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When I recently read Evin Craney’s (IBA Board Chair) love letter to indie beer, it struck me that I was a bit different. I am coming up to three and a half years in the independent beer industry – and I am (just) north of 50 years old.

My letter is therefore coming from another place.

I’m not entirely alone in coming to indie beer late I suspect, as most of us have had multiple careers. I have not grown up (in an adult sense) in beer. My background is the public service – mostly at state government level, but also federal and local.

I came to drinking beer late as well. I simply didn’t like it when I was a young bloke, and the choice of beer was Carlton or VB – neither for me thanks. It was James Squire’s Amber Ale that got me in, sometime in the early 2000s or thereabouts. Then it was discovering IPAs. And off I hopped, pun predictably intended.

Then I came to my current role, as a GM in a very small regional brewery, by accident. I was not even looking for a new job. When the owners of the brewery I am at now put a call out on social media looking for some staff, including a General Manager, my first thought was “I reckon I would know someone who could do that.” And I messaged the owners, who I knew, and asked for a bit more info about the role.

It then occurred that maybe this is the moment for me to leave the reasonably well-paid government world and head into the uncertain, hectic nature of small business. I cannot remember if I’d had a few IPAs at the time (probably), but it must have made sense at some point because I did it (well, Shedshaker owners Doug and Jacqueline gave me the chance and promised it would be fun… which it mostly has been).

A friend of my sister’s told me before I started that I would love the role, that the sector is super friendly and indie breweries look out for one another. And this it seems, is mostly true. I have enjoyed getting to know the folks owning/running the breweries in Central Victoria and have enjoyed their beers (hello Hepburn Springs Brewing!) as well as putting together a little brewers group so we can all hang out when we can (and that turned into a Regional Cluster). When we lost 90% of our stock in the fire in January that trashed Harcourt and the Coolstore where our beer was, we had offers of help in the form of free kegs from friendly breweries we know well (Hepburn Springs, Bells Beach) and some Melbourne stalwarts who we had never really spoken to before (Two Bays, Dainton and Moon Dog). It warmed the heart, really. We had spare taps in our venue while we were rebrewing all our lines, so their donated kegs were a god-send and also raised money for the Harcourt rebuild with proceeds of those beers being donations. In all, we helped raise around $100,000 while we rebuilt ourselves.

That’s the best part about being a small indie brewery in a community like ours – we are involved in so much. Shedshaker turns 10 this month and we have fundraised for, sponsored, donated to, helped organise and lent expertise/bodies/trestles/marquees/chairs/jockey boxes to so many local groups, clubs, events and more. I spent around 20 years in Government, nearly all in roles working with the community and I can confidently say I have directly helped more people and groups in this role than I did in my past career. It’s the ethos of our brewery – community, collaboration, creativity – and one that would sound familiar to many others.  And we do it sometimes when it really isn’t sensible from a business perspective but then again it is – we stay true to our values and put community first because that is who we are and what we are known for.

Like all industries though, there are bugbears. Mine are specific. For all the talk of comradery and mateship… when large indie breweries dump cheap kegs of barely beer (usually some watery draught rubbish) into the regions, knocking us or another small player off a tap (and not CUB), you wonder if they give that any thought to the damage they do. When regional music festivals take government funding then bring in breweries from the city and ignore local producers, you wonder how this is fair. We pay taxes and rates for a large indie (or a former indie whose marketing budget has many zeroes and is counted in yen) to come and flog their wares while we are locked out? Where is the collaboration? Mateship? Business plans, marketing spend and KPIs win out over this romanticised idea of indie breweries all being besties.

But that is life. We are all in business after all. Just as long as we don’t pretend it is not happening, don’t forget to take the rose-tinted glasses off once in a while and don’t forget that it sucks when smaller producers are clobbered by bigger indies. We are stronger together, taking on CUB/Lion Nathan and pushing back on them, on offering better beer (isn’t that the point of independent breweries?) than machine-made blergh, and not playing first-to-the-bottom with cheap crap just to get on a tap somewhere.

It means for us, who cannot compete much on price, cannot afford to give away free umbrellas and t-shirts, won’t sell kegs at a loss just to get on a tap – we need to form strong relationships as well as have great tasting beer at a price that works for the customer and us. And that is where small players have an advantage – customers often talk to the owners or brewers or GM like me. We get to know our customers and know about their business (and them us) as we share, and overshare, info on how we are travelling, how the kids are, how tricky finding staff can be in the country, how that medical condition is going… It’s not just about making sales and meetings targets. It is meaningful friendships that underpin what we try to do.

There is bugger all money for most of us in brewing – let’s face facts. Our venue is our biggest customer, like others our size. That keeps us paying the bills and gets us through tough times, when interest rates go up, petrol goes up and the never-ending competition for one tap out of eight in some pub somewhere… but we do it because we love it, we love making beer, we love the people it connects us with and the community that we support to the hilt (and supports us back). 

Maybe I’m naïve (I have been called worse) but many years in the public sector means I simply don’t have a ruthless commercial mindset, where domination and expansion seem to be the point of existing. I prefer genuine collaboration over goofy reels on IG with “besties.” I would prefer to sell two cases a month ongoing to a like-minded business than a pallet of kegs once off to some random pub at a discount and never hear from them again. I would rather grow slowly, organically and sustainably than put out our hands for crowdfunding, get-rich-quick schemes or not paying the ATO. I prefer to make beer with taste, that isn’t boring or simply a clone of some other beer (well, except if we do end up making a draught beer – it will be the most boring beer of all time and will probably sell well, dammit, but we will only make it to knock CUB off some taps where pubs don’t have contracts and are paying a fortune for a keg. Because this is the good fight – maybe we call the beer Sayonara Draught…). 

So, this is why I love indie beer – the sector is made up of many great people who are the heart and souls of great breweries who at their best are working together, collaborating and innovating.  

And the beer is so, so, so much better.

Adam Perrett
General Manager
Shedshaker Brewing