And Discover How Community + Giving Back Is What Eden Brewery Is All About
Meet Jacob Newman, our local Texan Highlander [with an amazing medical background – keep reading!!] – and proud founder and owner of Mittagong’s Eden Brewery – the boutique craft beer spot approaching its seventh birthday and punching well above its craft beer weight.
We chatted to Jacob about his winding career path to beer – which started as an underage American brewing in his dad’s garage – and what drew him to the Highlands.
Jacob’s passion for his adopted Highlands community is clear, and that’s what has made [and kept!] Eden Brewery so popular.
1 :: How did you end up in the Highlands?
You can probably tell from my accent, I’m not originally from Australia!
I was introduced to brewing as an underage American [I mean, 18 so not TOO underage], but that’s not what brought me to Australia.
After school, I became an emergency medical technician and worked as an ambo for two years. I was keen to do more with those skills so moved to Townsville which is where I met my wife.
My interests moved from emergency medicine to Indigenous medicine and we ended up moving to Papua New Guinea for two years.
The plan was for us to live there permanently, and I actually built a health clinic, but the situation got a bit too dangerous, so we travelled around doing volunteer work in Mexico, Darwin, Katherine and California where I became interested in brewing again.
Volunteering doesn’t pay too well so we decided to move back to Australia and start a brewery.
2 :: Why the Highlands?
On our first trip here, we had breakfast at The Shaggy Cow, and then started working our way through all the local cafes and I’m like, “Man this is amazing.”
We were looking for an established alcohol culture, which is basically all of Australia!
And also there were lots of wineries, so that fits really well. We had an interest in paddock to plate which the Highlands is well known for.
And we loved that the Highlands had four separate seasons. Summers are hot and winters are cold and that’s how it’s supposed to be.
3 :: We want to know a bit more about brewing in your Dad’s garage.
In the US, you can’t drink until you’re 21 BUT at 18 you can Google search how to make beer.
There’s nothing illegal about buying a bag of barley and some yeast. So I started brewing in Dad’s garage, which meant I became pretty popular at high school with that skillset.
4 :: And now you’re here in this amazing space in Mittagong. Tell us all about the beers.
We have looooads of new beers. That’s something we strive for. We typically have a new beer every two weeks – that’s our average.
So over seven years? That’s a lot of beers!
We want to show the diversity in beer, not just what you find on tap at your local pub.
So we do things like sours, and smoked beers and stouts and IPAs, and it’s really like…it’s about extending everyone’s understanding of the range of flavours and ingredients you can use to create unique tasting beer.
5 :: What’s the philosophy of Eden Brewery?
Breweries and pubs were the centre of a community for a long time – it’s where people would gather and catch up – but when those meeting places started to become more corporate in the way they were run, we lost what made them so unique and special.
So the community moved from bars and pubs to cafes to gather.
We want Eden Brewery to reclaim that identity that was once ours.
No TV’s, no pokies. The idea here is to catch up for a good conversation around a good local beer. And that’s what we’ve built.
6 :: And you’re all about sourcing local as much as you can too, right?
Yep, that’s huge for us.
When the brewery opened, we were using ingredients from Germany and the US and all around the world.
And we asked ourselves, what does it really mean to be an Australian brewery?
Showcasing Australia is a fundamental part of that. Not everything can be sourced as close as we want it to, but our philosophy is we always source closest first.
As an example, all of the barley across our range is grown in the Riverina region in Wheaton, so everything we use is New South Wales-grown barley.
7 :: What do you love about owning Eden Brewery?
I love it when families come in to the brewery. The kids are sitting and playing with the Lego we provide, and the parents are having a tasty beer and a good conversation while the kids do their thing.
I love changing the culture around what beer is for people.
8 :: You guys also like to give back.
Since we started, 10% of our profits were going to Oxfam but in 2020 we began working with a group called Forever Projects, which are based in Wollongong.
The money we save on producing some of our special beer batches by sharing what we have and donating our time goes to helping women break the poverty cycle in Tanzania through Forever Projects.
So, for example, the farmer will donate barley to us for beer in return, and our brew team will work for free for this particular batch because we all share similar values and feel the same about volunteering some of our time to help others.
At the end of the day, that particular batch of beer is made at a super reduced cost and every dollar we make in profits for that beer makes its way to Forever Projects who are helping people out of poverty in a very cool way.
Awesome! Love it – thanks Jacob.
Guys, Eden Brewery is one of our favourite places to hang out with friends – we actually go there as a team a fair bit – so Jacob’s philosophy of creating a place for communities to gather definitely speaks to us!
Head in, meet the team, taste the beer [+ wine + spirits!], kick back and become part of the Eden Brewery family – cos’ that actually is what it feels like when you’re there.
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