Tim Engelbrecht – the founder of Greedy Bear, Australia’s first alcoholic sparkling Mead – was going through his own personal paleolithic period when he read about the ancient honey brew with a 10,000-year history.
“It was a primitive, barbaric phase of my life,” says Tim, who at the time grew his hair long and was going barefoot while feasting on a paleo diet.
Tim is a passionate person who gets right into things. So, aged 22, he brewed some Mead, which at the most basic level is honey mixed with water and fermented with yeast, though it can also be flavoured with herbs, fruits, spices or hops.
“I created my first batch of Mead at home with some friends in my backyard with a food grade bucket I bought from eBay – I think it was meant to be a cream container, whatever – went to the local fruit shop at Blacktown, bought a bunch of honey, and whacked the yeast in,” says Tim.
“It actually fermented, and it was actually pretty good. But it was very sweet and closer to 13% or 14% alcohol, more like a traditional wine style.
“I flirted with the idea of doing it commercially, but I was kind of freaked out by the idea of having a winemaker, having a facility – the whole concept and scale.”
Instead, Tim had just started a wedding photography and videography business which was going well, so he focussed on that instead, brewing Mead as a hobby.
But the idea of scaling up didn’t die and re-emerged 10 years later when Tim met Nick Calder-Scholes from One Drop Brewing Co at a wedding he was working, who told him Mead was taking off in the United States.
Tim did some research, checked global brewing site Untappd, and saw at that time seven of the top 10 rated drops were Meads.
“So I looked into what they doing. They were carbonating the Mead, they were offering lower alcohol percentage Meads, peanut butter and jelly Meads – weird and wonderful craft versions of what I was doing.”
That’s when it clicked. Rationalising that Australia is generally a decade behind US trends, Tim decided to sell the wedding business, get a jump on the competition and develop a Mead brand at scale.
For the brand he went with Greedy Bear. “The meta idea is that the bees in Australia are still mostly European, and they sense humans as bears. At the end of day, we’re the greedy bears and it’s a fun name.”
Running a brewing operation is also far more complicated than a wedding photography business. “This is a completely different monster,” says Tim, who quickly discovered that making and marketing alcohol comes with government oversight.
His first attempt with a really bright, branded can breached the Alcoholic Beverages Advertising Code because it was deemed too appealing to minors.
Lesson learned, back to the drawing board. Branding was pulled pack – it still looks great though – and Tim kept working on the brew, which is where renting co-working space at WOTSO proved to be worth its weight in Mead.
“I came to WOTSO Neutral Bay with six of the same Meads but with different yeasts and ran a blind tasting with everyone here,” says Tim.
“From that I had a clear winner on the yeast front and that winner just happened to be a high glycerine producer, which has really nice mouth feel. For a 4% Mead it has an amazing full-bodied weightiness to it and is really impressive.”
That brew ended up becoming Greedy Bear Original – the core product Tim launched in July, brewing 5000 litres which he pre-sold online and has so far personally delivered to more than 200 consumers around Sydney.
“Bringing it back to WOTSO, that’s one of the benefits. You have all these other cool entrepreneurs and people at your disposal. You say ‘hi, try this’ and put it around the lunch table and you have feedback instantly, just like that, from 20 or so people.
“Whereas if I worked for myself, I’d have to stage a special event, it would be much harder, and you have a whole range of people. Old, young, IT nerds, robotics specialists, designer nerds – the full spectrum.”
Among the next steps for Tim are further refining product market fit, expanding distribution and canvassing external investment to take Greedy Bear to the next level. Tim may have come a long way but in many respects his journey has just begun.
About WOTSO FlexSpace: WOTSO FlexSpace is an expanding network of 26 flexible working sites across Australia and New Zealand. WOTSO FlexSpace has 7210 desks under management across 48,000 sqm and has achieved double-digit revenue growth for the past three years. www.wotso.com
