By Scotty Morgan
Building a brewery is a game of compromise. All the things you want or need to do are often constrained by a budget, time and the approval to brew delicious beers in your own brewery.
Unfortunately, local councils and breweries do not always make friends. There is a lot to cover – from wastewater management and smells, to truck movements and the like.
Our brewery though had a reasonably easy ride through the process. We’re located in Sydney Corporate Park in Alexandria, on 26 acres of what used to be a huge printing factory. The site used to chill 500,000 litres of water to three degrees Celsius every night, and used 32,000 megajoules of gas per hour. Since we’ll only use a mere 3000 litres of water a day and 2000 megajoules of gas, we’re tiny and more environmentally friendly, compared to the operation the site used to hold.
We’re also lucky to have 5000 people working onsite. Our neighbourhood is a diverse range of businesses, including a Harley dealership, Australia Post, a bank, a few more car yards and (until this wee) a large magazine company. All in all, a good mix of people to come visit the brewery.
But, the DA and the Excise application require a lot of work. Our town planners submitted a 50-page document, with associated plans and drawings, on our behalf. And our excise application required more pages of information than I care to remember.
Regardless of the amount of paper and mind-numbing hours of work, we are thrilled to have all the approvals done – just got to lock in our license now – and to be getting on with the job of making great beer.
