Brewing luminary Chuck Hahn has taken Kosciuszko Brewing Company back to tins with a couple of innovations planned for the canning line.
Conceived at the foot of Australia’s highest peak, the Kosciuszko Brewing Company has seen demand for its craft beer soar beyond the Snowy Mountains.
Now the craft brewer is pushing production of its signature beer, Kosciuszko Pale Ale, beyond the bottling line, and into cans.
Both the brewery and brand were established in 2009 by brewing luminary Chuck Hahn at the Banjo Paterson Inn in the Snowy Mountains.
Hahn says it was his love of the mountains that first sparked the idea to set up a craft brewery in the region.
“I spent many years in Colorado, so when we bought a place up here to ski and fish, I began thinking that we should start a little brewery here,” says Hahn. “That is how Kosciuszko Brewery was born."
As the official home of Kosciuszko Brewery, Hahn says the pale ale was brewed exclusively onsite at the Banjo for the first two years of its life.
Kosciuszko Pale Ale is a slightly cloudy Australian-style ale that has been crafted from a Pale & Munich malt blend, using Tasmanian-grown hops, with late hopping in the kettle using Galaxy hops.
“We could only brew about 20,000 to 25,000 litres a year in this location.
So, when customers started asking if they could take some back home with them in 2011, we extended our brewing and bottling to the Malt Shovel Brewery in Camperdown, which is on the site of the original Hahn brewery.”
According to Lion, owner of the Kosciuszko Brewing Company, overall demand for the pale ale grew by more than 20 per cent in 2018, with 84 per cent pack growth in NSW.
To meet this growing appetite, Hahn says keg and bottle production originally at the Malt Shovel Brewery has been upscaled once more to the Tooheys Brewery in Sydney.
Total sales are now over 300,000 litres of Kosciuszko Pale Ale per month.
