A new brewery in Austinmer is finding inspiration in the history of the northern Illawarra.
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Coal Coast Brewing Company is a venture from Kelly Carey and her husband Michael.
She looks after the business and marketing side while he’s the “brewer in training”.
The brewery's first beer, Pit Pony pale ale was released just in time for Christmas.
Kelly said they opted for a pale ale as their debut release in part because suited the warmer weather and also because it wasn’t something that would scare off the average beer drinker.
“We love a level of bitterness in our beers but we didn’t want to go for an IPA because we thought that might be a little bit heavy,” she said.
“And for our first introduction, for our first brew, we really wanted to make sure it was something approachable for the general public.”
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The beer’s name was inspired by the ponies that would haul coal skips from the mines in the days before mechanical mining.
“I’m passionate about history and Michael’s a secondary school teacher, a history teacher, so we just got really entrenched in local history,” Kelly said.
“We thought with this beer, is there a way we could join those two together?”
It’s a theme that Kelly said would continue with Coal Coast's upcoming releases, which included Longwall Lager and a common-ale style called Ode to Amy.
The latter pays homage to an 1888 shipwreck off the coast at Thirroul.
The Pit Pony pale was initially only available in growlers or on tap at a few venues in the northern suburbs, including Jose Jones.
Early in the new year Kelly said they planned to get the beer into cans and then into bottle shop fridges.
As Coal Coast has just started, the couple has yet to go through the expensive path of setting up their own brewery. Right now, they’re using spare capacity at Hairyman Brewery in Sydney.
“Short term it’s [brewed] at Caringbah with a friend who’s got premises there,” Kelly said.
“Then we’ll look to have our own production site in the not too distant future.”