In his own words, the whole Howling Hops story started as a “bit of a laugh”. “Pete (Holt) who is the director of the company that owns the Southampton Arms and The Cock Tavern, loves beer and has a real passion for it. But he saw these breweries popping up left, right and centre, and thought we could do the same. So we did, and started brewing on a kit the Camden Town Brewery used to use.”
Demand for their beer near enough immediately outstripped supply, and the team couldn’t brew enough so they upscaled to two extra FVs, halving the brew length in the process. “We sold too much and I was struggling to keep the beer on the bar at the tavern, so we upscaled again,” says O’Rourke.
Brewing underneath The Cock Tavern was hard work, in a tough workplace that was hot and unforgiving, but the beers that make up Howling Hops’ comprehensive range, bar its pilsner, were all borne out of those gruelling sessions.
And while the brewery’s new premises are a far cry from the small confines that Howling Hops started in several years ago, there are still challenges to overcome.
He says: “The management of the tanks can be a bit frustrating, admits O’Rourke. “As the time spent with them, and thinking about them, is pretty all consuming, as it takes nearly a full day to run beer from the fermentors into those things.
“You also need to take into account the removing of the beer with what’s left going into kegs or bottles. Add to that the sanitising and cleaning, as of of this obviously has to be done, and done the right way. You have to respect it, it can’t be rushed.”
The brewery’s impressive bespoke set up has been supplied by Bavarian Brewery Technologies, and enables Howling Hops to offer its full complement of core beers, all 10 of them, direct from the bar. Its biggest seller is the 4.7 ‘Howling Pils’ followed by the 3.8% ’Pale Ale’ and the higher percentage 5.0% ‘Pale XX’, an order of popularity that comes as no surprise to the resident Queenslander.
Its FVs are double the size of the serving tanks so they tend to run half the FV into a serving tank and the rest into bottles. And when the serving tank gets to a certain age, normally around two weeks, they will keg the remainder and the process starts again.
Challenging Installation
Though you wouldn’t know it to look at them, the team encountered some “issues” as O’Rourke puts it, during installation. “We had some war wounds for sure.” A 4mm tolerance, 2mm either side, was given for each of the tanks, and it took around five hours to get them through the door.
