CURLY LEWIS BREWING COFFEE
My flute teacher used to say before I played, ‘take a deep breath, so you can be in it’. That is not bad advice as you lean in to talk with a mate over this beer about more than just what happened at band camp!
Origin – Bondi, New South Wales
ABV – 6.0%
Size – 375mL can
Style – Stout
The story was so vivid that two decades on I still remember my wife revealing the details of the first time she went for a Brazilian wax. I winced as she spoke of lying naked, spread-eagled, as boiling-hot wax was agonisingly wrenched from a part of her body primarily reserved for giving birth. First made famous in New York in the late 1980s by Sex and the City's Samantha, there was a time that my wife, and indeed any respected member of the fairer sex, wouldn't be seen on the sands of Bondi without some 'lady-scaping' of the short and curlies, a fake tan…and maybe even a vajazzle and some silicone breasts! She gleefully tells me that today waxing is considered so déclassé.
Whatever your preference – sporting a lab rat or William Shatner's hairpiece – all are welcome to come as they are to first brewery calling Bondi home. Foundered by Oli dos Remedios, Adam Richards, Gareth Morton, Loren Morton, and long-time brewer, beer judge, and industry consultant Scotty Morgan, Curly Lewis took up residence in August 2022. A mere hundred metres from Australia's most iconic beach, complete with panoramic views and metronomic surf, the lads gladly receive all states of hairlessness inside to sample a line-up of locally-made beers and snacks by the famed Frank's Deli.
Given it's the first to open in Bondi since craft beer culture caught fire and that it's a beachside brewery whose first priority is refreshment, many of those beers tip towards the session end of the scale. There are though a few more out-there offerings, such as this Coffee Stout, which headlines Curly Lewis' Wildcard range. Brewed with a healthy hit of single-origin coffee the beer is a classic dry stout layered with dark fruit notes. Joining those plum-like elements is a more roasted and nutty side and a decent bitterness on the finish.
It's the sort of beer that will put hair on your chest... and perhaps just a little extra down there too!
