One of the success stories of Western Australia's beer scene in 2024 is a brewery that doesn’t have a venue, not even a taproom open for a few hours on the weekend. It's not selling beer to retailers, and the few 20-litre kegs that make it beyond the bounds of an industrial unit sandwiched between a kayak wholesaler, a painter, and a Christmas pageant enabler evaporate quicker than spilt beer surrounding the brewery's Buck Hunter machine.
It also has one employee: Rhys Lopez. And he plans to keep it that way.
The first thing to understand about Evil Mega Corporation is satire. The second is wit. And the third is the hard-graft nous that’s manifested, and confidently underwrites, a brewery unlike any other in Australia. Sure, Evil Mega Corp is keen for first followers, although growth isn’t an aspiration.
Rhys is a gregarious character: enthusiastic and curious. His Paddle Pop lion meets Cheshire Cat grin bellows haughty baritone laughs after every sentence, regardless of how serious the subject matter might be: bankruptcy, for example. The more time you spend with him, the more it seems that of the some of this project’s absurdity has offered Zen-like calm; what else can you do but laugh?
There’s also an obsessive work ethic that’s shaped a long career across many roles in the WA beer industry, most recently as Otherside’s head brewer, which informs Evil Mega Corp.
“It was always my dream to have my own brewery where I could do wild and wonderful things, before I was even home brewing,” Rhys explains.
Adjacent spells in hospitality, as a sales rep and brewery cellar work gave him a well-timed perspective of a growing industry and audience, before brewing full-time led into building a brand at Otherside. However, the original impetus to do things his own way lingered.
“It was really during early COVID. My wife at the time and I were talking about buying a lotto ticket and saying, ‘What would you do if you won?’ And I said, ‘I’d just get a tiny little brewery and keep making weird beers and not have to worry about it.'
“And she was like, ‘You could probably afford to do that now.’ I couldn’t, but I started anyway.”
Galvanised during the first COVID lockdown, Evil Mega Corp’s brewery kit arrived in January 2021. After encouragement from the industry, notably FOUND.’s Steve Finney, the first Evil Mega Corp subscriptions were pre-sold, partly out of necessity.
“I’d spent all of my life savings on this stainless steel, and that enabled me to get a couple of small business tax breaks because I could prove that I was an actual business, and it wasn’t just a hobby,” Rhys says.
“I thought this will all happen just around the corner, and that was 2021. The first beers came out in May 2024, just under three year later.”
The extended gestation period was a result of COVID timing or, as he puts it, took “a little bit while I got all my shit together.” The circumstances also meant there was no in-person setup support from the brewery manufacturer – as is usually commonplace. He laughs, saying: “It’s been a big learning curve.
“There’re still tubs collecting dripping glycol that I haven’t been bothered to fix because my first ever and 200th plastic welds are all in this glycol system. But there’s definitely improvement as it goes along.”
Subscription business models aren’t unique, and certainly in to the beer industry, however Evil Mega Corporation is a rarity in that this is the brewery's sole income stream, barring the occasional keg sale. Pair this with the notion that subscribers are paying the busker ahead of time for a song they might not like, and it’s soon clear that the model isn’t the purpose, it’s a vehicle for intent.
“I’ve worked in big and small teams and there’s always that thing where the production crew sometimes feel like we’re the crucial aspect of the beer but we’re the most neglected, and the glory goes to marketing and sales,” Rhys explains. “They get all the fun, while we’re sweating in 40-degree sheds.
“So, I thought the way to stop that happening is to do as much of it myself as possible. And I’ve been lucky enough that I’ve set this up so I can do it all myself.”
For Evil Mega Corp, this includes a “janky as fuck” website, AI-generated labels with oblique, often contradictory music pairings, and cinéma verité-style social media posts that straddle evangelist and casual cult leader tones.
“I don’t have to have a venue where I have to manage staff, and get liquor licensing, and deal with punters. The companies that I give the most money to, aside from suppliers, are third-party logistics operators, and they’re my ‘employee’.
“The reason is partly because I didn’t have any backers, any financial investors, because I didn’t want them, though I had a lot of people offering. But because of that I also didn’t have a war chest of money to fund stuff.
“Previously, I’ve dealt with businesses that will pay you after 90 days after five angry emails and when threatened with going to collection, but I couldn’t run this business this way.”
He describes the initial run of subscription sales, and the weight of expectation that came with it, as “pretty daunting”, adding: “I originally intended to run it side by side with Otherside. Like a lot of other breweries, Otherside is trying to pull back on ABV and focus on price points and that kind of stuff, which is totally understandable, but I was missing a creative outlet that I enjoy.
“The idea that I was hoping for was that I’d be able to do my own thing, and it would be great, but soon I realised that I still have two masters. I have the people that want the experimental, boundary-pushing stuff, and there’s people that want hazy IPAs and fucking sweet stouts.
“So, there’s a big mix of those in my subscriber base because I’ve done both of those things and people know me for different reasons, but I can’t afford to fill four tanks and them dump them down the drain because they’re not good.”
As for finally making the leap, he says: “Otherside was still my full-time focus, but I’d made commitments to people and it got to the point where I just couldn’t do both.
“There was a lot of sleepless nights, and for about 17 months I was working seven days a week: the last twelve months at Otherside as well as here. I was really at the end of my rope. I’m glad the first four beers were really well received.”
They included Perseverance, a bourbon-oaked imperial brown ale with an image of an exhausted robot in a brewery on the labels: “That was me; that was my mindset at the time.
