Boisterous brothers Oli and Louis Leimbach swung by Dan’s Daily to talk net zero brewing, what LARGO means, and what it’s like to be absolutely slaying the charts.
“It’s every kid’s dream to grow up to have their own beer,” says Oli Leimbach, sitting next to his brother Louis in the Dan’s Daily office. Of course, you could argue that these two – the duo behind wildly successful Australian band Lime Cordiale – have ticked off a lot of childhood dreams already. Platinum singles, ARIA awards, sweeping Triple J’s Hottest 100, global tours to thousands of rabid fans, and an unbearably good EP in collaboration with Idris Elba (the internet’s husband) – to name just a few. But it's beer they’ve set their sights on now – and carbon neutral beer at that. This week marks the launch of LARGO Brewing and two debut brews. Having had the pleasure of tasting the beers and hearing the story from the boys directly, we’re placing heavy bets on the climate-conscious LARGO becoming just as loved as Oli and Louis themselves.
If you’re wondering, LARGO is an acronym for ‘late afternoon glass off’. “It’s a term we’ve all grown up with as surfers on Sydney’s Northern Beaches,” Oli explains. “It means a surf just as the sun’s going down, and you surf until it’s too dark to surf any more.” Louis is quick to point out that the ‘R’ comes from ‘arvo’ – “It’s pronounced ‘Laaaaargo’,” he says, with an accent Crocodile Dundee would be proud of.
Indeed, there’s plenty of celebrity beers these days, so what makes this any different? For one, they’ve done plenty more than whack their faces on a white-label brew. “It would have been easier if we’d just slapped a name on it, taken a little selfie,” laughs Louis, “but no, it’s been our baby.” In between winning hearts and topping charts with their rollicking indie-surf pop, the two have been working on LARGO for more than two years, and to finally have it out on the shelves feels surreal. “To actually see it going down the production line was insane. I was so nervous, my heart was pounding, there were these huge stacks of the cans and all I could think was ‘holy shit’,” says Oli.
‘Addicted To The Sunshine’, track five off Lime Cordiale’s 2020 album 14 Steps To A Better You, gently hides a message. Couched in sunny guitar and breezy refrains is biting commentary on the world’s reckless hypocrisy when it comes to the environment. And you can’t talk about LARGO without highlighting its climate positive credentials. They might be loveable larrikins on stage, but in an era where greenwashing is rampant, Oli and Louis are deadly serious about taking credible climate action. The beers being carbon neutral (AKA removing as much carbon from the atmosphere as they put in) was non-negotiable, and LARGO has been certified as such by Climate Active. “We grew up as bush kids on the coast and we consider ourselves environmentalists, but we’re also touring artists that are travelling the world, and that can mean a heavy carbon footprint,” says Louis. “With touring, we try to pull back our emissions in the first place. We’re not just like, let’s fly everywhere and have this dirty footprint and then just offset.”
This means travelling electric wherever they can and carefully arranging tour schedules to avoid flying as much as possible, and it’s these practices that informed the early conversations around how LARGO could exist. “From the get-go, we looked at where we could pull back on energy use. So, we’re doing things like skipping unnecessary steps in filtration, and using a percentage of unmalted barley, cans instead of bottles, net-zero refrigerants, and solar panels on the brewery – things to make sure we’re reducing our energy consumption in the first place. Then 99.5% of the brewery waste is recycled and we’re also offsetting for any emissions we can’t eliminate ourselves,” says Oli. Crucially, those offsets are both bone fide and Australian. Louis points out that some of the biggest coal-mining companies claim parts of their businesses as carbon neutral, thanks to offsets. “When you fly and you click yes to carbon offsetting, you don’t actually know what’s happening,” says Louis. “We know exactly where our offsets are being used – for native vegetation and ecosystem regeneration about 150km outside of Bourke, NSW, within the Darling River basin.” A QR code on the back of the cans leads you to their Climate Active disclosure statement, a detailed breakdown of the scrupulous measures that allowed them to land that critical carbon neutral certification. It takes into account everything from the ingredients to running the forklifts and packaging. “Our view is that you should just do it and be transparent instead of boasting about it and it's half-arsed,” says Louis.
So, why beer and why now? Well, why not? Beer is a staple of touring life – Lime Cordiale are playing sold-out shows around Europe and the UK as I type – and they wanted to develop something they (and their friends and fans) could happily drink gig after gig. “We used to imagine what it would be like to step onto a tour bus and travel around Europe, like that’s proper rockstar stuff,” says Oli. “It’s the same with beer. This has been one of those moments.” If playing open mic nights at the pub is the equivalent of toying around with home brew, then the launch of LARGO is like facing a roaring stadium crowd. “We’ve dabbled in our own home brews and we would bring them to parties and be like, ‘What do you think of that beer, mate? I made it myself’,” says Louis. “This is a bit like that, but on a grander scale and it doesn’t taste like shit because we’ve worked with some great, great brewers.”
We’d go further than that – the beers are actually excellent. The Clean Lager is exactly what it promises – an easy-drinking, low-in-bitterness drop that heralds the popular return of lager as the ultimate session beer. “What happens when you’re touring is that you’re drinking the same beer for six months and halfway through, you’re absolutely sick of it,” says Oli. “It’s happened with so many beers and we kept changing them up and found you just can’t drink those super crafty, fruity flavours more than a few times.” Now the brothers have something they can put in their rider to satisfy that post-gig thirst, and the rest of us have a crisp, refreshing beer that tastes great without getting old.
There’s fair praise to be doled out for what adorns the outside of the cans, too. Because playing multiple instruments isn’t enough, Louis has also done all the artwork for Lime Cordiale since the very beginning – singles, albums, posters, merch. It’s all his handiwork. Full of brotherly pride, Oli gushes about his sibling’s talents: “His artworks are epic. His medium is lino cut and he has a few different presses, including a smaller one that he takes on tour with us.” You’ll often find Louis at the back of the bus, creating his lino prints. “It’s super messy,” Louis admits. “There’s all these little bits of lino everywhere and always a big clothesline of artworks hanging up around the bus so the prints can dry – which has gotta annoy the rest of the band sometimes, but they let me do my thing.”
As for what’s next? Louis and Oli are chuffed to be sharing LARGO with the world. And in brilliant news for Lime Cordiale fans, they’re working on new music, too. “We’re distracted with the actual music,” laughs Oli. “When you’ve got beers and other things you’re working on, you’re like, oh yeah, we should actually concentrate on the songs for a little bit.” There’s even a doco about the green side of touring in the works.
Until then, there’s nothing else to do but crack open a can of Clean Lager or The Dawdler, watch the sun go down, and put the Lime Cordiale discog on repeat.
