All brewer Phil O’Shea wants is to be able to sell his beer at his own brewery – without any hassle.
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The owner of Keira Street’s Five Barrel Brewing said the way Wollongong City Council advised he set up the brewery in 2016 has forced him to say no to customers who want to buy a beer.
That’s because under the development consent rules, Mr O’Shea can only sell “tastings” in middy glasses.
And if you buy a pale ale and like it so much you ask for another, well, he can’t sell you one – because you’ve already had a taste of it.
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“A lot of the people who come to our brewery don’t quite understand why someone who creates a product isn’t allowed to sell it in the way the general public expects,” Mr O'Shea said.
“There’s been a really big disconnect between what the general public expects and what is actually permissible under current rules.”
Mr O’Shea has an application before council to modify the consent provisions to “light industry/artisan food and drink industry” and the removal of a restriction that stops Five Barrel from offering anything but those tasters.
“People want to come in and have a couple of beers, but realistically we have to kind of discourage them from it,” Mr O’Shea said.
People want to come in and have a couple of beers, but realistically we have to kind of discourage them from it.
- Five Barrels' Phil O'Shea
“What we would like to do here is serve food and serve alcohol and do it in a responsible format that encourages people to come down and try new beers.”
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Back in 2015, Mr O'Shea wanted to set up a brewpub in the Wollongong CBD.
“When we first spoke to council about it, essentially being a new concept to council largely they didn’t quite understand,” he said.
“Their advice was that brewing was an industrial business and we needed to move our concept to an industrial area.
“One of the downsides of being in an industrial area is that running a bar is not one of those permitted uses.”
In July the state government started a 12-month trial in inner western Sydney where craft breweries could operate as bars.
If successful Minister Paul O’Toole said it could be rolled out across the state.
Mr O’Shea didn’t want to wait until then, not while other new breweries in the Illawarra hadn’t “had the same restrictions that have been imposed on us.”
Glen Humphries
I'm an award-winning senior journalist with the Illawarra Mercury and have well over two decades' worth of experience in newspapers. I cover the three local councils in the Illawarra for the Mercury, state and federal politics, as well as writing for the TV guide. If I'm not writing, I'm reading.
I'm an award-winning senior journalist with the Illawarra Mercury and have well over two decades' worth of experience in newspapers. I cover the three local councils in the Illawarra for the Mercury, state and federal politics, as well as writing for the TV guide. If I'm not writing, I'm reading.
