Shack Bay Brewing - origin story

Matt, our esteemed head brewer, rang and said he wanted to open a brewery. I said, “Sure, how do we do that?” Now, I knew nothing about brewing beer, so was largely led by Matt and his renewed enthusiasm for anything other than his day job. It was infectious, so by week’s end, we had a plan to buy some kit and set up shop in his home office. It's a small system, nano, if we're being technically correct and apparently, it’s as close to a proper commercial setup as one can fit in a small home office without breaching council rules.

So off Matt went and started brewing. He spent countless hours researching styles, testing ingredients, and building recipes from scratch... sometimes literally on the back of a napkin. Each batch brought us closer to what we believed Shack Bay Brewing should taste like. To bridge the gap between passion and production, Matt started working with Ocean Reach Brewing in Cowes. Their team welcomed us in, offered advice, and helped us scale up Matt’s garage-tested brews to something we could proudly sell to the public. It was real brewing, with real tanks, and suddenly our little side hustle started to feel very real.

There was one issue... it may have seemed small to start with, but, my word, was it big. Liquor Licencing... 

While Matt was knee-deep in hops and fermentation charts, I rolled up my sleeves on the other side of the business building the brand, designing logos, writing blurbs, and learning how to run an e-commerce site from scratch. Every word, post, and sticker was intended to be carefully considered however, that's no how we roll... after several beers and a few group chats with our local supporters we settled on the name, the logo and the first beer - The old faithful PALE ALE. We knew weren’t just making beer; we were crafting an identity and one that celebrated our coastline, our community, and the kind of laid-back, high-quality brews we wanted for our Invy community.