Two in a row: Busselton brewery is best in show

The 2023 Perth Royal Beer Awards held earlier this month proved South West breweries are producing some of the finest beers around.

The region’s brewers were recognised for their excellence in a range of categories, competing with entries from across the state including Esperance, Kalbarri, Denmark, Swan Valley, Perth and as far afield as Queensland.

Beers were judged by a panel of 65 experts, scoring appearance, aroma, flavour, technical quality and style.

Busselton’s Rocky Ridge Brewing Company backed up their stellar 2022 showing with another big year of wins, collecting the coveted overall Champion Beer for their Jindong Balling, along with Champion Large Brewery, Best India Pale Ale Draught and Best Hybrid and Specialty Packaged.

“We are so proud of Ross [Terlick, head brewer] and the brew team – Ross is a wizard and the team are just amazing,” Rocky Ridge co-founder Mel Holland told the Mail this week.

From their humble beginnings in 2017, the brewery has found itself at the cutting edge of technology, while perfecting long-used techniques to create high quality products.

“When we first started it was just Hamish and myself, living and working on the property,” Mel said.

“At that point our production capacity was about 50,000 litres a year – now our site could potentially take us to 2.5 million litres.

“In the early days we were producing wholesale kegs only, and then in 2019 just prior to Covid, we started to ramp up production.”

Mel said their focus had been on top quality production, and the team were thrilled with the results.

“We took out the same awards last year, so it’s a really great testament to the quality of what we’re producing and that we’re getting it right, even with some of the more adventurous brews.

“We’ve invested a lot into quality control, favouring really good equipment and investing a lot in staff training.

“We’ve got one of the best labs in the South West now, possibly in WA.”

Mel said winning the coveted trophies for two consecutive years gave the team a new wave of confidence in their vision.

“It was great to win last year and to to win it again for a different category of beer – it shows we can stand up against other high quality beers.

“Our beers never usually win category trophies, we like to push boundaries and often we struggle to actually put our beers into the categories, because they’re unique.

“This year every beer we entered in the Perth Royal Beer Awards won a medal – it’s an awesome result.”

Other South West breweries were also recognised at the awards, including Beerfarm (Best Lager Packaged – Beerfarm IPL), Cowaramup Brewing Co (Best Porter Stout Packaged – Cowaramup Chocolate Porter) and Black Brewing Co (Best Porter Stout Draught – Bao Bao Milk Stout).

Chief Judge Will Irwing said while there were no obvious trends this year, the quality of the beer was outstanding.

“We had an exceptionally talented and experienced judging panel to sort through every conceivable style of beer. Tasting and scoring more than 570 beers is no small task,” he said.

Mel Holland said the South West brewing community was exceptionally strong, with many talented brewers complimenting each other’s skills and particular interests.

“The beer palate is becoming far more sophisticated – the beer drinker is growing up,” she said.

“With beer becoming more popular, there’s more variety in the market, and it’s great fun to brew those interesting beers.

“In the South West, we’ve found this kind of rhythm, this dance where everyone is great and doing different things, it’s really healthy because we’re all pushing each other to do more and try something new.”

Rocky Ridge will make available an extremely small batch of their Champion Jindong Balling beer – a barrel aged barleywine – in the next week.

“We’ve got a new barrel ageing program which we’re releasing some beers from this week,” Mel said.

“The Jindong Balling is a malt-driven, slightly sweeter beer, barrel-aged in ex-whiskey and ex-PX barrels.

“It’s something we’re super proud of, to showcase those pointy end beers, something different. This is the sort of stuff we love making, and drinking.”

To find out more about the limited release and the full range of Rocky Ridge products, visit rockyridgebrewing.com.au