By Jessica Yun
The origin story of alcohol-free start-up Heaps Normal begins, ironically, over a round of beers.
It was November 2019. Heaps Normal chief executive Andy Miller, then working as a marketing and strategy consultant, was catching up with friend and graphic designer Peter Brennan. The pair were lamenting the lack of options for those wanting to cut back on beer.
Andy Miller is the CEO of Australian non-alcoholic craft brewer Heaps Normal.Credit:
“We didn’t really feel like there were many products out there that satisfied that genuine beer taste,” Miller says. “People associated non-alcoholic beer with this kind of watery, malty, very sweet beverage that didn’t resemble beer at all.”
So, the pair decided to have a crack at making their own. They called on brewing expert Ben Holdstock, who had worked with Miller during their days at brewer Young Henrys together, and was excited by the challenge. Next came Jordy Smith, a professional surfer and a childhood friend of Brennan’s, who wanted non-alcoholic options when he was off the booze during training season.
Two and a half years later, the quartet has grown to a team of 20 that Miller oversees from his new base in Bangkok, Thailand. The company is still young, yet it has catapulted into a $57.5 million business with over 2,000 wholesale customers. It is now part of a booming global sector projected to grow by 31 per cent by 2024, according to data from beverage alcohol market research group IWSR.
Miller and his fellow founders weren’t just trying to launch a new product in a crowded market of beloved brands: they were gently challenging the consumption of alcohol altogether by suggesting an alternative.
“Beer doesn’t have to mean alcohol. Beer doesn’t have to mean getting wasted,” Miller says. “Beer can also taste great without having those side effects.”
The name Heaps Normal points to this mission of normalising drinking without getting drunk in the very social contexts where having a good time entails having a cold one in hand. “All those activities you’d normally associate with alcohol … music, going to the pub, watching a sporting match with friends … we saw the opportunity to create a brand that we were proud to take to a barbeque or a standard gig.”
The Canberra-born brewery’s success to date has already exceeded the founders’ expectations, but Miller knows change takes time. He pays tribute to his marketing experience at Young Henry’s, and as a strategist for craft brewers Beerfarm, Capital Brewing Co and Indigenous family-run company Sobah Beverages.
“We’re patient,” he says. “People [are] coming around to the idea in their own time.”
The founders of Heaps Normal: (left to right) global brand ambassador Jordy Smith, head brewer Ben Holdstock, head of brand Peter Brennan, CEO Andy Miller.Credit: Nikki To
Rewriting the recipe
Heaps Normal brews beer with none of the alcohol using the same four ingredients as traditional beer (water, malt, yeast and hops). But all the details in the 15-step process had to be changed to ensure the end product tasted like beer but without any alcohol. To achieve this, sugar levels have been rebalanced, temperatures have been adjusted, and the standard brewers’ yeast has been replaced with a non-traditional yeast.
It took Holdstock and the team six months to brew and perfect a winning formula that would pass the pub test – literally. For their first trial batch, the team put the beer in an unmarked can and invited food writers, brewers, bartenders, and friends from the industry to sample it.
They didn’t tell them it was non-alcoholic. Many thought they were tasting a mid- or full-strength beer. About one in ten guessed the truth.
“That’s one of the most exciting, rewarding moments, watching people’s jaws hit the floor,” Miller says.
“That was a turning point for us, when we had the confidence to really stand behind this beer that we’d created.”
Heaps Normal launched on the last day of Dry July in 2020, a fortuitous accident. Miller notes that pandemic lockdowns saw people reevaluate their relationship with alcohol. Young people, in particular, are driving the focus on physical and mental health and wellbeing: the proportion of Australians in their 20s abstaining from alcohol jumped from 8.9 per cent in 2001 to 22 per cent in 2019.
Despite what his company stands for, the founder is conscious of not being preachy: Heaps Normal doesn’t want people to quit drinking. “A lot of beer drinkers are adopting that kind of behaviour where they’re still enjoying their favourite craft beers when they go out, but they’re using Heaps Normal in between to space things out.”
And if a giant beer conglomerate came knocking one day, would Heaps Normal give up its independence?
There’s been interest, Miller reveals. “We’re not entertaining anything like that at this stage.
“We’re having so much fun building this business … I don’t think any of us could fathom the idea of letting go only less than two years into that journey.”
But the team is pragmatic about the possibility. “If there was an opportunity further down the line where it made sense to … level up our ability to achieve that mission [of changing drinking culture] – then that would be the sort of opportunity we would consider down the line.”
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