Freshwater Brewing Co. and its on-site taproom, Freshie Taproom, is a new brewery with big ambitions. With a mission to make beer and the holistic brewery experience inclusive and accessible to everyone, the team at Freshie’s are passionate about their ethos and their beer.
Having celebrated their one-year anniversary in September 2023, we sat down with Co-Founder Tom Bruce to learn more about his experience, the brewery, their goals and plans for the future.
Forging a career in hospitality
Despite starting in the industry over a decade and a half ago, Tom initially wasn’t sure if hospitality was something he wanted to do for a career.
“I’ve been in hospitality for about 15 years now, and it was just something I always really enjoyed. I quite enjoyed just chatting with people… it was a nice thing to just be behind a bar, chat sh*t with people and have a bit of a good time, and I always really enjoyed it.”
“It was never really a career aspect for me. It was always something that I just did to fuel everything else I was doing on the side.”
However, after working in a Sydney brewery and moving to the UK for a couple of years, his outlook changed, and Tom contemplated that this could be the career path for him.
“A couple of years ago, after I met Chloe*, we both moved over to the UK, and I was running a pub over there. That and another brewery in Sydney were the two places that I started to piece together the idea that, oh, maybe I could do hospitality as a bit more of a career moving forward.”
The birth of Freshwater Brewing Co.
After moving back to Australia from the UK, a friend of Tom’s reached out, saying he was about to open a brewery and wanted Tom in on the action.
“I had always joked that when he was ready to open one up, I’d come and run it for him. So he called me and said, I’m going to do it; what do you think?”
I jumped at the opportunity; it just landed in my lap, and I thought, how hard could that be?”
And so, Freshwater Brewing Co. was formed.
“I became the first employee and founding member of Freshie Brewing alongside Johnny, and he and I just started fumbling our way through it.”
“There are four of us. So there’s me, Chloe, Brett and Johnny, and then we also had Marv, who’s our primary investor, so he’s been on board from the start as well.”
Beer for everyone
The team at Freshies wanted to build a different kind of brewery with an ethos dedicated to doing things differently and breaking away from the traditional notion of how people usually see breweries.
“Beers are getting bigger and bolder, and big, crazy, hazy nonsense beers are up at 9%.”
“While the whole industry has been heading towards that, craft beer, in a lot of ways, is more accessible than ever. But it’s becoming more nuanced and niche and creating its own little counterculture away from the rest of the hospitality beer industry.”
With the craft beer market gaining traction in Australia, Tom and the other founding members were keen to set themselves apart to ensure Freshies stood out from the crowd.
“We looked at that as an opportunity to go, well, instead of just following the crowd and doing big crazy hazy beers or really niche angled beers just to serve 10% of the population, why don’t we open it back up?”
Let’s look at beers that everyone can drink and can be accessible to everyone.”
Going against the grain
The Freshies team saw the current craft beer culture as an opportunity to go against the grain and get back to basics.
“Let’s do lagers, let’s do European styles, let’s do easy drinking stuff,” says Tom. “Let’s do stuff that anyone could go and pick up at a barbecue out of an Esky and go, yeah, it’s pretty good.”
In essence, Freshies wanted to create easy-drinking beers that anyone could enjoy while still appealing to beer-buffs.
“We’re trying to have a foot in both camps.”
“If you love beers and you’re crazy about it, you can drink it and go, oh wow, the malt profile! Or, that really uses some interesting hops in there to balance those flavours… if you don’t care, just drink it; it doesn’t matter. It’s still good stuff.”
“So that’s where we’ve decided to place ourselves in the industry, and it’s working pretty well for us as well so far.”
Breaking stereotypes
Aside from making delicious beers that appeal to the masses, Tom and the Freshies team are also passionate about breaking down stereotypes to ensure their taproom is a welcoming environment for all.
Tom first became aware of some of the inequalities within the beer industry through Chloe’s (his partner and fellow Co-Founder) experiences.
“Chloe’s been in the craft beer industry almost as long as I have. She was running a craft beer bar in Nottingham while we were living over in the UK, and the stories I’d hear of men coming in and going, oh, is one of the managers around I just want to talk about beer.”
And she’s like, yeah, I’m the manager, I can help you. And then men will straight up say, nah, are any males around.”
The stereotype of women not liking beer was also prevalent outside of Chloe’s workplace, often occurring when they visited other breweries.
“It’s crazy, and you hear stories like these all the time. It’s not a one-off event, but it’s shocked me in times when I’ve been with her, and we’ll go into a brewery somewhere, and the bartenders go, oh, so do you want a wine?”
“She’s like, no, I want a beer. They go, oh, okay, well, we got this really fruity one. She’s like, I don’t want that. I want a beer.”
“And it’s just all these assumptions that get made around women and beer, and we’re like, it’s so sh*t. It’s crazy. And it happens all the time.”
Building inclusivity
Seeing firsthand how the beer industry can be intimidating and exclusionary for women, Tom and the team were determined to build a welcoming, inclusive space where everyone can come and enjoy a beer.
“I never fully understood it until I was in the space with Chloe and to see it happen in person.”
“So that was another one where we go, okay, well if there’s already these made-up conceptions about females in beer, how do we leave that at the door?”
And we came up with this pitch… it has to be innovative, welcoming, and safe-space focused.”
From the get-go, the Freshies team wanted to ensure their brewery was a bright, vibrant, welcoming environment where everyone was welcome. And the aesthetic design of Freshies Taproom nails that brief. As soon as you walk in, it’s full of pastel colours; it’s bright and welcoming.
“Straight away when you walk in, it’s not like every other man cave brewery that’s around. There’s no number plates on the wall or pinball machines and all sorts of exposed wood.”
“So that’s number one. Make the space bright and inviting, and have some nice music on. It’s not just like pub rock from the nineties or something. Make it a bit more world music, make it a bit different, make it interesting.”
Next is the menu.
“The beers and the food offering and the drinks that we have behind the bar, they all signal that this is a space for everyone.”
“We’ve got probably the most inclusive wine list from any brewery on the northern beaches, possibly even Sydney. The wine list is really nice, natural stuff, a great range of Australian natural wines that have great flavour, but also in the same space… It’s a there’s something for everyone approach.”
What’s next for Freshie?
Freshwater Brewing has seen massive success in its first year of operations, and the team are excited about what lies ahead.
We’ve done a lot of learning since we’ve opened… We didn’t open up and go, that’s it. We’ve nailed it and changed nothing. We’ve been changing heaps over the last year.”
Like any new business, things often need tweaking and changing – it’s rare to nail everything on the first go, and Tom has relished the opportunity to learn and make changes to improve the business.
“There was definitely an aspect of us potentially being before our time and having to adapt and change and make sure that people have exactly what they want when they come into the space. So there’s been quite a lot of learning along the way. But it’s been good. It’s been really fun.”
When it comes to the future of Freshwater Brewing, Tom and the team are excited to drive the business to new heights. But they’re also cognisant of not losing sight of their roots and ethos.
“There’s a bit of an effort to not take ourselves too seriously. We do find that when I was at the other brewery in Sydney, people would come in and want to talk shop about the really small details.”
“We can talk about that if you’re into it, but a lot of people just come down because they go, wow, look at these big shiny tanks. This is fun. There’s a bit of light music on, and just want to enjoy themselves.”
*Chloe is also a full-time employee at Lightspeed, as well as a founding member of Freshwater Brewing Co.
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