Torquay is known the world over for its beaches and both locals and visitors know that if you're seeking a beer post-surf there's no shortage of good stuff around.
Several breweries call the Surf Coast region home but it was only a decade ago that Torquay welcomed its first. That was when Renn and Jess Blackman opened the doors to their brewpub in the heart of the town, driving home their family-first approach by naming beers after family members.
Looking back ahead of their tenth birthday celebrations, Jess says they always knew hospitality was key to their plans; both recognised they were unlikely to convince people to drink IPAs without a place in which to do the converting.
“Beer drinking is so different now than it was ten years ago,” she says. “Particularly in a coastal town like Torquay; there weren’t a lot of IPAs getting around.
“We knew we needed to win everyone over with hospitality to get them on board.”
Even if local palates have changed over the brewery's lifetime, hospitality remains central to the Blackman's story. Today, alongside their Torquay brewpub, they also operate the Ocean Grove Burger Bar and a substantial production brewery and venue in Grovedale, in Geelong's south – a city where they also ran a CBD bar for some years.
“It’s so important for our size, you can do so much in your own space,” Jess says. “You get to tell people your story yourself.”
As well as producing award-winning beers – they won Champion Small Australian Brewery at the 2019 Australian International Beer Awards – they've proven themselves nimble and eager to push into new spaces, whether that's venues, their lineup of seltzers, or hosting their first beer festival next month.
“If there’s opportunities out there, we just get excited,” Jess says. “Renn and I get excited about the prospect of doing new and different things. So, if something seems like a good idea, we’ll go for it and worry about it later."
The festival, the Point Break Brewery Invitational, is another first Blackman's are bringing to Torquay. The event will see nine breweries from across Australia and overseas pour beers throughout the day as classic movies play around the venue.
Hosting mates from across the beer world in their hometown has long been a goal and, despite the current climate for beer, hospitality, events and pretty much everything else being about as temperamental as it gets, they felt, well, why not?
“It’s the talk of the team at the moment, we’re so excited,” she says. “We’ve talked about it for years and, for us, we knew we were in a place this year where we could do it.”
They're celebrating their tenth birthday this weekend with a party that's a little more pared-back than a festival but which will allow them do something they don't do often enough as brewery owners: enjoy beers with their friends and family.
“I’m just excited for pints at the brewery,” Jess says. “We don’t often get there for a full day, so it’s not often we get to just have pints at the brewery.
“There will be friends, heaps of customers will come, and some people who work for us who don’t anymore, so it’ll be a great catch up.”
Ahead of the big day, Jess and Renn joined us to share insights in one of our favourite series, Ten Lessons From Ten Years.
Jess and Renn Blackman
1. It’s the people that count
You actually can work with your friends and you can make friends with the people you work with. The wins are more fun when you share them, and the challenges are more bearable when you have an amazing crew around you.
Really talk to your customers and be part of the community. They are all who matter the most: the people. Blackman’s Brewery isn’t just Renn and Jess.
There’s the epic team – more on them later – there’s the Blackman’s beer club members, there’s the Friday night crew who have the beers, and the regular family Sunday Sessions. There’s the pubs, footy clubs and the local bottleshops who sell our beer.
It’s everyone around us.
2. Have the most fun you can, whenever possible
Grab onto the good opportunities, go to the fun events, make the exciting beers, go on the beer trips, eat the food. The hard stuff is really hard, so make sure you enjoy any of the fun stuff you can along the way.
It can all get overwhelming and stressful sometimes, but at the end of the day, we are making something pretty fun that people love to drink. If you can smile and have fun then the people around you will hopefully do the same.
3. It’s not just beer, quality hospo is key
For a beer brand of our size, having your own hospitality venues is so important, and a big part of why we are still here ten years on.
In our first two years, hospitality was the largest contributing factor to the growth of our beer brand and helped us get to our goal of packaging our beers. Having a place where people can come, enjoy a beer, and experience our brand first-hand is invaluable.
When we first started out, tasting paddles and share plates were enough to keep most people happy but hospitality has grown and changed. These days in venues our margaritas need to be as good as our beers and we accept that – and make cracking ones!
4. Keep moving
Forwards, backwards, sideways and back around. As much as we’d love to, we simply can’t be stagnant. We have had to adapt quickly and do things we didn’t think we would, could or should do over the past ten years, particularly in the last four years which was right when we thought things surely would start to get easier.
