Who You Know ... Gary Pease And Ross Purvis

Newcastle Herald

Saturday May 24, 2008

Neil Jameson

They were young, thirsty and cash-strapped.

It all added up to good reason to step back from the bar, reject the temptation of a commercial beer and head straight for the shed and a shot at brewing their own.

Ross Purvis and Gary Pease met at Teachers College in 1971 and found they had a bit in common. As trainee science teachers, they shared a passion for putting a flame under a concoction just to see what happened.

They also enjoyed a beer. The Teachers College scholarship didn't stretch to a grog allowance. So, they set about brewing their own.

The bug bit when Gary (left in picture) learned that the laboratory crew at Stewarts & Lloyds were doing the odd foreign-order in beer, not just metallurgy.

"It was fairly basic in those days," Gary recalls. "A 40 pound honey tin, stick it on the stove, throw in some malt, a hop bud [concentrated essence of hops] and . . .

There was a missing ingredient.

" . . . somebody had a contact in Toohey's who borrowed some yeast."

Gary cordoned off bathroom-laundry space in his Hamilton East home and laid down a first brew. As a pioneering effort, it definitely passed the taste test.

"I invited a few blokes around and they drank the lot. It tasted just like Toohey's New."

When college was done. Ross was posted to Jesmond High and Gary to Francis Greenway at Beresfield but neither time, the tyranny of distance nor a few changes of address could diminish their brewing bug.

At times, they would give it a rest, but all it would take was another excise hike on beer to send them back to the shed.

Not all batches went down smoothly. They stored one in the linen press next to the hot water service. All but a few bottles blew to bits.

"I put on a motorcycle helmet, lab coat and acid-proof gloves and gingerly took them all out and put them in the garbage," Gary recalls.

Ross: "We were picking broken glass out of the door and woodwork for ages."

As young dads with mortgages to pay and kids to feed, producing 30 long necks once a month for as little as $5 a batch became part of their budgetary strategy.

When Gary moved into his current home at Hamilton South 22 years ago, he noted that the property included one important component: a free-standing garage at the rear of the yard well away from the house. Today, its cluttered interior gives off the aroma of countless well-crafted brews.

It was 10 years ago that Gary cast an eye over an article written by a guy working in a Mayfield home brew shop. Until that point, the boys had been experimenting with ideas like substituting honey for sugar.

It helped that Gary had a mate who owned bee hives. The article contained a bunch of beer recipes. It opened up a whole world of beer possibility to the two amateurs.

"The first beer we made from that list was a Corona," recollects Gary. "That was when I found that those wankers who were sticking a slice of lime in the neck were fair dinkum. It actually works."

Since then, they have made literally dozens of different types of beer from a myriad of ingredients, sometimes using their own recipes, and they've picked up a few gongs at home-brewing shows. Gary produces a well-thumbed notepad chock-full of his own concoctions.

"This one's got Morgan's Golden Sheaf wheat beer," he says reading from the notepad, "the zest of two oranges, three heaped teaspoons of coriander . . ."

In all this experimentation, surely the two science teachers produced their share of disasters.

"Nope," says Ross. "We've had some better than others but we've never had a bad beer."

But, then again, beer does have its moods. They produced two identical batches on the one night. Ross took his home. One bottle blew up. A couple of weeks later when he knocked the cap off another, the contents hit the ceiling. They were all like that. But across town, Gary's were perfect.

Little Creatures, the award-winning pale ale from WA, attracted Gary's interest, so he had a shot at replicating it in the humble surrounds of his garage.

"I have a mate who is heavily into boutique beers and I gave him a glass. 'Hmm,' he said. 'Little Creatures'."

It was the same friend who, back in 1988, had introduced Gary to boutique beers. Since then, the boys have been on their own international beer adventure, all without straying too far from the shed.

It's been quite a journey.

Gary takes a quiet pull on a beer he has just drawn from the keg in the garage and puts it all in perspective.

"So many beers, so little time."

Neil Jameson

© 2008 Newcastle Herald

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