HIGH Country brewers headed for the hills on Tuesday to make up their seventh annual collaborative brew.
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Nine craft breweries cooked up their signature Rule #47 beer at Mitta Mitta Brewing Company.
Together with Billson's Brewery Beechworth, Mitta Mitta Brewing Company was new to the High Country Brewery Trail this year.
Brew day hosts, Tim Cabelka and best mate Alec Pennington, with their partners Jen Cabelka and Chris Rowe, launched their craft brewery at Mitta last year, successfully building the business from scratch after a tree change from the Mornington Peninsula.
Mitta Mitta Brewing Company now offers a core range of pale lager, mid-strength Middabitta and Black Velvet Revolution as well as seasonal beers, all made from hops grown on the site.
Mr Cabelka said all of the nine breweries had input into the Rule #47 beer style this year.
He said this year's brew was a Kveik Red India Pale Ale, featuring a Norwegian farmhouse strain of yeast (Kveik), Voyager Craft Malt from a single origin small batch craft house and hops from the Ovens Valley's Rostrevor Gardens.
"Bright Brewery had already been using the Kveik strain of yeast," he said.
"It's a super yeast that ferments quickly at high temperatures and you don't need much of it."
A fellow newcomer to the High Country Brewery Trail, Nathan Cowan has transformed the historic Billson's Brewery in Beechworth since 2017.
Together with partner Felicity Cottrill, Mr Cowan has reinvigorated the business into a thriving producer of traditional cordials, sodas and tonics, gin, whisky and now, beer, for the first time since the 1880s when Billson's Brewery was the biggest supplier of beer in the North East.
The latest additions to the High Country Brewery Trail joined Black Dog Brewery in Taminick, Blizzard Brewery in Dinner Plain, Bridge Road Brewers in Beechworth, Bright Brewery, King River Brewing in the King Valley, Rutherglen Brewery and Social Bandit Brewing Company at Mansfield.
Rule #47 beer will be available from each of the participating brewers on the High Country Brewery Trail within the coming weeks.
It will be available on tap and in bottles.
Rule #47 is a cycling term:
Drink Tripels, don't ride triples.
Life is short, don't waste it on bad beer.
velominati.com/therules/
Mitta Mitta Brewing Company beers are also available from Mitta Pub, East Albury IGA, Eskdale IGA and The Goods Shed Craft Beer Cafe (Wodonga) as well as the brewery itself.
