How boring jobs led to a new alcoholic kombucha business

“IT’S such a new realm in the beverage industry … it’s not really cider, it’s not beer and nor is it wine.”

Dominic Hurley (left) and Shanu Walsh (right) are the founders of Murwillumbah brewing company Ventura Brewing.

SEARCHING for fulfilment after a series of odd jobs and time abroad lead to Shanu Walsh and Dominic Hurley creating an alcoholic kombucha company.

Murwillumbah-based Ventura Brewing is a small batch, crafted brewed 'hard' kombucha which is hoping to offer an alternative from the craft beers and ciders currently on the market.

"It falls in a category of its own, it's such a new realm in the beverage industry … it's not really cider, it's not beer and nor is it wine," Shanu said.

"This is a whole new category because the alcoholic side hasn't been done so much before so it was pretty tricky when we were getting started cause we couldn't just follow how to become a beer brewer so we had to take things from different industries and make it our own," Dominic said.

Ventura Brewing currently produces three versions of alcoholic kombucha including original, elderflower and cucumber and hibiscus and rosemary.

 

The brewing has been a two year process which began, initially, as desire to escape a series of mundane jobs.

"We sort of went into these mundane jobs and we spent some time together overseas as well … eventually we saw the craft beer industry in America and we're so passionate about food, the craft industry and we saw the shortfall in the Australian market and how far we can go," Shanu said.

"We started brewing small-scale Kombucha in my basement, we made a few batches and got some good results and it needed a lot of refining along the way but we realised there was something we could make out of it."

As the operation grew, the duo moved the business from Shanu's basement and into a sizeable warehouse in Lundberg Dr with room to grow.

"Primarily it's going to be a production facility but to say we don't want to set up a tasting room and be able to have people drop in and fill up a growler and do the growler recycling thing or doing an event here, we want to go down that way," Shanu said.

To see more from Ventura Brewing, visit www.venturabrewing.co or @ventura_brewing Instagram.