Home brewer Phil O’Shea is turning his hobby into a livelihood, opening Five Barrel Brewing in Keira Street.

The brewery was going to be called Stack Brewing – after the now-deceased Port Kembla stack – but was changed to avoid any conflict with another brewery that had the same name.

Mr O’Shea, who also runs the Crafty Brew mail order beer business, is keen to have everything ready by Christmas.

But he’s hoping to open the doors a few weeks before then to give fans of craft beer a bit of sneak preview.

“We’re hoping to have our first beer ready in about a month,” Mr O'Shea said.

”We’ll probably swing the doors open in about a month for a soft launch and then we’ll do another couple of batches and get a few more beers ready before we have a  big launch.”

The venue will have a tasting room attached to the brewery, where people will be able to try any of the planned eight beers Mr O’Shea will have on tap.

Mr O’Shea said their liquor licence means the tasting room won’t operate like a bar and will only offer Five Barrel beers on tap.

However he did have hopes of transforming it into a bar in the years ahead.

While he was planning on brewing some unusual beers like sours or cask ales, as well as his favourite dark beers, Mr O’Shea said there would be a beer for everyone.

“We’ve got a couple of different beers to cater to different people,” he said.

“For instance, we’ve got a lighter lemon cream ale – it’s a little bit fruity, a little bit sweet. So people who like pale lagers, they would like that.”

He was also looking at sending a few kegs out to other venues in the Illawarra.

“I’ve spoken to quite a lot of proprietors around and they’re keen on giving us a go,” he said.

“So I think there’s a lot of people with a lot of interest in just trying new things.” 

Five Barrels is only the second brewery for Wollongong, after the Illawarra Brewing Company had the city to itself for so long.

But Mr O'Shea said the city’s craft beer market was big enough for both of them.

“I’ve not specifically spoken to the guys at Illawarra Brewing but we don’t anticipate too many issues, they’re much bigger than us and they have a different sort of model to us as well.

 I think the brewing industry in general is a pretty friendly bunch of blokes.”