Luke is the full bottle on spirits, beers and brews
Luke Smith is living every beer and spirit drinker’s dream life.
Luke Smith is living every beer and spirit drinker’s dream life.
From his two-hectare farm on the outskirts of Cowes, Luke runs Green Gully Brewing, with an orchard growing hops, while he also harvests added flavours including seasonal fruit, finger and kaffir lime, lemon, beetroot and botanicals.
On the farm, a nano-brewery features commercial machinery and an assortment of his own modified creations: a mash tank uses converted dairy farm machinery, and a 500-litre brewing system is made from second-hand items from the likes of Carlton and United Breweries and even pharmaceutical companies.
With more than 40 years’ brewing experience, Luke makes award-winning “old school” traditional, classic styles, sold under his Island Beer brand in cans, kegs and bottles, through his online shop as well as local restaurants, the Cowes IGA, Rusty Water’s produce store, and Hill Top Farm Meats.
He also plans to make spirits such as gin, rum and limoncello, as well as experimental beverages including cider, mead and ginger beer.
“Sure it’s a great life. People think making beer and spirits is about sitting around sampling,” says the father-of-two.
“But there’s a fair bit of work involved.”
Quirky
Luke contracts full-time in major infrastructure and construction projects, around Australia and overseas, making smelters, gas plants and power stations.
But this summer he has taken a break to focus on brewing and distilling.
Now in his 50s, Luke first started helping his father make beer at the age of seven, starting his own home brewing system at 18.
It was a lucky select few Phillip Island residents who were first privy to his brewing skills when he moved to the island 16 years ago.
“Back then I used to make it in my garage in Sunset Strip for friends. I used to get a lot of visitors, it was a bit of a speak easy,” recalls Luke, a member of the Independent Brewing Association.
“It made me realise the potential. At the time no one was making beer or spirits on the island.
“I saw an opportunity to make something that was alternative and independent.”
After Luke and his family moved to the two-hectare farm he turned his hobby commercial, continuing to make his classic styles.
“I don’t make bland beverages full of nasty stuff. I focus on something different: made from scratch, using local ingredients but left of field.”
Luke – who this year won a silver at the Royal Melbourne International Beer Awards – sources yeasts from around the world, made by a microbiologist in Melbourne, while he also makes his own cultures.
“It’s the yeast that dictates a lot of my styles of brews.”
He sources Victorian malted grain to make a mash, soaks out the sugars for about an hour before it is transferred to a large kettle, hops added, heated for about an hour, cooled and transferred to be fermented, which can take a couple of days or several weeks.
New brews
Given his left-of-centre brewing style, Luke is now planning to make a bevy of experimental beverages, which he will also can, bottle and sell online.
He plans to make more spirits, cider (from apples and pears) and short mead (low alcohol fermented honey), ginger beer, as well as unheard of brews such as swanky (“a low alcohol, temperance beer”) and kvass (an Eastern European fermented bread beer).
This summer he will also turn his hand to making watermelon mint soda beer, gluten-free, rice-based seltzer, and rhubarb soda (“popular in the ‘90s in New York”).
“It doesn’t mean I’ll stop making beer, but with my engineering background and love of chemistry, it keeps me learning.”
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