The longest running independent brewery in Queensland is changing hands – from parents to daughter.
After a long stint at the helm, Sunshine Coast Brewery owners Greg and Brigid Curran are officially handing over the ownership and management reins to their youngest daughter, Bernadette, who’s been brewing and helping the business grow since 2020.
“It’s been a back-of-our-minds conversation for a while,” Bernadette told The Crafty Pint. “I think it’s been at least a year we’ve been talking about it.”
Sunshine Coast Brewery has been around since 1998, tucked away in an industrial estate in Kunda Park. When the Currans bought it in 2006, they saw it as their eventual retirement plan. While there wasn’t necessarily an expectation their daughters would take over the brewery, it became part of the fabric of their family life.
“A really cool place to have in the family. All of us kids had our 16th, 18th, 21st birthdays here.”
When the girls grew up and moved out of home, with two of them leaving the Sunshine Coast, they still retained a connection to the brewery.
“Whenever you went home and visited Mum and Dad, there’d always be beer in the fridge,” Bernadette recalls.
“Even recently, when I was coming up with ideas for new events, it was a group chat with the sisters… They know it better than anyone else.”
Still, Bernadette’s plan was never to run the family business. She was still in high school when her parents bought the brewery. While she’d begrudgingly help on the packaging line during school holidays, she later moved to Brisbane to study before starting work as an exercise physiologist.
But, in 2020, COVID lockdowns caused her work in Brisbane to dry up. At the same time, the brewer at Sunshine Coast Brewery moved away, leaving the business short-staffed. Bernadette found herself heading back to the coast to help out at the brewery part-time.
“I think at some stage or another we’ve all done variable levels of involvement,” she says.
While neither of Bernadette’s sisters officially work in the business, they’ve both contributed in bits and pieces over the years: Libby with copywriting, Jacqueline with marketing. So Bernadette thought she’d do a bit while she had some time on her hands.
“I thought, ‘I’ll come and help out a day a week.’ And I really enjoyed it. And I haven’t really left since.”
Without having so much as having home-brewed before, she stepped in and learned the ropes of the brewery alongside her father Greg.
“I sort of learnt everything in reverse!” she says. “The first batch of beer I did was on our thousand litre kit.”
Soon after that, Bernadette got a homebrew kit and began her own program of learning. But, while she came on as a brewer, it didn’t take long for Bernadette to take an interest in the business side of the brewery too. Even her beer education quickly evolved into market research as she went to local bottleshops to explore beer styles with which she was less familiar.
“Seeing what was out there,” she says, “and seeing what consumers were buying as well.”
She started spending more and more time on brewery work: from one day a week at the brewery to two days, experimenting with new recipes on the weekend, and working on the computer in the evenings. It became evident to everyone that Bernadette wasn’t just there to make beer. Her role was evolving, and she was constantly asking the question: “What else can we be doing to grow the business?”
Given this family-owned business has kept its head above water for more than a quarter of a century – spending years as the sole brewery in a region that now has enough to call itself the country's craft beer capital – Sunshine Coast Brewery is a success story. But that doesn’t mean it’s been easy.
In many ways the brewery opened ahead of its time, offering a range of styles when the vast majority of beers drinkers only wanted commercial lager. Even the ten-tap venue the Currans opened in Maroochydore in 2011 – on the same street where Sneaky Baron later found success – struggled and closed down after a couple of years.
Without other breweries to look to or other brewers to network with – and with limited resources for looking outwards anyway – the team settled into its own ways of doing things. They put out award-winning beer made by the likes of Ian Watson (Happy Valley head brewer and co-founder of La Petit Rocher) and Balter co-founder and head brewer Scott Hargrave, they worked hard to educate customers, and they developed a good reputation in the community.
Over time, the craft beer scene picked up speed, caught up, and kept charging ahead… and by this point, the Currans found it hard to keep up. The brewery had developed a conservative approach to new beers, while the market had come to expect new and exciting things all the time.
“Things got a bit stagnant,” Bernadette says. “And being such a small team, it was just going though the works and doing the same thing, especially when the industry has changed so much. The same thing wasn’t cutting the mustard.”
Thankfully, the brewery’s solid local following kept them afloat. But, working on an old and inefficient brewhouse, operating a tiny taproom off the beaten track and a slow bottling line, and with a large core range that leaned towards traditional styles, the business wasn’t really set up for growth in a rapidly changing industry. It needed more than a fresh lick of paint, and revamping a business requires a lot of energy.
And it was at this time Bernadette that brought new blood and a fresh perspective.
“Especially from a consumer point of view – I enjoyed going out and trying different things from my locals,” she says. “As a new person coming [into the business], I was eager to try and do new and different things.”
Change can, however, bring friction; as Bernadtte and her dad worked side by side in the brewery, still deciding whether they would hire a new brewer or not, they found themselves butting heads at times. His way of operating was to follow the processes and procedures and recipes the brewery had been working with for years. Bernadette would spend her evenings reading articles on different beer styles and varieties of hops and yeast, then come to work keen to try new, different things rather than work off a checklist.
