What is a beer?

Beer is made in beer barrels and wine aged in oak. A given?

Not so for Tasmanian craft brewer Ashley Huntington.

One of the pioneers of the Australian craft brewing industry, Ashley Huntington is challenging consumers to rethink their notion of what is a beer.

The affable and passionate brewer is a qualified chemist, trained as a winemaker in Australia and has spent many years making wine in France for BRL Hardy.

He intended establishing a vineyard and winery when he and his wife Jane Huntington purchased a farm in Tasmania's Derwent Valley.

Ashley Huntington's Sour Cherry Ale, aged for three years in an oak barrel.

Instead he was seduced by beer and set up the Two Metre Tall Company at Hayes adjacent to the Derwent River.

"I'm just mixing up what ever I've seen in my life, which is a combination of cooking, winemaking, brewing, and don't forget farming."

The Huntington's have grown their own and source locally grown barley, spelt and hops for their ales and soured ales, including a bright red sour cherry ale aged in oak wine barrels.

"For a start, a bright red beer, redolent of cherries, served in a wine glass, coming out of barrels after three years.

It's not even pouring a head because it's coming straight out of a barrel and I don't mean a beer barrel as in keg, I mean wine barrel as in wine barrel.

So it's a beer that's been aged for three years and built, brewed and steeped on these cherries inside oak barrels.

Now there's a new idea for beer, isn't it?"

Ashley Huntington has recently returned from a Churchill Fellowship sponsored tour looking at sour and natural beer fermentation in Belgium, the UK and the US.

A beer makers lunch, homemade sourdough, beef shin soup, pork terrine made with home grown pork and sour cherry ale. The farmer, chemist, wine and beer maker has also completed a Cordon Bleu cooking course in the UK.

"I've got to say I'm a little breathless even still.

Some of the things I tasted astounded me and I'm actually a brewer.

"Beer is a collective noun for an entire family of beverages, the likes of which Australia is only going to see expressed through the craft beer movement," he said.

Just as the wine industry grew as the public's knowledge of wine grew, Ashley believes beer consumers "will come along for the ride".

"We are already beer drinkers, we've just got to forget that beer is a monotonous beverage.

Then, as what happened to the wine industry, as the consumer realises the diversity of what is possible with this beverage hither-to-known as beer, they will be excited.

Beer is hurtling down a pathway from which hopefully it will never recover, with the most remarkable beverage in the country," he said.

Source: ABC Rural News, 7 August 2013