“The first beer was a first runnings-only, triple batch into tank, maple syrup imperial porter called Frankenstein on the Moon, because I wanted it to be like, ‘Shit’s not going to make sense, deal with it’ – kinda set the expectation.
“I was selling a lot of t-shirts at the time and wondered, ‘Why isn’t there an extra medium?’, which became Extra Medium Imperial Pale ale, and Teen Pope, a Belgian dubbel with pineapple terpenes that was inspired by a dream about a 1980s-styled sitcom about radical young pontiff... I did wonder if that was too weird.”
He needn’t have, because what’s followed, such as an imperial grisette featuring forbidden black rice and hibiscus and more esoterica, has garnered a passionate following, even as beer names like Liquidity Crisis cut a little deeper into start-up hustle – for the record, that was for a hazy IIPA.
“This nearly sent me bankrupt at one point. I was like, 'Man, if my subscription date was three months earlier, I’d be a lot better off than I am now.'”
Informed by this, Mega Corp’s subscription model will change in February 2025 to a rolling monthly membership that can be turned on and off much like a gym membership.
When looking to the future, Rhys is as excitable as ever, bringing up malted lentils, rotary evaporators collecting hop aromatics, and hypersonic transduction to extract flavours, as well as the more commonplace – at least in this realm – wild ales, barrel-ageing and distillation.
All very experimental and niche but, as he points out: “It’s one of the only advantages I have as being super small.
“As everyone is trying be less experimental, and more dependable, there’s still people that want these crazy styles.”
However, when as asked about what Evil Mega Corp looks like in 2030, a refreshingly austere response features just three physical items – “a mezzanine, full solar power and an electric van” – as well as what could be considered cute philosophical ideals... if he wasn’t so serious.
“No growth. I don’t want this to grow. I don’t ever want to get to the point where I’m employing other people to do the labour and I just take the surplus value; I’m not interested in that.
“I think there’s a spot where I could be, working most of the week, have a good life and be creatively fulfilled. And get to do the ‘living stuff’ instead of the ‘surviving stuff’. And I want to be able to do that without having to be constantly pursuing these ‘growth goals’ because the commercial imperatives are contradictory to the artistic goals. So that’s my goal.
“The joke with the logo is that it’s got arrows that are continually expanding, but that’s a piss-take. It’s completely against the ethos of what I’m trying to do.
“I’d really like to start doing stuff on the East Coast and become a niche brand that’s Australia-wide, not just in my postcode, because I think this model works. And with housing prices the way they are, maybe young brewers are better off putting their money into something like this.
“I’d like to be a single water molecule in an awesome wave of nano beer bullshit.”
Pausing for what seems like a rare moment of reflection, Rhys is sanguine about the journey so far.
“I think you’re better off not knowing what you don’t know, because once you’re in the middle off it, you’ve just gotta get through. If you knew at the start how much difficulty there would be, you just wouldn’t do it.
“Based on human survival, we need to look back on the past with rose-coloured glasses. It’s probably a healthy attitude to have to look back and go, ‘Ahh, it wasn’t that bad.’”
“This is my third brewery build and, man, I’m not getting better at it,” Rhys adds, before finishing with another deep laugh that takes in both sides of the coin: a chakra of knowing, optimism and reassurance that has served him well so far.
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About the author: Guy drinks and writes about beer, goes for a run most mornings and makes his own chilli hot sauce. Find out more on Goodtimes Craft Beer via Facebook and Instagram.
For me, beer writing is about sharing experience with others, most of which is as much about what happens around the glass as what’s in it. It’s why I started a blog in 2014 after years of drinking beer and through quite literally bumping into founder James Smith at Good Beer Week began writing for The Crafty Pint. Many amazing friendships have developed from the love of water, malt, hops, yeast, adjuncts and hype!
The beer(s) or moment(s) that turned you on to good beer
Early 90s experience with Dogbolter and bottles of Delirium Tremens at the Sail and Anchor proved that there was more to beer than the cheap stuff I was drinking. A few years later, Chimay Blue once again teased before Little Creatures Pale Ale and Feral Hop Hog set the course for beer with flavour and nuance.
Favourite beer styles
Balance and drinking context are key but a short list includes Brett saisons, super fresh West Coast IPAs, well constructed BA sours, BA imperial stouts and fresh India pale lagers.
You've got three beers to turn someone else on to good beer; what are they and why?
Depending on the beer and circumstance, bitterness and acidity are the hurdles to overcome.
- Right now, Eagle Bay’s IPL is a great modern expression of technique and approachability. The hop presence arrives in soft mango and lime with enough bitterness but it’s the tight carbonation and refreshingly super dry finish that seals the deal.
- Boston Brewing’s Afterglose: Raspberry gose brings a near-perfect fruit / salt / acidity balance to a vibrantly coloured beer. It’s a real talking point which can lead to conversation about the history of beer styles, acidity on the palate or just: "Do you want another one?"
- Any fresh Czech-style pilsner. This has to be fresh in order to pick up the grassy noble hop characters and zippy bitterness on the slightly more biscuity malt body. While familiar to many, a really fresh expression is great starting point for a massive world of beer.
Tell us about a standout beer moment
A favourite beer memory involves spending an afternoon sitting under the dripping eaves of a café in the 5th Arrondissement watching Parisians run in and out of a bakery with fresh baguettes while I drank large goblets of Duvel as the winter rain soaked the tiny cobblestoned square. So much about beer is context!
