But that's exactly what Bulli Brewing's Michael Peloquin has done.

Despite the name, his brewery is at Unanderra and it's too big for his own needs.

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Rather than have some of the brewing tanks sitting idle, Mr Peloquin agreed to let another Illawarra brewer - Jeff Argent - come in and make beers under his own Grassy Knoll brand.

Mr Argent has his own keys to the brewery and has even been looking after the Bulli Brewing beers while Mr Peloquin is taking some time away.

It might seem unusual, but breweries renting out extra capacity to people without their own facilities is reasonably common.

For Mr Peloquin, who works several days a week in Sydney before devoting most of his remaining time at the brewery, it means he can take a holiday and leave Mr Argent to monitor the beer.

"If you ran it just by yourself, you'd have to employ staff and the level we're at that, would send you broke," Mr Peloquin said.

He described the arrangement as like having a business partner but without the problems of the real thing.

Mr Argent had been living in Sydney and brewing the Grassy Knoll beers up there but, after a move to East Corrimal, he realised it made sense to find a local brewery that had some space for him.

As well as the financial benefits of gaining rental income from what was previously unused space, the arrangement between Bulli Brewing and Grassy Knoll makes it economically viable for Mr Peloquin to finally get his beer into cans.

Previously it was only available on tap, mainly at the brewery bar.

"To make canning economical you need to hit a milestone of around 3 or 4000 litres on the day," Mr Peloquin said.

"For me to have done that on my own would have been a massive investment and a massive punt on getting this beer sold, but with Jeff chipping in, the two of us were able to can the beer."

With the pair sometimes brewing their own beers on the same day, it might seem like there could be the risk of one stealing the other's recipes - but Mr Peloquin said there really weren't any brewing tricks to swipe.

"Recipes aren't all that secretive - you could look at a beer and pick up the recipe of it," he said.

"Any well-known beer, there's clone recipes all over the internet for them so it's not that secretive.

"And we try not to make the same style of beer, so we've got different product.

"Now we've got the canning we can have eight to 10 different beers available in the fridge in cans."

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