Former electrician Matt Jancauskas and his team at Brouhaha like to add a little more spark to their tasty offerings than most craft beer brewers.
Their imaginative flavour combinations at the popular attraction in Maleny on the Blackall Range gave birth to a choc berry stout late last year for the general public and the most unusual Til Death Do Us Tart Nectarine Sour for Matt’s wedding.
But the continued buzz around their Strawberry and Rhubarb Sour is truly electric.
The quirky, one-off collaboration brew was created originally in 2017 for the annual Brewsvegas – one of Queensland’s most-respected craft brewing festivals promoting, supporting and celebrating local beer businesses in greater Brisbane.
Strawberry and Rhubarb Sour? What were they thinking?
But after a few years on the beer menu, there’d be a riot if the gold medal-winner was taken off now.
“It stuck. People loved it,” Matt said.
“It’s bizarre and we honestly would never have predicted it.”
“We keep tweaking it slightly as the produce changes because obviously the strawberries and the rhubarb change seasonally.
“We make so much of it now that we have to get it processed for us and contracted because we have to draw down on tonnes and tonnes and tonnes of strawberries and rhubarb and get them processed every couple of months.
“We’re really careful to make sure we get the rhubarb at the right time of the year and then freeze it.
“Every other brewer you talk to, they’re contracting hops and things like that. We’re literally contracting strawberries and rhubarb.”
Outside the Maleny brewery, the Strawberry and Rhubarb Sour is by far the biggest packaged seller and Matt can’t come close to supplying demand.
“It’s just first in, best dressed every week,” he said.
“It’s a freak and we can’t make enough of it.”
Matt was never a home brewer. But as a younger man seeking to spread his wings and move to London, he realised trying to find an electrical job wasn’t feasible.
Starting at the bottom of the growing craft beer scene, however, might just provide his dream job.
He Googled “brewery jobs London”.
He wrote an application in Hong Kong Airport for a particular job ad, started working casually the day after his interview to help fill the void and got the gig over far more qualified applicants.
The business put him through brewing studies over a two to three-year period while learning the trade hands-on – literally starting in the basement of a restaurant as the business grew, hand bottling, capping and labelling.
Matt left at the point of having 30 staff under him and creating a mega factory by craft beer standards.
The business was sold to Heineken shortly after he left.
After returning to Brisbane with his newfound skills and knowledge, and with the help of business partners, the former Central Queensland lad began Brouhaha in 2016 and quickly won the support of locals, as well as Blackall Range visitors.
It began with 10 original beers on tap, with 100 variations in the first two-year period.
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Today, the core range of seven beers (four or five originals still on tap) is joined by seasonals (big on hops and fruit) four times a year.
Brouhaha’s biggest sellers remain the India Pale Ale, “Everyone wants one when they visit a brewery”, and the Hinterland Pale Ale.
The traditional German-made Maleny Lager is simplicity at its finest, yet holds its own in wider beer competition, taking gold against the big guys: traditional beer makers and German lager makers.
“We don’t filter that at all. There’s no pasteurisation. It’s purely made with temperature and time. It’s four ingredients (water, barley, hops and yeast) – that is it.”
“There’s lots of people who aren’t lager drinkers that really enjoy it. And then there’s lots of lager drinkers who aren’t craft drinkers that enjoy it.
“We think it’s a real achievement to have made a good lager in the size of brewery we have.”
Looking out for one another on the range
The spirit of locals supporting locals has seen Brouhaha and other Blackall Range businesses weather the COVID-19 storm.
That’s evidenced in the craft brewery helping producers such as Mountaintop Mushrooms with an oversupply of produce that can be used in the kitchen or an arrangement that sees spent grain fed to wagyu cattle and wagyu steak on the menu.
“We have a huge emphasis on the food and we don’t ever want to change that,” Matt said, surrounded by a sizeable lunchtime crowd on the back veranda of the Coral Street premises.
“We’re so blessed to be based up in the Sunshine Coast hinterland because the produce up here is phenomenal.
“There’s like little microclimates up here as well that really help. Different altitude and different rainfall, east and west-facing and all those different things all come into it and it just adds a really diverse range of produce that we can get.
“Different sides of the range are different as well because you’re getting that morning sun versus the afternoon.
“We’re really proud of the fact that we’re a restaurant and a brewery, and we love that we’ve got a really great list of wines and spirits and all sorts of things as well.”
