It Starts in the Dirt
Most people think a beer’s story starts at the brewery.
Ours starts in the dirt.
Out in the WA Wheatbelt, about 30km from Kulin, Brendon and Gabrielle Savage farm barley across 5,800 hectares at Tolga Farm. It’s a four-generation family operation, and they don’t farm the way most of the industry does.
Here’s the part that really matters.
Brendon and Gab didn’t shift away from conventional farming back in 2004 as a feel-good move. They did it to keep a generational farm alive and thriving. What followed was two decades of rebuilding their soil, improving water retention, reducing reliance on synthetic inputs, and creating a system that can handle dry seasons that would wipe out a conventional paddock.
Healthier soil creates a more resilient farm.
A more resilient farm delivers stronger, steadier margins.
This is smart economics first. Smart, sustainable business second.
A better way to farm, full stop.
The environmental benefit? That comes naturally.
Barley with a significantly smaller carbon footprint, not because anyone was chasing a green badge, but because the farming was done properly. That thinking sits at the core of everything we do at Rocky Ridge.
Why It Matters
In 2023, we brought together a six-way collaboration: Tolga Farm, Joe White Maltings, Bintani, CBH and Certified Sustainable.
The goal was simple.
Create Certified Sustainable, single-origin, regeneratively grown malt at scale.
Then we went all in.
This isn’t a one-off batch with a green sticker slapped on it.
It’s the only malt we use, across every single beer we brew.
At our size, going single-origin isn’t easy. It’s a logistical headache. And we choose it anyway.
Each year, we commit to one major malting run — around 350 tonnes of Brendon and Gab’s barley. It’s carbon-neutrally malted in Perth, then stored and managed to last us the entire year.
It would be far easier to order commodity malt as needed.
We don’t. Because this is better.
The result is a clean, traceable line from paddock to pint. From Kulin, through a single malting run, straight into our brewery. Every kilo of CO2 accounted for.
Fucking good malt, for fucking good beer.
The Captain Jindong Series Returns
For World Environment Day, the Captain Jindong Series is back. And this year, we’ve gone all in.
Six beers. Each one tied to a real action we take as Australia’s only Certified Sustainable and Carbon Neutral brewery. And underpinning nearly all of them is that same malt from Tolga Farm.
🌊 WATER | Guava Habanero Berliner | 4.2%
Real guava and whole habanero. Bright, crisp and carrying a subtle heat.
🌍 EARTH | NEIPA | 5.8%
Soft, pillowy and pineapple-forward. Brewed with the knowledge that our spent grain feeds local cattle.
🌬️ WIND | DDH Hazy IPA | 6.2%
A full hop flex featuring SubZero Hop Kief, cryo hops and experimental New Zealand varieties.
🔥 FIRE | West Coast IIPA | 8.0%
Old-school dank meets modern hop tech. Big, bold and powered by solar.
❤️ HEART | Choc Raspberry White Stout | 6.0%
Cacao, raspberry, coffee and vanilla. Built layer by layer, entirely by hand.
⚡ CAPTAIN JINDONG | TDH Cali TIPA | 9.0%
The boss beer. The biggest ingredients. Everything turned up.
The Takeaway
You can grab all six in one mixed pack and taste the full series as it was meant to be.
But here’s the thing.
Start with the beer.
Make sure it’s delicious.
Then, if you’re interested, look a little closer at what went into it, and how it was made.
Because exceptional beer and a smaller footprint aren’t a trade-off.
They’re the same job done properly.
And we’ve spent the last ten years proving it.
Taste first. The power, as always, is yours.
