An Indigenous-owned non-alcoholic brewery on Queensland’s Gold Coast is taking its craft and storytelling to new heights in 2021. Sobah co-founder Dr Clinton Schultz speaks with Doris Prodanovic. This story originally appeared in the January/February edition of Food & Drink Business.
Purpose, place, story and lore: these are the elements at the core of Sobah. Husband and wife team Dr Clinton and Lozen Schultz have adamantly infused these principles into the business since it launched as Australia’s first non-alcoholic craft beer in 2017, which has only worked in favour for the Indigenous-owned brewer.
When sitting with Clinton Schultz – a psychologist and academic by profession – at Sobah’s Gold Coast-based headquarters in Burleigh Heads, it doesn’t take long to see how important it is for him to share and support Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander businesses and stories through Sobah.
“There’s nothing that really throws a lot of that stereotypical rubbish back in the face of, I guess, the majority population, more than being a strong, proud, Gamilaroi man running a non-alcoholic beer company, and everything being infused or brewed with our traditional foods,” says Schultz.
“We are able to show complexities of the flavours but also the health benefits that are in those foods.
“We’re trying to do a lot, but it’s led to something that I’d say is probably as uniquely Australian as you’re going to come across, and definitely so for the beverage industry.”
Native ingredients such as Davidson Plum, Wattleseed, Aniseed Myrtle, Boab and Pepperberry are delicately infused and sourced in individual Sobah varieties, whether as part of its core or seasonal ranges. Schultz told Food & Drink Business the team tries to source ingredients from where they are naturally grown as much as possible.
“The ever-growing interest in native produce is making it a little bit more difficult to buy direct from community or from small-scale farms on natural country, because some of the larger players buy up such big quantities it has now become a wholesale market,” he says.
“It’s a tricky little space. We are really passionate about trying to ensure that the native produce space, as it grows, is run and maintained by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, as well as the knowledge and culture that goes with the produce.”
Schultz adds that there is often a clash in value structures, particularly from the big producers because Western systems see many things as being commodifiable. This has become easy to do in the native foods space, he says.
“There’s a lot of people who just see native foods as just a just a new fad ingredient.
“For us there’s a purpose behind it all, and that what we’re actually using goes beyond it just being an ingredient. That side of the of the industry is going to be Australia’s next big challenge in this production space.”
New brew tricks
Despite being a non-alcoholic beer, Sobah is brewed the same way as any other beer. Its point of difference is the strain of yeast it uses, which ensures no ethanol is produced and the beer is alcohol-free.
It was the post production process, which was the “expensive learning curve” of Sobah’s R&D.
“Since non-alcoholic products don’t have alcohol in them to preserve them, there are extra steps needed to ensure you have a product that is stable enough to be delivered to retailers and consumers,” says Schultz.
“We started off as a fresh farm-house ale and we were trying to do cold chain distribution, but for us, it was unreliable and too expensive, and therefore, not profitable.”
“Now, everything we produce is tunnel pasteurised, so the products come out one hundred per cent dry shelf stable after the pasteurisation process. As far as we are aware, we have one of the only small-scale tunnel pasteurisers in a brewery.”
“We had to do a few tweaks to the recipes to ensure we weren’t impacting on the profiles of the products, and that we were still getting the flavours we wanted at the end of pasteurising, and it has worked out well. Our products are better now than what they were when we first started, both in terms of flavour and stability.”
Personalised approach
Sobah plans to rebrand its core range this year, with some of its new, limited batches already rolling out with fresh designs across cans and cartons.
Schultz says the new look will emulate the label design of the four special/seasonal beers released in 2020.
“They will be more individualised and related to the actual native ingredient and where it comes from, rather than generic branding.”
“It’s another part of constantly looking at how we can better promote the diversity that exists among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, and trying to help people understand that we’re just not one big homogenous group,” says Schultz.
“There’s a breadth of diversity that’s beautiful and should be embraced, and we’re trying to find ways to tweak people’s minds around the simplest things, like adapting the can art to reflect products and place, which makes people start thinking about that diversity.”
All of the artwork across Sobah’s range is created either by Schultz or Aboriginal artists, including Alara Cameron, Jory Murphy and Jeremy Donovan, who designed the new label for the Lemon Aspen Pilsner.
“We source lemon aspen from far north Queensland, which is Kuku Yalanji Country. Jeremy is actually Kuku Yalanji, so has produced the art around the fruit and the story that comes from his country,” says Schultz.
“It keeps people engaged with the company. There are even people out there seeking the product because they’re just as interested in the stories as the beer itself, which is fine by me.
“It brings another sector of the market to what we’re doing and the more people we can engage with, spreads the message and wonders of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australia.”
More firsts
Sobah has now entered an investment round to not only help grow the business, but the size of its home on the Gold Coast. The Schultz’s goal is to establish Sobah as “Australia’s first, full non-alcoholic brew café and commercial brewery”.
“We want to bring all our small-scale production in-house [currently being made in a Tweed Heads-based brewery], so that we can start meeting one of our own agendas, which has always been to increase employment opportunities for marginalised peoples here on the Coast. It would be largely targeted at Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities, but not just them,” Schultz says.
“The majority of our team at Sobah come from a marginalised background and struggle with what others may see as a disability or barrier to them engaging with mainstream employment. We want to be able to create employment opportunities and training for them, and that’s been really rewarding to do at the level we already have.”
Sobah – in addition to being a play on words of ‘sober’ – is loosely translated as ‘place of sobriety’ or ‘of more mindful drinking’, with the sound of the suffix, ‘bah’ meaning ‘place of’.
Starting his own journey of sobriety six years ago, as well as calling the Gold Coast home for most of his life, Schultz says it would feel “unnatural for myself, Lozen and the company to be moved from where its home is”.
“We have such an opportunity to create not just a brewery, but a cultural tourism hub, that’s what we want to do, at its full scale. Hopefully when it’s done, we’ll have everything from the brewery and brew café through to an arts and craft space and a healing centre under the Sobah umbrella,” he says.
“There’s also a lot more people, particularly young people, who are far more mindful about the origins, purpose and the impact of the businesses they’re giving their money to – that’s been one of the big successes of the craft beer space. There’s also more people now who are willing to support Aboriginal businesses.
“Everything that Sobah is has fallen in the right place for it to work.”
