Taking Brendale craft to Japan

A Brendale brewery, which won 19 medals at the recent Queensland beer awards, will be part of a Moreton Bay overseas trade delegation this month.

Hip Hops Brewers, on South Pine Rd, has been invited to join the City of Moreton Bay team - which includes other businesses - in Japan later this month.

Mayor Peter Flannery will lead the delegation at the Global City Network for Sustainability (G-NETS) Leaders Summit and SusHI Tech Tokyo 2026 conference.

Local businesses - paying their own way on the trip - will work alongside the Mayor and Council on trade opportunities.

“If you look at our little brewery you might say we’re a fair way away from having this sort or capacity to be a major export player,” Hip Hops Brewers Director Shaun Reeves said.

“But if we had niche collaborations, niche partnerships we could look at possibilities and take advantage.

“The other part is, through connections Moreton Bay has with sister cities, in this case Sanyo-Onoda, seeing if there are things being done that we can bring back.

“For example, is there a way we can get Queensland’s first sake production going?

“This is certainly not a junket. It’s a great opportunity to go because Council can open doors a business operator would not be able to open.

“We’ve been talking with Trade and Investment Queensland about a couple of possibilities while we are over there to get the lay of the land.”

Hip Hops Brewers is already known in Japan having been asked to produce a commemorative beer for last year’s visit to Moreton Bay by a delegation from Sanyo-Odono.

Such was the success of its Tomodachi (meaning friendship) Lager won gold in the Hybrid Beer section of this year’s Royal Queensland Beer Awards.

Last week the Mayor of Sanyo-Ondoda sent Hip Hop Brewers a letter of congratulations, “which made my day!” said Shaun.

“I had an idea for a sushi beer,” he said, “(we) used fresh Moreton Bay seaweed sea lettuce, produced by UniSC, balanced it with yusu from a farm in Gympie and came up with a beer we were happy with.”

Hip Hops Brewers won three gold, 11 silver and four bronze medals at the Royal Queensland awards which was a “really good result”, Shaun said.

“But we also enter awards to see where we sit as far as quality of product goes, get judges’ opinion, see where areas for improvement are.

“Each year we get feedback and look at what we did to try and improve from the previous year and what we need to do by way of filtration, test equipment, water profiling, recipes.”

Many beers have localised names with Shaun saying he loves “alliteration, cliches and puns” as well as looking for backstories from the area.

Lakeside Lager, Samford Sessions and Redcliffe Red were among the recent award winners, while Hip Hop also sells Petrie Pilsner, Samsonvale Stout and Griffin Golden Ale.

Despite the spelling, Brentdale Buddies, which won silver in the Amber Dark Ale category, is a nod to the suburb where Hip Hop Brewers is based.

Shaun said it began with Buddy Brewing at Burpengary, approaching him for a Moreton Bay collaboration and suggested an Irish red ale.

“I started researching Irish heritage in South Pine and (it was) from the Davis family that (developer) Bill Bowden bought land and named his horse stud Brendale,” said Shaun.

“That was after the Davis family’s original property back in Ireland called Brentdale. So there’s no spelling mistake … Bill just shortened it to Brendale.

“We continue to look for collaboration opportunities with other local producers and growers to showcase the businesses and flavours of our region.”