Alice Springs Brewery celebrates five years in business
When Covid hit just 14 months after opening, Alice Springs Brewing Co was forced to change up operations. Read how it led to the brew being stocked in more than 80 stores across Australia.
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It’s been a brutal journey for Alice Springs Brewing Co to reach its five year anniversary, but for founder Kyle Pearson they’re all the better for it.
Mr Pearson launched Alice Springs’ first brewery after working in hospitality venues around town for 20 years, and realised almost immediately why nobody had made the leap before.
“We probably learnt pretty quickly why nobody had done it, it’s been a pretty difficult journey but here we are now,” he said.
The vast distance between Alice Springs and where equipment was made and crops are grown quickly impacted operations – a difficulty the brewery is still looking to overcome.
“It’s just really small things, sometimes things break down and it's a $3 part but we can’t get them in quickly so then we can’t make beer, it gets frustrating,” he said.
“But we’re a lot better now than we used to, we have spares of most things now.”
By far the biggest challenge for the brewery came just 14 months after opening, when Covid threw a spanner in the works of many of their plans.
“We had to adapt pretty quickly, the thing is though, it was the worst thing that happened to us followed pretty quickly by the best thing that happened to us,” Mr Pearson said.
Prior to Covid the brewery’s main customer base had come from tourists, but as the pandemic wreaked havoc on the supply chain many Alice Springs locals began to discover and support the business.
“It’s probably from that point we got a lot more locals get around us and it was the same with other people in the Territory,” he said.
“We had an old bottling machine and we started using that and shipping things around the place, and then it sort of dragged us into packaging (into cans) and dragged us into where we are now where a lot of the growth we’ve got has been from packaging.”
“Our first packaging machine we could do 60 cartons a day, now we do 60 cartons an hour.”
Four years later with their fifth anniversary rapidly approaching, Alice Springs Brewing Co beverages are now stocked in 78 venues throughout the Northern Territory, alongside stockists in Queensland, New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory.
Mr Pearson described making it to five years in business as a “milestone” for the company, with the brewery set up to host a birthday bonanza in September.
Set across four days from September 14, the venue will host performances from rock band Regurgitator, Sydney comedian Luke Heggie and local performers Stellar Sea and Glennie Rae among many other local and interstate acts.
“We just really wanted to bring in a high standard of act, and I don’t think Regurgitator has played anywhere under 10,000 seats in a long time, it’s going to be a cool setting to see them in,” Mr Pearson said.
“I’ve been a big fan of them since I was 16 years old so I’m really excited for that, and yeah I guess we want to have something here for everybody and just have a really good time that weekend.”
The brewery will be bringing back “old favourite” craft beers alongside a selection of special birthday beer releases – which Mr Pearson said the company would begin brewing shortly.
“We want to do something big that’s as much for us as the local people who have supported us,” he said.
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