8 minute read
five barrel brewing
There’s no denying there’s been a shift in the beer-drinking culture in recent years. Instead of reaching for a can of VB, we’re more often sampling and sipping an array of craft ales created by small-batch brewers. Like everything we consume, people are paying more acute attention to where and who the product has come from.
In the Illawarra, we’re so lucky to have a few regional brewers doing their thing for our drinking pleasure – and one of them is Five Barrel Brewing.
Owned by Phil O’Shea, who has lived in the Illawarra for more than 20 years, Five Barrel is a real family affair. If you head to the taproom, Phil or his dad, Mike, will pour you a beer and on Fridays and Saturdays Phil’s mum, Jane, will whip you up the likes of a polenta waffle bowl or delicious cheeseburger to accompany it. Phil’s siblings and wife are also heavily involved in the booming biz, “The focus of the brewery has always been to grow the business as a family,” Phil says.
Tucked away at the southern part of Keira Street in the industrial area, the warehouse-style brewery is chilled out and completely unassuming. You can easily spend an hour chatting to Phil or Mike about the selection they have on tap and tasting the seasonal range, before walking away with a growler or six-pack in hand and a deeper appreciation for talented local makers like Phil and his family.
For Phil, who is not a big drinker himself, the chemistry of the perfect brew is the driving force. Even the name Five Barrel has scientific meaning. “Barrel is measure of fluid. And in the beer brewing world a barrel is 120L,” Phil explains. “We brew 600L batches… which is five barrels.”
We sat down with Phil to talk all things beer (and, of course, have a couple of taste tests, too).
When did your brewing career begin?
My first journey with brewing was with a mate in high school in his shed, making home brew that we thought was amazing, but on reflection… we knew nothing! It was just creating alcohol for the sake of creating alcohol. More recently, it was after I left my job in the corporate world. I loved the culture around beer in Europe and America and I wanted to bring a little of that to Wollongong. I saw the scene was starting to develop in Wollongong about five years ago. That’s when I started brewing with the view to start a brewery. I didn’t treat it as a hobby from the start; it was home brewing with purpose. It was a different perspective to my first foray into brewing, because I focussed on the science behind it. It’s been a huge learning curve, but I found my feet pretty quickly, and it only took a couple of brews to be genuinely happy with the beers I was creating. But then it took a few years of remaking the recipes over and over to feel like I could replicate what I was doing on a small scale to a commercial scale. All my research was showing me that having a killer recipe isn’t the only thing you need, you need to be savvy in business as well. Beer’s the fun part, but the reality is it’s a highly regulated environment and the amount of paperwork required is incredible. It’s a big deal and we treated it seriously from day one.
Where were you brewing before you opened the taproom?
I was brewing with Dad at my parents’ place. Mum and Dad’s cellar quickly developed from a wine cellar into a beer cellar. Every Saturday we just brewed week in, week out. Quite often it was the same recipes over and over and we just gave beer away – we couldn’t drink it all. In this business, you have to be really mindful of how far you go with the drinking. We get samples dropped off all the time, we have other breweries come to us and we go to visit others too, so it’s easy to get carried away. It’s such an amazing industry to be part of.
When did the Five Barrel name take off?
The brand really developed when we signed the lease to the brewery. That was the commitment… the line in the sand where we had to start establishing something. We took it very slowly to begin with. Our focus has never been to be a massive brewery, we are regional brewers – and it was, and continues to be, our ethos to grow ethically and responsibly to create a sustainable business, financially and environmentally.
Tell us about the sustainable practices you have in place...
We source Australian ingredients wherever we can; the quality of the ingredients we have here in Australia is terrific so why go anywhere else? There’s a lot of bi-product that comes from brewing, including chemical, so it’s about managing our waste and water usage. And then giving the waste that can be reused as feed to local farmers to help them out. We’ve been doing that since we opened. We started out dealing with Oak Flats High School. They have an agriculture plot, and the feed we contributed relieved their budget, which meant they were able to expand their agriculture program and use that money to repair fences and add more animals. But, unfortunately, we outgrew them – we had more feed than they could use. Now we deal with a farmer in Gerringong. We’re just shy of about a ton a week of feed that we supply him with.
When you first opened in 2016, how many beers were you making?
We launched with four beers. Our commitment was to have a stable four that are available year-round and then have a rotating selection of seasonal options. Our core four has evolved since we first opened. Being a small business means you have to adapt to what people want. And because we are a local brewery, we get that feedback really quickly from simply talking to our customers. Our stable four now are the golden ale, pale ale, milk stout, and hoppy amber. Originally there was an ESB (extra special bitter), and the milk stout wasn’t included. But when we brewed the stout it was hugely popular – it was a winner from day one. We’ve done over 80 different beers in the last three years.
Talk us through the brewing process?
