Aussie brewery makes Kickstarter goal in one day

One balmy day in 2014, three blokes were sitting in a pub dreaming about brewing their own beers. The next week, they were making their dream a reality, and this month, they launched a crowdfunding campaign to help them open a brewery in Burleigh Heads on the Gold Coast.

These three blokes are Michael McGovern, Eddie Oldfield and Dan Norris, the minds behind Black Hops Brewing. Since launching their first home-brewed Eggnog Stout in Brisbane, back in 2014, the blokes became 'gypsy brewers' at various locations across Australia where Michael's home-brewed batch of Eggnog Stout became more popular than anticipated - the first keg sold out in two hours. Now, they are looking to expand further and plan to build their own brewery in Burleigh Heads.

Black Hops Brewery launched their crowdfunding campaign last week with a goal of $10,000. They reached this within one day.

"We're freaking stoked!" says Dan. "Especially to do it in the first day, that was amazing. I spent a lot of the day refreshing the web page!"

After having toyed with the crowdfunding idea for some time, Dan, Eddie and Michael, ran into some unexpected costs and decided to launch a campaign with Pozible.

One unanticipated expense was a bottling machine they fell in love with.

"We weren't planning on bottling beer initially, and the extra costs were about $10,000," says Dan. "Once we realised you could sell beer on Pozible, we were keen to give it a try."

With their crowdfunding success, they've been able to cover their bottling costs and sell beer directly off the Pozible website.

And with the campaign running until February 10, there is still time for fans to support Black Hops Brewing.

"The more we can raise the better, because it lets us talk directly with our core audience and get our beer into the hands of new people," Dan explains. "I'm really hopeful we can raise significantly more than our original target now and make some real noise!"