“Dad and I got to the point where we couldn’t do that much of the brewing together any more,” she says with a laugh.
The dynamic shifted when they brought Peter Ross on board as a brewer in 2022. Peter and Bernadette started sharing the brewing, and while they have different taste in beers – Peter loves German styles while Bernadette prefers modern, new world flavours – they shared an exploratory approach to beer.
“The thing we have in common is that we’re keen to try different things,” Bernadette says. "And seeing what is out there; seeing a weird and wacky beer and going along to try it, even if its not your cup of tea.”
As Greg and Brigid saw how Bernadette and Peter had their finger on the pulse of the beer scene – and were closer to being the brewery’s target audience than they themselves were – they began to defer to the two brewers with regards to beers and brand identity.
Bernadette says: “They started throwing to me and Peter a bit more, ‘What are people after? You guys can lead that conversation.’”
From here, slowly, Sunshine Coast Brewery began to change direction.
Bernadette and Peter shrank the brewery’s long-running core range, and started turning over a few of the taps to more limited beers.
“It can be something we’ve literally done 19 litres of on one of our small homebrew kits, just to see how it goes and get customer feedback. If it's a hit – awesome. Scale it up from there.”
The venue itself received more attention as well: the tap list became more user friendly, they got a food offering up and running again, and they spruced up the beer garden with the help of some loyal regulars.
"We started trying to make the place a bit more like the venues we wanted to go to on the weekend.”
The brewery made the shift from bottles to cans, finally retiring their old bottle filler. (“Have you seen it?” Bernadette asks. “It looks like a spaceship. And I think we worked out it’s older than Mum and Dad. And Dad turned 70 earlier this year.”)
And while they haven’t yet upgraded their main brewhouse, they’ve recently commissioned a new 150L pilot kit so they can make limited releases that are slightly less limited than a single 19L keg.
Greg and Brigid watched Bernadette inplement more changes at the brewery, and saw the improvements she was making to the business. While she was taking on more responsibility in an unofficial capacity, eventually they realised this was their chance to step back and let Bernadette steer the ship – officially.
“As of the 1st of July, I’ve officially taken over the reins from my parents,” she says. “They’ve essentially eased into retirement, and I’m doing a fun combination of the stuff I was doing anyways but then also that next step forward.”
While this means a further step up in workload for Bernadette, she finds it somehow easier now that she has the final say in managing the team and in taking any given idea through planning to execution.
“It's funny – ever since taking over the reins from Mum and Dad, I’ve got so much more work on my plate, and responsibility, but it’s less stressful.
“We’ll see if I still feel that way next year!”
Looking to next year and beyond, Bernadette has plenty of ideas in the works.
She keen to run more events at the brewery, taking advantage of how quiet the industrial estate is on weekends: “We’ve got minimal noise restrictions and all the parking in the world available – the polar opposite to every other brewery on the coast!”
As soon as possible, she plans to upgrade the brewhouse from its old woodclad mash tun and copper kettle to a kit that can handle more contemporary styles.
But one thing she has no intention of changing is the heart and soul of Sunshine Coast Brewery: its connection to the community, from the local businesses they partner with to the regulars who think of the brewery as a second home.
“Sometimes on the days we’re brewing, one of the guys drives past and he’s had a shit day and he wants to have a chat. So you turn the tap on and you have a drink and have a chat with him. It’s the place people feel comfortable.”
As part of this, Bernadette’s particularly passionate about ensuring the brewery is always a safe and welcoming environment for women, since she's had enough experiences of being ignored or mansplained by people in the industry.
“It’s happening less and less, but it still happens. I’m hyper aware of that from a customer side of things.”
Thankfully, she says Sunshine Coast Brewery has long been a place where women feel comfortable.
“Had an old lady who walked in the other day and ordered a pint of porter, the strongest flavoured beer we had on tap,” she says. “Awesome – no worries. Being a place someone can do that, instead of saying, ‘Are you sure? Here, have a ginger beer instead.’”
The Aussie craft beer industry is young enough that there hasn’t been much in the way of intergenerational breweries. So, especially at a time when many breweries and venues are barely hanging on, there’s something special about seeing this one not just survive, but adapt and evolve even as it remains a Curran affair.
“It’s been in our family 17 years now. Time to do something new,” Bernadette says.
“One of my cousins is coming on board to get some bar work. It’s really that next generation working together.”
Mick Wüst is the author of the book Beer Drinker's Toolkit, a fun and approachable guide to beer. He's also a freelance copywriter for the beer industry. You can find him on Instagram as Schoonerversity.
The beer(s) or moment(s) that turned you on to good beer:
I'm sure I'd had good beers before this, but the first barrel-aged imperial stout I ever tried made me feel like Popeye with spinach.
You've got three beers to turn someone else on to good beer; what are they and why?
- Balter XPA
- Wayward Raspberry Berliner Weisse
- Boatrocker Ramjet
The last beer you enjoyed:
A IIPA from Woopi Brewing that tasted like fruit salad and resin.
Three things that represent you:
- Book - World War Z (seriously, give it a go - it's better than it sounds)
- Travel - Greece
- Food - all the bread and hot chips