A brew day from start to finish is only about five hours, with about a three-hour clean-up. Cleaning is a huge part of brewing – we spend about 30 hours a week cleaning. But that’s just a fraction of the process – the real magic happens in the fermenters. On a brew day we take malted barley, wheat, oats, depending on the recipe. We mill it up, mix it in with water – there’s an enzyme that exists on the grain that converts the starches to sugars. We then wash the grain to get as much sugar out as possible, boil it up, add hops and transfer it to the fermenter where it sits for two to three weeks depending on the beer. It’s a simple process but really hard to replicate, especially on our scale because the ingredients change batch to batch.
We think you’re doing a good job! I think we’re on the right track. I wouldn’t say that we’re 100 per cent there yet. I still consider ourselves a start-up brewery, three years in we’ve still got a lot to learn, but as with everything that we’ve done, it’s all with the idea to grow sustainably and as a family.
What’s the difference between a small and large brewery? Attitude and who drives the creativity in the product. With larger breweries they are more cost-driven which can hamper creativity. They also can’t physically make some of the beers that we’re brewing, because the ingredients don’t exist in the huge quantities that they’d require.
There’s been an explosion of craft beer enthusiasts in recent times… There’s been a huge shift in people’s drinking habits. We find it’s quality over quantity these days. We have families come in on Saturdays to try a few beers, grab a six-pack and go home. They’re not here to drink and drink and drink. We’re not a party brewery. We think that adults can be adults. I’m just so glad that so many people in the area are enjoying the experience of coming in and trying beers, but not drinking to excess. That’s something we actively dissuade here. The culture around beer these days leans towards socially responsible breweries. It’s about the experience.
You now stock lots of local restaurants, bottle shops and pubs… We do – 95 per cent of what we do is in the Illawarra. Recently we started stocking in BWS stores around the area. People will be able to see us up in the Highlands or down in Vincentia, so that’s a huge thing for us! BWS approached us a year ago and we knocked them back initially, because I didn’t think we were quite ready yet. As a small business, you have to learn to say no sometimes. As much as you want to grow, grow, grow, if you don’t have the process behind you to fall back on then things will quickly get out of hand. We’re a very process-driven brewery, which has enabled us to transition to a larger scale more smoothly.
Did restaurants approach you about selling your beer? A lot of what’s happened has been about being in the right place at the right time. One morning I had my Five Barrel shirt on and I was at a coffee shop – someone tapped me on the shoulder and said, “Do you work there? I manage Wollongong Golf Club and how cool would it be to have a local beer on tap”. And that’s how that happened. We rely on word of mouth. The very first place that put us on tap was Dicey Riley’s, but it wasn’t until The Little Prince took us that it all snowballed. It was amazing for us because they got rid of Hahn Superdry and put our Golden Ale on tap and they didn’t see a drop in sales!
What does your day-to-day look like? We brew three to four times a week, generally across two days. It started off as me and my dad, but Dad is packaging three days a week now. We still hand bottle and do all our own deliveries, which is time-consuming. And my brother – who works full-time, but I borrow when I can – gives me a hand brewing. If I’m not brewing, I’m cleaning, I’m packaging, I’m delivering. And if I’m not doing any of that, I’m working the tap room. You never have a spare hour during the day, there’s always something to do. I’m really lucky my wife, Maree, is a massive supporter. We had a son at the beginning of the year, and I know she feels like a single mum sometimes. Small business is hard work, and I’ve been able to rely on Maree, and the rest of my family – honestly, everyone is involved in making Five Barrel what it is.
How do you come up with the flavours – do you have a favourite? No favourites, I like whatever’s fresh. That’s the way I encourage patrons to try beer too. Fresh is always best! Inspiration comes from breakfast through to sunset, I’m always thinking of what’s next. Plus, we largely follow American beer trends in Australia so I’m always keeping an eye on that.
What’s the ultimate goal for Five Barrel? Our short-term plans are to keep developing that craft beer culture in Wollongong. It isn’t just about us, it’s about what local means. We need to be involved in that, with other breweries, and other makers in the area. It’s bigger than just us. We can be kicking goals as a brewery but it’s so important for us to see cultural change in the Illawarra too. Our idea of growth and success is people coming to us to say they enjoyed a beer at a restaurant on Wollongong Harbour and wanted to try more. It may be unconventional, but success for us isn’t measured on litres of beer brewed and sold, it’s about being established in the community and contributing to it. There’s so much on offer in the Illawarra, but we need to have a ‘use it or lose it’ mentality. If people don’t buy local, local doesn’t exist.
Are you happy you made the career change? In my corporate life, I was surrounded by people who had been in the same position for 30 years and they were miserable; everything seemed like a hassle to them. That’s what I love about my job, it’s such a positive industry, and the people involved are so friendly and happy to share ideas. I still wake up every morning (absolutely tired!) but excited and loving what I’m doing.
Images Creative Events Photography creativeeventsphotography.com.au
