BentSpoke Brewing celebrates six years with new beer Descent 20

The Descent series was designed to be released every year to mark BentSpoke's anniversary. The first, in 2015, was a 15 per cent stout. In 2016 it was a 16 per cent stout and the third was a 17 per cent stout.

Richard Watkins, who co-founded BentSpoke with Tracy Margrain, says they knew they couldn't keep going on that trajectory, so when they decided to start canning the beer, the brewery brought their yearly release back to a sessionable alcohol, at 10 per cent. Last year's release then saw them begin ageing the beer in bourbon barrels.

Which brings us to Descent 20, a 10 per cent Russian Imperial Stout aged in bourbon and wine barrels for 12 months.

"We've got a lot of complexity coming from the tannins in the red wine as well as the vanilla sort of oaky characters coming from the bourbon," Watkins says.

"The process is not that common in Australia, although we are now seeing a lot more brewers do it. I guess back in the day - early 2002 - myself, Brendan Varis from Feral Brewing and Brad Rogers from Matilda Bay were the first trained brewers to start barrel-ageing beer and start playing around with bacteria.

"That's also a part of ageing beer in barrels as well because the wild yeast in the bacteria will give really interesting flavours to beer that you don't get when you're ageing it in stainless steel. Very similar to wine in some ways."

Descent 20 is just the start of what's to come for BentSpoke, with Watkins saying that the future is set to hold a lot more interesting and different beers for the brewery to go along with their core range of easy-drinking brews such as Crankshaft and Barley Griffin.

That future could include a beer made from the 1000 litres of olive oil brine that is currently in the cannery in Mitchell.

"It's quite salty and there's a beer style called a gose which is a salty beer style that originates from Germany where the water is really salty," Watkins says.

"I want to use this olive oil brine to make a beer and the brine has also got a lot of wild yeast in it, too, so we want to use that yeast to actually ferment the beer and try and do something new. We'll start off on the small scale and step it up, see where it goes."

It's not unusual for people to underestimate the scale of the flavour profile beer can have. The flavour spectrum, Watkins says, is much bigger than wine or any other drink. It's not a side of beer that is not often showcased, especially considering how much of the market is commercial beer.

"I think if people get to taste all of these wonderful flavours that beer can offer, everyone will like a beer," Watkins says.

"You don't have to like all the beers but I know that if someone comes to me and says that they don't drink beer, I say that I say 'You haven't found a beer that you like'.

"There are 25 different beers in the brewpub at the moment and I know that I can always find one beer that someone will like. That's because they haven't experienced that spectrum of flavours. Everyone assimilates that beer is that mainstream sort of beer."

Only 5 per cent of the Australian market is held by craft brewers such as BentSpoke. And that's a market of more than 650 breweries across the country, meaning Australia has more breweries per capita than the United States has.

But despite the size, Watkins says the quality of the beer brewed in Australia can still improve.

"New people who want to come from mainstream beer into craft beer really want to have that good experience otherwise they're not going to pay a lot more money for a craft beer," he says.

"I think that while there's a lot of potential for our industry to be one of the best in the world - we probably are in the top five in the world - there's a couple of things that I think we can be a bit better at.

"Let's face it, we're only 5 per cent of the beer market, so if we were able to get another 1 per cent of that beer market, there wouldn't be another stainless steel tanks in Australia to actually brew that extra volume required to go that extra 1 per cent.

"I think we have got such a good opportunity. In the UK and the US, their craft beer markets are 15 per cent, so we've got a long way to go and a massive market out there that we can tap into."

This year has also seen a change in the cans which BentSpoke uses. Even before BentSpoke was established Watkins and Margrain knew they wanted to use cans with a full tear-off lid after seeing them on a trip to the US in 2012.

"You can see the beer, you can smell the beer and you taste the beer without it going glug, glug out of a normal can," Watkins says.

"It's literally like drinking it from an aluminium glass."

Unfortunately, the US supplier no longer makes that style of can and BentSpoke is in the process of finding a new supplier.

"But also the EPA in New South Wales has decided that the lids are illegal now because they're detachable and they contribute to the litter stream," Watkins says.

"I just pose the question, are there more BentSpoke lids in litter in New South Wales or are there more PET bottle top lids, or stubby twist-top lids in the litter in New South Wales? It's a bit disappointing that they've chosen small craft brewery to really have a go at."