial brewing as a high alpha bittering hop given its 14 - 16 % alpha acid content. We decided to dispel this perception and use a bucket loads of these fresh hops in the TPA, including rinsing the boiled brew over a bed of fresh hops in the Mash Tun, effectively acting as a substitute Hop-back.

The water for the brew, as with every beer produced at Van Dieman, was sourced from springs on the brewery property, purified and then brought up to a water profile similar to Burton-on-Trent in the UK, synonymous with producing high quality pale ales. We used a English ale yeast to compliment the primary ingredients and beer style.

Its A hazy golden coloured ale with a casual hop aroma as if the front lawn has just been mown. Mentions of lemon grass and apricot flavours can be discovered as it rolls across your palate, all the time delivering a refreshing and authentic crispness. Not much was made, even less was put into kegs, don’t wait around – it wont last.

We're delivering a few kegs out to the market this week, so it'll pop it head up at selected good beer venues shortly

TPA - Limited Release 2012

We get excited here at Van Dieman about releasing new beers, none more so than this ripper harvest ale that we are shortly about to release in kegs.

Keep posted here for were the kegs will be heading, as we've only got a limited amount and we'd hate to see you miss out.