BIG SHED BREWING CONCERN GOLDEN STOUT TIME

Paddle Pops and pints! What I love about them both is how they bring us together. As is the case for this cracking craft.

Origin – Royal Park, South Australia
ABV- 5.4%
Size- 330mL bottle
Style- Stout

In 1996, a shed was built to promote social interaction and to increase the quality of life for blokes. The slogan above the bar was 'Shoulder to Shoulder', as in men don't talk face to face, they talk shoulder to shoulder. That movement was to become known as Men's Shed.

The story of Big Shed Brewing Concern is not too dissimilar. It starts in 2002 with good mates Jason Harris and Craig Basford brewing out of a farming shed in the Barossa Valley. It was a way to increase the quality of their life and create social interaction with their family and friends. After doing such a great job of the task as amateurs, they decided to go pro. Rather than leaving behind that desire to promote social interaction, they built on it, or more accurately built it – a big shed in Adelaide's Royal Park consisting of a communal brewery. It was a place where the lads could commercially brew batches while also allowing other South Australian start-ups to mix their own. Not only were Jason and Craig giving a leg up to others in the craft beer community but they also got some rent money to help keep the bank man at bay between brews.

Steadily the big shed became filled with tenants, most notably the Mismatch Brewing Company.  All the while, Jason and Craig began establishing the Big Shed brand in its own right, before commercially launching the first of their core range in 2014, an American brown ale they called FrankenBROWN. Fast forward four years and a shed load of CBA awards later, the Big Shed will soon be getting bigger….much bigger. Backed by the State Government, there are plans afoot to move premises and increase production from 225,000L per year to several million. While it’s not clear when it will happen, you can be sure that one of the beers rattling down those new lines will be this Golden Stout Time, a drop that started life as a one-off GABS beer in 2015. It polled third in the 'people's choice awards at GABS that year and when asking the online world if they should brew another batch not long after, the virtual applause was deafening. So they did, and have been doing so ever since. 'It's a hearty stout infused with toffee and honeycomb and light on hops; If that combination sounds like 'Australia's best-selling ice cream the Golden Gaytime, it is because …well it is! Given the flavour sensation, it may be hard to put down, but Jason tells me that as it warms up in the glass, it only gets better and better.

Like the ice-cream itself, this is an ideal drop to drink shoulder to shoulder with a mate. After all, 'it's hard to have a Gaytime on your own.

BIG SHED BREWING CONCERN