WHEN FogHorn opened in April 2015 the King Street venue was Newcastle's first brewpub.
In the seven years since, the city has welcomed Rogue Scholar at Newcastle West, Merewether's Modus Operandi, Carrington's Styx Brewery, and in June Method Brewing joined the scene at Islington.
Grainfed and Shout are also expected to open breweries in Lambton and Islington respectively in the coming months.
While many people would view the craft beer boom as competition for drinkers, FogHorn chief brewing officer Shawn Sherlock sees the growth very differently. For him, it represents opportunity.
So when Method held its industry launch party nine weeks ago, Sherlock approached his old friend Sean Costigan, one of the Maitland Road brewery's three co-owners, about brewing a collaborative beer. Sherlock and Costigan previously worked together at Murray's in Bobs Farm.
Last week, staff from the two breweries met to brew a 6.6 per cent red rye IPA at FogHorn. The ale will be officially launched on September 8 when FogHorn hosts an IPA Masterclass Beer Dinner.
Besides the red rye IPA, the dinner will feature two beers from FogHorn - Young Americans IPA and the Hunter Haze NEIPA - and Method's New World IPA and West Coast IPA. Both breweries will have the red rye IPA on tap following the dinner.
"I don't know if they needed any help, because they're doing some great things in their own right," Sherlock says.
"It's just good for us. One of my favourite things about our industry is it tends to be a pretty collegial and friendly and supportive industry.
"I've known Sean for a long time. We used to work together. I've been really excited watching what he and the guys have been doing at Method."
Sherlock says it was Method's initial idea to explore a red rye beer, before FogHorn brewer Daniel Gayner designed the recipe, inspired by whiskey-based cocktails. The beer uses both rye malts and crystal malts as well as distinctive Australian and US hop varieties typical of IPAs. For extra bitter characters, coriander and dried orange peel were added.
"We're not using a massive dose of it, so it's not intending to come across as a spiced beer as such, it's just reinforcing that bitters character and it's very much an IPA," Sherlock says.
"It's taking it a little bit out of what everyone else has done with the style."
Sherlock's reputation as a craft brewer extends well beyond the Hunter. He's renowned as one of the country's finest, having won Australian Brewer of the Year in 2012. FogHorn's Hunter Kolsch and Sligo Extra Stout are also considered among Australia's best of those styles.
Method co-owner Gavin McKenzie said having Sherlock's endorsement was a massive vote of confidence.
"Shawn has been in the industry a long time and is definitely well known in the brewing industry, so it was pretty exciting that he's been in and tried our beers and it's up to his standard," McKenzie says.
"Knowing and working with Sean [Costigan] helped and he knows he doesn't take any shortcuts and produces good beer."
Despite being open for just nine weeks, the red rye IPA is actually Method's second collaboration. On Saturday they'll tap the Chimuwaku Yuzu NEIPA collaboration with Brisbane's Common Ground Brewing. Chimuwaku means teamwork in Japanese and yuzu is an East Asian citrus fruit.
The NEIPA joins Method's expanding beer range that includes New World IPA, pale ale, Bohemian ale, American XPA, mid-strength dark ale, oatmeal stout and a hazy pale.
While FogHorn and Method's collaborative dinner might be all about IPAs, Sherlock is predicting the often-maligned lager will make a renaissance this spring and summer.
A fortnight ago, FogHorn unveiled their six per cent Born Slippy - Larger Lager, inspired by Underground's 1996 hit Born Slippy, made famous by the film Trainspotting. It's loosely based on a traditional Bohemian or Czech-style pilsner, but it's boosted in overall size and malt and it uses a new concentrated version of a Czech saaz hop.
"It really produces a nice character," Sherlock says. "It's allowed us to get that classic Czech character through the beer, but do something different with it."
Sherlock says more European-style lagers are due for release during October.
"A lot of people were setting up their breweries to brew ales and getting out of lager brewing as people saw lager as mainstream lagers like VB and Tooheys New," he says. "But there's a whole tradition of interesting flavours for lager, and to some extent, craft beer threw the baby out with the bath water and ignored those styles for a while. But they're coming back globally and here in Australia."
