Last week, the NT Indy ran a poll that let you tell us who has the best home grown brewery here in the NT.

After hundreds and hundreds of votes were tabulated, Alice Springs Brewery was the clear winner.

Alice Springs Brewery owner Kyle Pearson said he was grateful to Territorians for putting their faith in his brewery by declaring it the Territory’s best. We caught up with him after the huge win to find out how he makes great beer and what’s in store for the brewery.

Q: Have you won any other prestigious awards – or anything more prestigious than this NT Independent best beer award?

A: We won a Brolga award a couple of years ago which was great. We are focusing our future efforts on entering our beer into as many judged competitions as possible as it provides valuable feedback.

Q: What will you be doing to ensure you maintain this award again next year?

A: We are just trying to be a brewery who makes great beer. I believe if we continue to get that right the rest will follow.

Q: Do we have to travel to Alice to try it or can we shop online?

A: We are available in a number of bars & bottle shops in Darwin and have a great distributor up there. If it’s not at your local, ask them to source through Thomas Chin Distributions.

Q: What does this year bring? Any events?

A: Hopefully no more lockdowns etc, so we have the confidence to venture out. Keep an eye out for the NT Indy Beer Fest which will be announcing dates in the coming months.

Q: Being in the heart of the desert, where does the water come from that you use to brew the Territory’s favourite local beer?

A: We source all of our water from the town supply which is from the Roe Creek bore fields. It isn’t great for brewing so we have to run it through reverse osmosis before we can brew with it. We have a strenuous water usage regime and claim back all the waste water from this process and water our grounds with it. As we grow in size we have plans to reclaim further and put a system in place to flush our toilets with it.

Q: Is ASB the most remote brewery in the world?

A: Not sure. It would be up there!

Q: Red Ale: Have you ever considered filtering some beer through some red dirt to make a true red centre red ale?

A: No – this isn’t a thing! We have a seasonal beer we do called Ochre Ale that comes up an awesome red colour.

Q: Your head brewer is Jim Ryan, formerly of Little Creatures. They sold for $380M to Lion Nathan, is this your future goal?

A: Nah. Dunno. I think the golden years of big buys by the giants is probably over for a while. Most of the sales I see coming through at the moment are under duress. We are happy being the guys from Alice Springs for now!