One of the brewers who helped drive the rise of craft beer in Australia has taken full ownership of the brewing company he co-founded almost a decade ago. Shawn Sherlock, who built a reputation as one of the country's finest brewers during his time at Murray's, has acquired the remaining 45 percent of shares in FogHorn Brewery from Mighty Craft, the "craft drinks accelerator" formerly known as Founders First.
While acknowledging the purchase came during a difficult time for the industry, Shawn (pictured above) told The Crafty Pint: “The opportunity to take full control was too good.
“There’s no guarantees with this, just as with any hospitality business right now. But we’ve survived the best part of ten years now – nine of those trading – and in hospitality terms that’s a substantial length of time.
“I’m pretty proud of being able to survive through some pretty tough times.”
Shawn first came to prominence when head brewer at Murray's at a time when craft beer was starting to force its way from the fringes to become the established part of Australian drinking culture it is today. During his period at the helm, the brewery released a phenomenal number of eye-catching beers, from the perfectly-named Icon 2IPA – one of the country's first double IPAs – to an array of sought-after imperial stouts, some of the best Belgian-style beers produced on these shores, and a number of pioneering barrel-aged beers.
After leaving Murray's, he founded FogHorn with James Garvey in October 2014, first opening to the public in April the following year. Operating predominantly as a brewpub close to the heart of Newcastle, it was the first new brewery to open in a city that now has well over half a dozen, pouring beers that saw Shawn continue to pick up trophies at the country's major awards.
In March 2019, his founding partner’s share in the business was acquired by Founders First, before that business transitioned to become Mighty Craft. The move saw FogHorn release a range of beers in cans before, in February 2020, Founders First bought Hunter Valley’s original craft brewery, Potters Brewery and Brasserie. They turned the venue into The Mighty Hunter, with FogHorn taking on the sub-lease for the onsite brewery, Hunter Beer Co. The plan was to expand this second FogHorn brewery in a way that wasn’t viable at the brewery’s downtown city site. Unfortunately, the pandemic had other plans.
“COVID and the two years of intense lockdowns really impacted the whole Mighty Craft business model," Shawn says. "They weren’t on their own [in being impacted] but it certainly impacted their relationships with partners like myself.
“In a lot of ways, we had 12 really good months, and I still don’t have a bad relationship with the Mighty Craft people that have been there from the start.”
When the impacts of the pandemic began to recede, only to be replaced by rising interest rates and other economic challenges, Shawn says the two parties “realised we would be better apart than together”, adding: “But neither of us wanted to do the wrong thing by the other.” Hence the lengthy process to reach this point.
Mighty Craft first revealed plans to sell its stake in FogHorn midway through last year as part of a divestment strategy to pay down debt. Now the sale has gone through, it means the "craft beer accelerator" has relinquished its final stake in the craft beer industry.
At one point, the ASX-listed business owned or held stakes in Mismatch Brewing, Jetty Road, Slipstream, Sauce Brewing, Ballistic Beer Co and Sparkke Beverages, as well as FogHorn and a number of local spirits companies. Now, after a series of sales and share buybacks, their only involvement in beer is with Better Beer, the brand they co-founded with The Inspired Unemployed and Torquay entrepreneur Nick Cogger.
In late April, Mighty Craft posted an ASX announcement stating the business was in preliminary discussion to buy the shares in Better Beer it didn't already own. Failure to do so, Mighty Craft noted, would likely make it difficult for the business to continue operating.
The Future Of FogHorn Brewery
While Shawn expects to start canning beer again at some point in the future, FogHorn stopped putting beer into pack at the end of last year to instead train their focus on what Shawn calls “a classic brewpub”, tightening the operation in keeping with tougher trading conditions.
Or, as he puts it in suitably nautical terms: “We’ve really tightened our ship and it’s a matter of setting a course to navigate the storm.”
In what’s a common refrain from venue owners around the country, they’re still getting plenty of bums on seats, it’s just that people are typically spending less per head.
“I’ve always believed in the quality of our beer and the quality of our offering,” Shawn says. “The support from the local community in terms of coming out to spend their hard-earned with us is still strong.
“Like everybody in the industry, we’re hoping interest rates come down and people’s discretionary spend rises, and we get back to how it was before COVID."
While he fully expects the current downturn to continue for at least another six months, he believes there's a bright future ahead for FogHorn and the independent beer sector as a whole.
“I’ve always been optimistic about the role of the craft sector in the Australian beer world – it’s not going to go away," he says. "People don’t want to go back to the way it was in the 80s and early 90s before the current wave that we’ve been part of began.
“But I think that seemingly unlimited growth phase was never sustainable; that’s well and truly gone.
“I’m a lot wiser than I was ten years ago. I came out of Murray’s with a strong reputation in the era of ‘Build it and they will come’. It was really exciting. I’ve learned a lot of lessons along the way and am quietly confident for the future.”
The Crafty Pint has contacted Mighty Craft for comment but was yet to receive a response at the time of publication.
James Smith launched The Crafty Pint in 2010, two years after moving to Australia from the UK. He was taken to Mountain Goat within weeks of landing in Melbourne, joined their indoor cricket team, and is still navigating the rabbit hole that is craft beer to this day.
The beers that turned you on to good beer:
- Watching pints of McEwan's 80 Shilling settle when visiting family in Edinburgh.
- Pints of flat Bass from the jug at the Cap & Stocking in Kegworth.
- A first Paulaner Hefeweizen when working in Munich in 1998: “This smells of bananas!”
- Castle Rock Harvest Pale – how could a 3.8 percent ABV beer be so good? (It turns out it was an early example of the three Cs – Cascade, Centennial and Columbus – in an English bitter).
- Dogfish Head 90 Minute IPA poured through hops at the Sunset Grill in Cambridge, MA, in the company of a man who turned out to be the Beer Nut (while we were both covering a double murder case at the time).
- Ordering a Mountain Goat Hightail on my first day as an Aussie resident as it was local and I’d never heard of it; “A dark Australian beer; well I never…”
- Murray’s Icon 2IPA at Beer DeLuxe Fed Square, recommended by a guy I’d not long known who's now the main man at Fixation, served by Mik Halse, now head of sales at Hawkers. How could an Australian beer smell as good as that?!?
You've got three beers to turn someone else on to good beer; what are they and why?
- Any really good, fresh and balanced West Coast style IPA. Punchy hop aromatics are the most obvious way to capture someone's attention and these IPAs, done well, present the key components in beer (if you're sticking to just water, malt, hops and yeast) in harmony yet with the volume turned up.
- Saison Dupont. Arguably a selfish choice here as I bloody love the broad saison style and dearly hope it will finally take hold in Australia one day. Given a choice, I'd probably crack one enlivened with Brettanomyces like Molly Rose Matilde for myself but, when it comes to turning on someone new, you've got to go with the classic.
- Rodenbach Caractère Rouge. Because if you don't enjoy or can't appreciate this beer, I'll never win you over. And because Filip, the fruit and wood specialist at Rodenbach that designed it, is a beautiful human.
The last beer you enjoyed:
Fixation IPA at The Incubator.
Three things that represent you:
- The Soft Bulletin by The Flaming Lips
- Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
- Golden Plains
NB All articles written by James in the first eight years of the site appear as By Crafty Pint. Today, that's used for collaborative efforts by the wider team.