Both hospitality and the beer industry have had a rough few years and continue to do so. We decided very early on to be flexible and do everything we can to move with this insane rollercoaster we are on.
This is including and not limited to becoming pizza delivery drivers – thanks, COVID – creating a seltzer brand – and it’s delicious, and hosting Taylor Swift Sunday Sessions – honestly, SO. MUCH. FUN!
5. Make beer for everyone, and make it good
We have strived to make quality beer from the very beginning. We make our beers with the best quality ingredients we can get our hands on, we give beers the right amount of time in tank, and we are checking in on them all the time.
We have an ethos at Blackman’s to always make beers that we’d happily have two pints of. But we also know that our customers' tastes vary, and so we learnt very quickly to listen to them.
Our core range is made up of beers that cover a huge range of styles – we want to make good beer for everyone. A 440ml stout series is awesome but more of our customers are looking for a beer they can drink day in and out without thinking too much about it.
6. Team Blackman’s
Blackman’s Brewery wouldn’t exist without our amazing team. And when we say amazing, we mean the best in the business. We work with an awesome, highly skilled team that has made Blackman’s Brewery what it is today.
Without good people, there would be no good beer!
7. Local matters and community is key
When we first started out, we wanted to be a successful craft beer brand Australia-wide.
For us, ingraining ourselves in both the beer community and our local community has taught us a lot over ten years – and that our original ideas of taking over the world weren’t quite our best.
The beer industry is full of amazing, wonderful people who we love drinking beer with, but who we can also connect with on a level that other people can’t quite understand. We can call up mates from our industry and ask brewing questions, business questions, and hospitality questions and that is invaluable.
Our local community are our heroes. They have supported us for ten years and got us through the devastation of COVID. We owe our community everything.
8. Don’t be too busy to enjoy it. Go on holidays
Enjoy the work, enjoy the beer. It took us at least two or three years to understand this. Early on, we really questioned what we had gotten ourselves into; the responsibility of employing people was overwhelming, being available to everyone 24/7 was taxing, and the work just never ended.
Having a family 100 percent helped us with this one. Once we learnt how important it was to surround ourselves with an awesome team, that’s when we started to enjoy what we’d built and enjoy the ride.
Having a holiday means you can step back – not all the way like other people can, but enough to be somewhere else – and we are much better employers, friends, work colleagues and parents now that we take more holidays.
9. Remember why you do it
We love sharing a beer. We’re in the business of beer, not heart surgery and while it can be tough and brutal, it’s an absolute privilege to work in this industry. If it feels too hard, too much, too stressful then stop and have a beer. Remember why we do it.
Beer is fun and it’s the best to share a beer with friends, family, workmates and new people.
10. There’s no secrets. It’s just really hard! But we love it
Unless we just haven’t been told something yet. Please call us if you know something we don’t.
You can read other entries in the Ten Lessons From Ten Years series here.
Will Ziebell is a history graduate who knows more about The Wire than he does about beer. He was awarded the AIBA Best Media trophy for 2018; HBO have told him to please send his fan mail elsewhere. He can be found on Instagram, Twitter and TikTok.
The beer(s) or moment(s) that turned you on to good beer:
Spending time living in the UK (and backpacking across Europe) when I was 21 certainly gave me a better understanding of the beer and different styles of the world. But I'd say it was a holiday to the High Country a little while later when lunch and a tasting paddle at Bridge Road Brewers created an obsession with Australian breweries and locally made beer.
You've got three beers to turn someone else on to good beer; what are they and why?
-
Boatrocker's Miss Pinky: It's a raspberry-packed Berliner Weisse that neither looks or tastes the way many people conceive of beer.
-
Bad Shepherd Hazelnut Brown: A luscious mix of chocolate and hazelnut that can appeal to the sweet tooth within us all.
-
Stone & Wood Pacific Ale: As the father of my oldest friend once said to me: "It's the perfect refreshing pint that smells like they've loaded it with the God's herb."
The last beer you enjoyed:
Garage Project's DFA while sitting at the bar at Miss Moses as the sounds of The Rolling Stone drifting in the background.
Three things that represent you:
- Bruce Springsteen
- Ken Burns
- The State Library of Victoria
