When they were formulating the idea that was to become Big Shed Brewing Concern, home brewing mates Craig Basford and Jason Harris always hoped to be able to give fellow home brewers a leg up. Ten months after getting a communal brewery in their hometown of Adelaide up and running, they've done such a good job they are in danger of putting themselves out of business.
The first "house guest" to start renting tank space and brewery time, Mismatch Brewing, is going great guns, Birbeck's has been knocking out batches there, a new start up with a desire to create "funky Belgian style brews" called Croydon Brewing has locked in space and a few cafes are sniffing around to create their own beers.
"All four tanks are booked up until January," says Craig. "We had blocked ourselves out of making more product!
"At the start, we had a lot of people talking about brewing with us but no one coming through then suddenly they all came in at once so we couldn't brew for ourselves."
Given the second batch of their FrankenBROWN, a hoppy brown ale, has just collected a medal at the inaugural Craft Beer Awards and they opened a brewery bar last month pouring their own beers alongside those of their friends, they were in danger of turning into happy victims of their own success.
"It's ridiculous," says Craig. "When you're in it and it's happening around you, you don't necessarily notice [your progress]. Then people come in who've not been in for a while and say how well we're going for only 10 months and you realise we're further along than we imagined."
When The Crafty Pint visited in January, they were still putting pieces in place, Mismatch was only doing its second brew there and the first ever keg of FrankenBROWN had just been tapped at The Wheaty. Today, as well as a fully booked production schedule (with other potential customers turned away), they've installed a brewery bar featuring parts of the old Adelaide Oval that's open Fridays and Saturdays, will soon add a commercial kitchen and are installing two more tanks – half the size of the current ones – to allow them to keep brewing Big Shed beers.
"The premise is that we'll be able to use the new tanks to brew our F-Yeah APA and FrankenBrown and then play around with some different brews on the smaller capacity [such as] a Szechuan peppercorn ale that we brewed on our 50 litre kit that people loved."
A new head brewer to oversee all production will soon be in place, freeing up more time for Craig and Jason to hit the road and bars to sell their beers, although brewing customers are still encouraged to get involved on brew day.
"We love to get people in so they understand what's going on with their beer," says Craig. "We want to work with genuine people who want to make decent beer.
"It's interesting for us too as we're not 30 year brewing veterans – we're still learning ourselves."
To date, they've used experts like brewing consultant Stephen Nelsen to assess customers' recipes before scaling them up to 2,000.
"We've had to learn fast and over time we're coming out with better batches of our own beers and the batches we make with them. It helps people to not get some gnarly veteran telling them, 'This is how you do it.' but instead [have someone] working with them."
The brewery bar opened at the end of last month. The aim is to mix their own beers with others brewed on site across the six main taps, with one experimental tap pouring beers such as the Szechuan peppercorn ale so they can get direct feedback. Anyone calling in on a Friday is likely to be able to watch brewers at work as the bar sits in front of the brewery – "live performance art!" says Craig – and will soon be able to plant their glasses on top of a bit of local history.
"We originally planned to use recycled jetty timbers for the bar as they looked awesome and had loads of character but we just couldn't work with them as they were full of nails and bits of asphalt," says Craig.
"The guy at the timber yard showed us bits of the old Adelaide Oval and we said, 'That's even better' so it's now being hand-planed by our friends at Grand Kitchens.
"It was completely serendipitous. We missed out on one opportunity but a better one came along."
It's a theme that's run through the early days of Big Shed, it seems, with the beer world welcoming the pair with open arms.
"We were in Sydney for Craft Beer Week and met shitloads of awesome people. Since we started out we've found loads of local businesses keen to help out too," says Craig.
"Making beer helps."
