In the modern era, beer is fermented in sterilised tanks, using lab-cultured yeasts. These yeasts are reliable, consistent and produce desirable flavour compounds as they convert sugar to alcohol. Sterilisation ensures there’s no competition from other microbes, which can produce off flavours or spoil the beer altogether.
A small number of Australian breweries do things differently. They ferment medievally, in open-topped, bath-like vessels called coolships. And they don’t add yeast – they rely on fickle airborne yeasts and bacteria alighting on the beer’s surface.
This sourdough-like process is riskier, but when done right, the good microbes outcompete the bad, producing acid-driven ales of stunning balance and complexity. Barrel ageing can add further dimensions. Belgium is justifiably famous for this type of beer, known as “wild”, “farmhouse” or “sour” (though it’s possible to make farmhouse and sour beers using the sterile process, and many people do).
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SIGN UPLa Sirene, founded in 2010, is one of Melbourne’s more established breweries and a wild fermentation pioneer. Though taprooms have multiplied across the city over the past decade, it’s remained notably absent from the scene – until now.
“We were too busy making beer,” quips co-owner Costa Nikias. “[A taproom] should have happened years ago. We were planning for it and working on it, but just never had the – I don’t know, it just had to be the right time.”
The brewery occupies three warehouses in an obscure wedge of Alphington, between Darebin Parklands and the Hurstbridge line. Specifically, it shares a ragtag gravel and cracked-asphalt complex with a sculpture workshop, garden supplies company, carbon-bike repair shop and others. If you choose to park inside the gates, be aware they’re locked at 7pm each night, four hours before La Sirene closes.
Where today’s taprooms often feel purpose-built, with the brewhouse proudly displayed through big picture windows, this one’s pure retcon. Most of the working brewery is hidden behind tall stacks of French oak barrels filled with maturing beer. Out front, there’s a makeshift beer garden that catches nice arvo sun.
Still, with its curvaceous French oak bar and padded leather stools, inside has a certain intimacy and sophistication. Nikias and his wife and co-founder, Eva, didn’t want it to feel like other breweries, with their sometimes bro-ey undertones.
“We love hanging out at wine bars,” says Nikias, who was a winemaker before he was a brewer. “Some of our favourites are Bar Liberty and Gerald’s. We wanted to bring that wine bar feel and offering to the beer world.”
That starts with the 14 taps, and an extensive cellar of aged beers and special releases. There’s a clean, easy-drinking pilsner and a slightly more flavoursome pale ale for drinkers seeking safety and familiarity. Beyond: Citray (a puckering orange sour), Farmhouse Red (brewed with hibiscus and rose), Praline (a hazelnut, cacao and vanilla stout) and numerous other wild, acid-driven ales that drink more like wine than beer. (Ten wines are available if you want to drink the real thing.) These bubbly, acidic brews pair uniquely well with food, refreshing the palate between bites.
And, just like a wine bar, La Sirene is as much about eating as it is about drinking. Spanish-style small plates dominate the menu, including chorizo and bread, sliced jamon iberico, garfish with lemon, and marinated baby octopus. There are also fancy toasties, spelt pizzas and a cheese cabinet stuffed with manchego, délice, le dauphin, d’Affinois and other creamy delights.
As these rustic, stinky cheeses taste of when and where they were made, so too do La Sirene beers, with their specific yeast and bacteria medley unique to the air in Alphington. Nikias won’t even mature the beer in American oak barrels, which he reckons is too aggressive, and rarely blends different batches the way other farmhouse brewers do.
“Making beer with a sense of time, place and season is what we’re all about,” Nikias says. “We don’t fiddle-fuddle with the beer too much; we don’t try and stylise it or direct it too much. It’s real wild brewing.”
La Sirene
2 Wingrove Street, Alphington
0452 339 210
Hours
Fri & Sat 5pm–11pm
Sun 12pm–5pm
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