Damien Martin remembers Dangerous Ales’ opening day like it was just yesterday.
“It was Friday the 13th of December, 2019, and there was a 600-metre line to get in when we opened,” the founder and head brewer recalls. “We’d taken over the old Milton Hotel that’d been shut for years, so everyone in town was pretty excited when we reopened.
“I don't think we were ready for how busy we actually were gonna be.”
It was a rousing reception for the brewpub on the NSW South Coast, but sadly it was a short-lived one. In the following days, devastating bushfires would rage out of control in the region, claiming lives and homes.
“We lost power. We lost a whole summer's worth of trade. They told all tourists to leave and closed the highways.”
Once the danger passed, they traded for another month before COVID-19 came knocking and upended everything. Luckily, the town rallied around their new-old pub and came out in droves to support them.
“When COVID hit, we were like, ‘What the fuck are we gonna do?’” he says. “But we started doing takeaways and doing burgers and pizzas out of our little coffee window.
“It was pretty crazy – we'd do 300 burgers on a Friday night.”
With plenty of beer in tank, they decided to can their beers. It was a move the country brewpub had never considered but it turned out to be pivotal: a crazy silver lining to the pandemic shitstorm.
Fast forward five years and now Dangerous’ cans are available in every Australian state. Their Milton Hotel venue is doing great business and they’ve knocked down the old 1970s garage out back where they first brewed and replaced it with a bigger brewing facility, boasting vastly bigger tanks as well as their own canning and bottling lines.
Along the way, Damo and his team have forged a red-hot reputation for quality beers, culminating in back-to-back wins at the Indies for Champion Juicy-Hazy IPA and a slew of gold medals.
As he prepares to blow the candles out on five wild years, we asked him to pick the beers that define the Dangerous Ales journey to date.
Crispy Boi Lager
Crispy Boi one started off as being called house lager and is something we’ve worked so hard on refining and tuning to get to this point, where it’s now like 60 percent of our total production.
We wanted something that was accessible but definitely not boring so it can still please a bit more adventurous drinker who’s like: “That's actually got a lot of flavour for a 5 percent lager” while also being able to give one to his old man.
Making a lager that can do that is pretty hard to do so we’re pretty proud of this one.
Fighting With Lightning Thiolized Hazy IPA
This was our first Indie Awards champion trophy winner. The awards were on the Gold Coast so I went up there with a heap of mates. One of them has a private jet and said he’d fly us up.
We had no expectation of winning any awards and, and Lightning won Champion Hazy IPA and a few medals. It was a pretty big night for those reasons.
The beer’s name came from having an argument with someone and I thought: “This is like fighting with lightning ‘cause you're never gonna win.”
Funnily enough, we initially made this beer for the GABS festival, but they didn't select it for their container bar, so we just poured it as one of our beers on our up-and-coming stand.
Mount Cooked Hazy New Zealand IPA
This won Champion Hazy IPA this year at the Indies. We weren't even going to enter it as it was actually a couple of months old and we only had cans left, but another beer that we were meant to enter wasn't ready to pack.
Then they gave us a call and said: “One of your hazies has won.” And we were like: “It has to be the Nelson Ha-Ha because it’s newer and super fresh” but it was Mount Cooked.
It was two to three months old by then in can, so we’re super proud of our packing process which really held up.
Killer Raspberry Sour Ale
This is a kettle sour with a very large raspberry addition that’s also in our core range. We use raspberry puree but we actually work with the farm it's coming from so we can make the beer that we want to make.
Like Crispy Boi, we wanted to make something that pleases a lot of people in the room. Something not too sour but sour enough.
It’s a simple beer but there's also a lot of detail that goes into how Killer Raspberry is made.
Nelson Ha-Ha DDH Hazy IPA
This one picked up a gold medal at the Indies and also came third in the recent GABS Can Design Awards, but the main reason I picked it was because it’s got the most customer feedback, and if people are excited, that makes us excited!
It's probably like one of our most spoken-about beers. People will come up to me at a beer event and just want to talk about that beer for 20 minutes.
I think The Simpsons reference adds a lot of nostalgia for people who would drink craft, as they’re in the same sort of age bracket growing up with the show.
You can find other entries in the Five Years In Five Beers series here.
Jason Treuen is an avid writer who's previously worked with the Sydney Morning Herald, Rolling Stone, Triple J Magazine and more. He loves craft beer, homebrewing, AFL, butter chicken and playing with his cats. He positively hates hangovers, and can be found enjoying adventures in beer here.
