SCOTTSDALE’S Little Rivers Brewing Company started making beer in February 2014, its plan was to establish itself as a boutique brewery in its first five years and then look at expanding.
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But less than two years on, Chris Carins and partner Jess Conison are increasing their brewing capacity from 2000 litres a month to 8000.
Mr Carins said that the couple’s soon-to-be-left-behind operation included a 500 litre brewing system and ``lots of hand bottling, labelling and packing’’.
He was last week overseeing the installation of the couple’s new 2000-litre, more automated system.
``We’re still brewing with the old vat and are hoping the new system will be up and running by the end of the week or early next week, but we’ve been saying that every week or the past four weeks,’’ Mr Carins admitted on Tuesday (today).
``A brew takes about three weeks from the start of the process to bottling - it goes into the brewing kettle for a day and is then transferred into the fermenter, where it ferments for a week.
``It’s then allowed to cool down and settle for another two, and as we can have four fermenters on the go we should be able to make between 8000-10,000 litres a month.
``This will allow us to get into more stockists and promote our beer more than we have been - we haven’t really started marketing ourselves yet, only through social media.’’
Mr Carins said that Little Rivers’ orders were getting further and further behind, the longer brewing was restricted to the old system.
``We’ve been pretty apologetic and our stockists have been very understanding, but the bottom line is we have to be able to supply more beer,’’ he said.
Mr Carins said that the growth in demand for Little Rivers beer had been ``a bit unbelievable’’.
