Interview
Against the grain YOUNG HENRYS CO-FOUNDERS RICHARD ADAMSON AND OSCAR MCMAHON MAY HAVE THOUGHT THEY WERE GOING IT ALONE WHEN THEY WENT AGAINST THE GRAIN IN 2012 AND BEGAN BREWING MORE ADVENTUROUS BEERS, BUT THEY HAVE BEEN ANYTHING BUT. THEIR INDEPENDENT CRAFT BEERS HAVE ATTRACTED A STRONG FOLLOWING OVER THE PAST EIGHT YEARS, FROM THOSE WHO WANTED TO LEARN HOW TO MAKE BEER AND COULD AT YOUNG HENRYS EARLY ON, TO OTHERS WHO SIMPLY WANTED EASY-DRINKING CRAFT BEERS. DRINKS TRADE’S ASHLEY PINI CAUGHT UP WITH RICHARD AND OSCAR TO TALK ABOUT HOW THEY’VE CARVED OUT A UNIQUE PATH TO CONSUMERS AND PLACE WITHIN THE INDUSTRY. How did you meet? Richard and Oscar: At the pub. Richard: I was on my way out of a project and looking for a brewery to experiment in that had a face-to-face presence with consumers (Richard’s background was in brewing and Oscar’s was in hospitality). Was Newtown your first choice for where the brewery would be located? Richard: The Inner West but not Newtown to begin with.
42 drinks trade
Oscar: We were looking everywhere, from St Peters to Paddington for a space big enough and where people could get to on foot. What type of experience were you hoping to provide at the brewery? Richard: We were looking at a restaurant/bar with a brewery attached but had to move into a wholesale model because of some issues with the council. Oscar: So we started wholesaling without little know-how.
How many staff did you have back then and how many do you have now? Oscar: There were about three or four of us working here at the start. Luckily, we were about the only ones on this side of town you could get a brewing job with. So in the first two years, we were propped up by people who wanted to learn about brewing and who would trade their time to learn because we didn’t have any paid jobs to offer. Usually now we have 60 full-time and usually 20 casual staff, but due to COVID-19 we’ve got 60 staff on Jobkeeper.
