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Life's A Beach - Building A Brewery In Bali
“I'm still passionate about what I do, I still love what I do, and I still think I'm one of the luckiest people in the world.
“I get to make beer for a living and, especially taking the step coming here to Bali, I get to mentor people that might not have necessarily ever had an opportunity like this before, so I feel really lucky that I have the power to be able to do that and pay it forward.”
Given her fondness for travel, adventure and life on the ocean, perhaps it was destiny that Sam Füss would end up brewing in Bali. Certainly, more than two years after moving to the island's northwest – the "real Bali" as she puts it – she's embracing every opportunity that has come her way.
Sam was enticed to move there with her partner Dani by the founders of Beaches Brewing Co back in 2022, and in recent weeks oversaw the release of their first two beers, Pale and Cerveza.
The switch of scenery gave her the chance to help build another brewery after being involved in the early stages of a number of them in Australia, including Little Creatures in Freo, True South in Melbourne's Bayside region, and Philter in Marrickville.
She joined us from her beautiful home – ocean views on one side, volcano on the other, a pool a few metres behind her, the call to prayer carried on the wind outside – to take us inside the experience of getting Beaches off the ground, training up locals with no prior experience, educating people who've never encountered craft beer before, and working in a beer culture that, in its own way, is like the Australian scene when she moved from the bar at Little Creatures to the brewery around a quarter-century ago.
We also trace her career from those early days through building a race track inside Matilda Bay's former brewery in Dandenong to Young Henrys and the trophy-laden days at Philter prior to the big move, with a few other stops along the way.
Sam reflects on lessons learned and wisdom gained, on the characters who mentored her, and on the rewards she now finds in mentoring others. And, as anyone who knows Sam would expect, we have a good laugh along the way, with the main interview kicking off at 11:47.
Prior to that, we discuss the week's news, including the sale of Westside Ale Works to new owners who plan to keep things as Casey Wagner had them, the impending launch of Vegan a la Beer, a guide to pairing beer with plant-based food, Seasonal and Whitelakes' success in the WA Beer of the Year awards, Burleigh Brewing's 18th birthday re-brews, the epic lineup for The High Country Hop 2025, our upcoming event at Molly Rose, and GABS Hottest 100 nominations.
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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.
