In the past few years, as the Australian craft beer movement has grown upward, outward and onward in every direction, one of the significant contributors to that growth has been the opening of more craft breweries. As each one begins production it not only helps increase the crafty segment of the market share pie, but also helps to put good beer in places it’s seldom been: in front of people that haven’t experienced anything like it, thereby adding a bit more chitter to the beer chatter.
There’s another bonus side-effect of a new brewery too: it can also provide opportunities for more brewing companies to get off the ground. It’s all quite practical really; you’re just starting out, production might not be at its full capacity, so instead of having an empty tank why not let some eager brewer come in and utilise that tank space?
This type of relationship is great news for the beer drinker – a sort of symbiotic double-up bonus; one brewery, two (sometimes more) brewers and an increased diversity of beers being produced. Of late, New South Wales seems to be doing particularly well in this regard with brewing companies like The Grifter Brewing Co, Doctor’s Orders, Wayward, Dennis Beer Co and Grainfed flying the flag with some well made, interesting and increasingly popular brews. In Victoria, you’ll find a similar setup at Cavalier, where the likes of BrewCult, Monster Mash, Dainton Family Brewery and Killer Sprocket have been making beer.
The latest local to join this rank of brewers without breweries is Shenanigans Brewing, a project by Dan Beers and Sam Haldane. This weekend just gone, the duo sweated through Sydney’s heat and humidity to brew their first commercial batch. And quite appropriately they did it at the also very new Batch Brewing Co in Marrickville.
Brewing commercially isn’t something Dan and Sam have suddenly jumped into in order to catch the rising wave of interest in craft beer. They’ve had the idea in place for some time and all they really needed was the right luck and timing in finding a place to brew.
Says Sam: "We’ve actually had a license to brew for about a year, and I checked back and we’d filed the original tax application about two years ago."
So while this is clearly still a good time in terms of them getting a beer out into the world, you could also say it’s not before time.
What does seem superbly well-timed is the beer they’ve brewed first up. Named "Griz", it’s described as "a pale, sessionable [circa 4.5 percent ABV] farmhouse ale with a splash of new world hops and a hint of rye" and it’ll be out before the end of summer.
It’s a recipe they’ve developed together at home, back and forth over something approaching 20 different brews and over several years – even predating the idea to brew commercially. But however much you’re comfortable with brewing the recipe on your own kit – and they are indeed homebrewers of some local repute – it’s quite something else to scale it up to 1200 litres on a brewery you’re unfamiliar with.
The benefit of being in someone else’s brewery is that help is usually at hand, with Chris [Sidwa, Batch brewer] ensuring they hit all the right buttons and valves at the right time. It also no doubt helps that Sam is fresh off a brewing course undertaken in Davis, California – although he did point out that the Batch system is rather different and simpler (in a good way) than the one he spent time learning on.
So aside from taking time to become more familiar with the intricacies of full-scale brewing, what of future Shenanigans? Is the idea to produce more of the same beer, or is there a desire to try something else?
“It’s a bit of both," says Sam (pictured in white top above; Dan in blue). "If people like this [Griz] we’ll probably keep brewing it, if not we’ll try something else. I’d like to brew an Imperial Black IPA and Dan’s been playing with a sour recipe.”
But that can wait. With brew number one now happily fermenting in the tank, the only thing they really need to focus on is celebrating.
To be amongst the first to try Shenanigans’ Griz, the official launch is on February 22nd at Spooning Goats as part of Craft Beer Rising.
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