Owners of the Longstocking Brewery on the Far South Coast are thrilled to announce some exciting developments.
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"We've just put in a new brewery, which is five times the capacity of our existing one and that will enable us to get into some of the larger markets such as Canberra," Longstocking brewery owner, Peter Caldwell said.
The independent, craft beer, brewery located at Oaklands, Pambula has grown and developed gradually over the last three years.
Owners Peter Caldwell and Joey Cunningham said they're thrilled to see the expansion coming into effect.
"We're absolutely wrapped, we planned it three years ago to see it in fruition, is just great," Mr Caldwell said.
Mr Caldwell said they'd planned the expansion of the brewery from day one, as they saw the potential to grow.
With the new and bigger brewing systems, fermenters and canning line, the brewery is set to start pumping out their craft beers and ciders.
"We bought a highly automated canning line from the U.S that enables us to can at around 25 cans a minute."
"It's faster than we can drink," he said with a laugh.
The canning line was due to arrive last week and Mr Caldwell believes they will start filling cans with their brews by early to mid July.
"It's a total game changer because our bottling process was very laborious and slow and it took a lot of people to do it," he said.
Mr Caldwell said the process would be much faster compared to when they bottled their beer.
"Five cases an hour or a case a minute with our canning line."
Mr Caldwell said there has been a lot of demand for their craft beer so they're thrilled to get the canning line in to start matching it with supply.
"Because we've had demand, we'll approach all the local stores because we want to support them and also sell into the Canberra market through an outlet called Plonk," he said.
The brewery is currently closed as a result of recent Covid restrictions and have decided to use this time to focus on projects within.
Ms Caldwell said that with all the adversity small businesses in communities have had to face, they've learnt to just turn these situations around.
"When an obstacle comes up we think let's see how we can turn that into an advantage," he said.
"So all of those things have just made us a little more innovative and a bit tougher."
Despite restrictions, the brewery has done well for itself, hiring around 30 staff members and hosting their largely popular live music days.
Mr Caldwell said most of their artists that play on Friday night and Sunday afternoon are from the Bega Valley.
Supporting local talents is important to the Longstocking owners.
"We're getting a chap from Melbourne but apart from that they're all local, a lot of them from Candelo," Mr Caldwell said.