By David Russell
Adopted South Australian craft brewery Pirate Life Brewing is branching out from its popular range of three hoppy ales, with five new brews about to hit the market.
First off the rank is the NZ Pale Ale, a partnership with hop supplier Hopco, featuring exclusively New Zealand hops. There’s also another collaboration with the Hilltop Hoods in the works, and some funky experiments featuring used wine barrels from the Barossa.
“We’ve started a series of collaborations with Ben Chipman from Tomfoolery Wines,” Pirate Life brewer and co-founder Jack Cameron told Inside South Australia.
“When he empties his barrels for bottling we’re going to get them down here, brew a beer and barrel-age them for a few months. The first one we are going to release in the next few weeks is in tempranillo barrels, so we’ve brewed a Spanish style dark beer to keep with that theme.
Ben Chipman from Tomfoolery Wines filling his barrels with Pirate Life beer.
“We’ll also do one with grenache barrels, and we’re hoping that beer will pick up a lot of colour and those nice fruit flavours. The other one is with shiraz barrels, which we’re going to brew a 12 per cent imperial stout in.”
Pirate Life started hitting South Australian lips 11 months ago, after Jack, 24, and mate and business partner Jared “Red” Proudfoot, 31, travelled across the Nullarbor from Perth with a big pile of funding to set up their dream brewery. It’s not a conventional job for guys their age, but then the pair haven’t lead conventional lives. At 14 Jack went to the US with his beer salesman dad Michael, following him around the country as he sold Coopers and BrewDog into the American market. The experience gave him an appreciation for beer from a young age.
“I went through my high school years with Coopers and Brew Dog in my garage, so I was pretty lucky as an underage drinker to be drinking some of the best beers in the world,” says Jack, “Being the Australian our house tended to be the party house with beer for everybody.”
Jared “Red” Proudfoot and Jack Cameron.
When he turned 18 Jack travelled to Scotland to take on a two-year job at BrewDog. One month in he called his dad and told him he wanted to own a brewery by the time he was 25. He didn’t know it at the time, but working alongside him was a fellow Western Australian he’d eventually launch a brewery with.
Jack and Red returned to Western Australia, Jack taking a role at Little Creatures and Red launching his own micro-brewery in Margaret River. A couple of years later they started to hatch their plan, aided by Jack’s dad Michael.
“For any brewer the dream one day is to brew your own beer. We were drinking a lot of beer together, talking about beer constantly, catching up every couple of weekends looking for new beers. MC (Michael Cameron) had a similar passion and recognised the love we had for it.”
The trio put a business plan together and raised $1.25 million from 26 investors, none of whom had ever tried a Pirate Life beer, and chose Adelaide to build the brewery.
“It’s an exciting city… the bar scene’s growing, the beer scene is growing, the wine scene is world class. There’s a lot of growth in the industry in South Australia.
“Distribution was also a big thing. We wanted to be a national brewery from the get-go. Adelaide was the perfect location; we can get beer to Sydney and Melbourne overnight cold and fresh, and over to Perth in two days.”
The decision paid off. Pirate Life beer is selling so fast Jack and Red can’t make enough to keep up with demand, despite installing extra tanks in November to increase capacity by 140 per cent.
By the end of next week distribution will have extended to every state and territory in the country, and the boys have plans to start exporting to London and New Zealand in the first instance, and China and the US further down the line. Jack puts the success of the brand down to good beer, a good story, and simple, exciting marketing through social media.
“The beer does the talking for any brewery, but we put it in a good package and people like the story of how we do things and of that pirate life that we try to live.”
Pirate Life is a Brand South Australia member.