BREWING COMES TO THE OTHERSIDE

For the brains trust behind a new Perth brewery it wasn’t so much about bottling a liquid as encapsulating a feeling.

Locally-based Sunset Events have been producing plenty of festivals across the State and during one afternoon watching a crowd enjoying the occasion the soon-to-be Otherside Brewing Company team had a lightbulb moment.

No one in the group is sure who said what first. But the general synopsis is after some workshopping the words became, “Imagine if you could bottle this: cork the festival experience. Imagine if it was possible to capture this feeling in a beer?”

So the process of developing Otherside started last year and the operation has recently welcomed Rhys Lopez to the brewing side and Seb Levy as the manager of their forthcoming venue which the team hopes to be operating from in Fremantle early next year.

Currently, Otherside is contract brewing out of Jan Bruckner’s Last Drop Brewery.

Otherside’s propaganda minister Julian Tompkin sums up the company’s ethos as more than just producing brews.

“It’s both a beer and a philosophy on life: an invitation to ditch your inhibitions and embrace your other,” is the Otherside mantra in Tompkin’s statement.

“That philosophy has remained steadfast since the very beginnings: push the boundaries ... and have a damn hoot doing it.

“At Otherside, our beers not only embody this sentiment, they holler it – a raucous and rhapsodic marriage of life’s essential elements: music and beer, sea and sun.”

The Otherside team spent the early part of 2016 working with Ian Atkins at the Beer Farm near Margaret River, honing ideas, developing recipes and working on collaborative brews.

That process has continued with a pilot system, affectionately known as the mixing desk.

Lopez comes to Otherside from The Monk but also has experience with Gage Roads and Little Creatures as well as the Hippocampus distillery.

Levy has left the Perth CBD where he worked for Colonial Brewing, Petition and the Print Hall to head to Fremantle.

Otherside is feverishly working towards a September 22 launch where it will release its key beer range.