As beer merchants we recently decided that it was about time Beer Cartel had a beer we could call our own. As a result we decided to head to the Beer Factory in Seven Hills in Sydney to try their brew your own brewing facility.

After making the trip to the Beer Factory we sat down with owner, Stuart Boag and discussed our available options. The Beer Factory has over 200 different beer recipes that it can easily create. It includes the standard Australian beers (read VB, Tooheys New, XXXX etc) to premium and boutique Australian and International beers. After evaluating our options we decided to go for one of the more flavoursome beers, a Scottish style ale also known as an Oregon Ale.

Having decided on our beer of choice our next step was the creation of the beer. The Beer Factory is very well set up in a large expansive warehouse with the ability for a large number of people to all brew their own beers at the same time. Our first step was pulling together and measuring the ingredients – this was as easy as ABC, literally! We were given a sheet with ABC directions outlining exactly what malts, hops and grains to get for our beer. The ingredients were then added together and poured into the kettle to begin brewing – and that was our brewing process! The beer was then put away to ferment – we were then given a ticket to undertake the bottling of our beer in 3 weeks time.

3 weeks later we returned to the Beer Factory to find our batch of boutique beer ready to be bottled and enjoyed. The beer is produced in 50 litre batches providing 6 cases (144 bottles) of the finished product for consumption. After a quick wash, the bottles were then filled with our beer and capped before the final process of applying our labels – all while enjoying a sample of our product!

And that was it – our brew, Scarface Oregon Ale, was bottled and ready to be enjoyed. Due to the liquor laws we are unable to sell our beer which means we have to give it away! Having given some to friends the reviews have been extremely positive – the beer is very easy to drink with a nice malty taste to it. The beer also matches with beef, lamb or game meats which makes it a perfect beer for this time of year.