In the Stone and Wood Brewing Co world things are done a little bit differently. Items are foraged for in their surrounding environment, and in the instance of the Festival of the Stone tour, the hops, malt, yeast and water will be collected as the team travel down the east coast with a party each stop of the way.
“We’re enroute to Torquay and we are pumped!” Jasmin Daly from Stone & Wood Brewing Co beams.
“We’ve been on this epic East Coast tour for the past five weeks and the crew are amped to be doing our event near Bells.”
The items collected over the few months help the brewery to piece together their next seasonal beer, which as you’d imagine is different each time around and launched at the Byron Bay brewery in May.
“We need to collect the materials for brewing this beer that uses a traditional method of heating hot rocks in a fire and placing them in the kettle (part of the brewing process), which caramelises this dark winter brew,” she says.
“For us this beer reminds us about getting back to basics and appreciating a slower pace of living. With us calling into towns along the way to collect the hops, malt, rocks, musos and legends who will be at Festival of the Stone in Byron, we decided to team up with Clean Coast Collective, do a beach clean up and then throw a mini Festival of the Stone as an after party at each of the stops.”
Aside from the upcoming seasonal beer, Stone and Wood Brewing also offer a Pacific Ale, cloudy, golden with a big fruity aroma, a Garden Ale, which has a clean malt character and floral and citrus aroma amongst many others.
The team will swing by Torquay on April 2 with their altered ex-army landrover, named Clyde, fitted with beer taps to give locals the ultimate day session. A clean up of Jan Juc beach will take place thanks to the team at Clean Cost Collective (you can see more of their great work here) and the grand after party will feature music from VanderAa, Playwright and Tropical Zombie with food from Mr Burger.
While this tour is a chance for the brewery to piece together an original beer while having an adventure doing so, it’s a chance for them to spread the word of looking after our surrounds and connect with like-minded people.
“Being able to do something good in each community gets us stoked and seeing how they go about it; learning from them and them learning from us, being able to support them adds another dimension which is pretty cool,” she says.
Written by Amanda Sherring
Images: Beach image (Angus Kennedy) and party images (Renae Saxby)
For more information visit: www.stoneandwood.com.au.
When & Where: Bells Beach Teepee, Torquay – From 3pm, April 2
