A brewery renowned for its award-winning ways is savouring the taste of victory again, after winning two major gongs at the Australian International Beer Awards.
Moffat Beach Brewing Co was acknowledged as the Champion Small Australian Brewery and it also won the Best International Style Pale Ale for its Shadow of the Moon Eclipse Strong Pale Ale at the awards night at the Victoria Pavilion at Melbourne Showgrounds.
Since opening its beachside brewpub/cafe in 2015, Moffat Beach Brewing Co has became one of the most popular destinations on the Sunshine Coast, where friends can enjoy a beer, meal and live music ‘between the tanks’, while watching the waves.
The brewery issued a press release saying it had now won a remarkable 32 trophies and more than 140 medals across the Australian International Beer Awards, Indies Awards and Royal Queensland Beer Awards during the past five years.
It’s been an incredible journey for the brewery, which essentially evolved from head brewer Matt Wilson’s first home brew.
Looking for an escape from the Sydney ‘rat race’, Matt and Sharynne Wilson (along with their daughters Aidan and Lilly), dreamed of creating a unique hospitality experience celebrating beer, fresh local produce and innovative cuisine.
After visiting Moffat Beach in 2012, they knew they’d found the place to bring that dream to life.
Launching as a beachside cafe called Blackwater Trading Co, their small business grew a reputation for its delicious food and coffee. However, it was beer that would put this hardworking duo on the map.
Inspired by early craft brewers like 4 Pines and Holgate, Mr Wilson started brewing in his garage.
“There were not many all-grain home brew kits on the market back then, so I got one of those 40L hot water urns you might find at the CWA and converted it to a brewing tank, wrapped with some house insulation stolen from a nearby building site for temperature control,” he said via the release.
“I’m a bit handy so I also rigged up this pulley system to dunk bags of grain and hops in the wort, although I did use a few of our clothes pegs to keep the bag in place. It’s a bit ghetto, but it did the trick”.
They decided to commission a 300L commercial brew kit at the back of their cafe in 2015.
And so Moffat Beach Brewing Co was born.
It took Mr Wilson about six months to scale up his recipes.
“A lot of beer went down the drain as undrinkable,” he said.
But before long, demand went through the roof.
Matt started working seven days a week, coaxing as much beer as he possibly could through that small brew kit.
And even then, he could only just keep up with enough beer to serve over his own bar.
Fast forward a year and he wanted to see how his beers fared on a bigger stage.
Being a regional brewery, and with no previous experience or training as a professional brewer, one of the best ways to seek industry feedback was to enter beer competitions.
All Australian beer competitions are assessed by blind tasting.
“In our first competition, we did terribly,” he said.
“We had problems with beer faults, primarily oxidation, and we couldn’t seem to get our beers entered in the right categories or styles.
“It was a massive learning experience, and the feedback we received from the judges was absolutely invaluable.
“Using that feedback, we improved our processes and procedures out of sight”.
In 2018, at the Independent Brewers Association Awards (Indies), Moffat Beach won Champion Small Brewery, plus Champion Session Beer for Social Jam Pale Mid.
It was just the start of a run that now includes scores of trophies and awards.
Buoyed by their success, Matt and Sharynne decided in late 2019 to open a large production brewery and taproom in Caloundra.
After ordering a state-of-the-art brewhouse from overseas and finalising council approvals, the team eagerly awaited the brewery’s delivery and the arrival of the commissioning team, only to see the COVID-19 outbreak put a spanner in the works, leaving the construction of the brewery entirely up to Mr Wilson and few of his friends.
But they assembled tanks, fermentation vessels, control panels and about a million pipes and fittings to create a brewhouse with more than 700 per cent the capacity of their beachside brewery.
For the first time since Moffat Beach Brewing Co was founded, they were finally in the position to sell beers beyond their own postcode.
Mr Wilson was said their beers were quite bold.
“For me, I’ve always brewed the beers I like to drink, and I just so happen to enjoy big, flavourful beers,” he said.
“The amount of expensive hops and malt I whack into my beers probably wouldn’t pass the ‘economic viability’ test of most larger breweries so I’m probably a bit lucky in that respect.”
General manager Craig Williams said the rise of the brewery was “an amazing story”.
“You’ve got this guy with no brewing education or industry experience, and he’s now the most awarded brewer in the country,” he said.
“My theory is that he spent years honing his art on essentially what most breweries would describe as a test kit, teaching himself every intricacy of the process, how to deal with problems and perfect a recipe over time.
“It’s a career journey that I don’t think many other brewers in Australia could claim.”
Sharynne said they hoped their beers would continue to impress around the world.
“We’ve always been driven by making the highest-quality beer we can,” she said.
“Where we are, the Sunshine Coast, it’s a magical part of the world, and now home to a whole host of breweries, distilleries and other quality producers.
“And I think a little bit of that magic goes into everything we make and do. Our goal is to share that magic with people far and wide”.
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