SINGAPORE (Aug 26): When Rahul Immandira first started brewing beer in the tiny kitchen of his dormitory at Nanyang Technological University (NTU), he knew it was only a matter of time before he would be told to stop. Still, as far as he was concerned, it was not an offence to brew beer at home for self-consumption and the dorm was “home” to him, after all.
Having done an internship at a brewery in the US during a study exchange trip, the then 25-year-old engineering student was having fun experimenting and giving samples of the beer to dorm mates. He was pleasantly surprised at the positive feedback he got and roped in good friends and fellow NTU students Abilash Subbaraman and Heetesh Alwani to help with the brewing. Soon, those in the know began asking the trio for their dorm-brewed craft beer.
Eventually, the school’s authorities caught wind of their venture. “They sent us a message to attend a meeting at this time and place, and we knew we had to go. We were told to stop, so we did,” Rahul says, laughing.
Their “adventure” was reported by the school paper and the article was picked up by a mainstream daily in April last year. From there, their story quickly went viral and by December 2018, with encouragement from friends, family and even strangers, the trio launched Binjai Brew, named after their dorm in NTU, as a legitimate beer-brewing business.
During an interview with The Edge Singapore, the trio — who have since graduated — came across as the funny, fun-loving young men one would expect them to be. One gets the sense that while they stumbled into this quite by accident, they found it too good to give up. Being engineering majors, they knew nothing about starting a beer business, but took up the challenge head on.
It was a serendipitous meeting with someone called Steve at the Southeast Asian Craft Beer conference that got things really moving.
“We didn’t even know him, and he wasn’t even in the beer-making business. He was at the conference just out of interest. But through him we got the contact details of our contract brewer,” recalls Rahul.
Today, they produce an average of 230 litres of beer a month through a brewer in Bukit Batok. They have three types of craft beers — the French Saison (Sol Mate), German Altbier (Alt-O) and India Pale Lager (Error 404). The beers are sold on their website and available at popular online grocers. They are also supplied to several pubs and bars. “We call our six-pack of beer Noah’s Ark,” Rahul declares gleefully. “Why? Because there are two of each [beer].”
Their penchant for witticisms aside, the journey to becoming a legitimate operation has not been easy. While setting up Binjai Beer was straightforward enough, running it is a far bigger challenge than they had expected. For starters, much of what they do is still guesswork, and they have had to learn as they go along. If they faced difficulties with delivery, they would roll up their sleeves and deliver it themselves — which they did, after a problem with their delivery service provider.
The team has had to simply feel their way through, relying on the kindness and advice of friends and family, and hard work. They deliver kegs of beer to customers and haul six-packs to festivals, events and road shows. The business has also eaten up most of their savings; they would not say how much, except that it was a five-figure sum in total.
Asked whether they pay themselves a salary, they all burst out laughing. “No, definitely not,” they chuckle.
Still, they do worry about the obstacles to expanding. “If we want to scale up, we’d have to think about our distribution challenges as well. We can’t deliver [all the] kegs on our own, for example. And also, when we grow, we would probably play a less front-facing role than we do now, and it is very important for us to connect with our customers,” says Abilash.
Currently, their time is occupied running pop-up booths at events, such as the Grill Fest 2019 at Sentosa in July. For them, this is the best way to spread the word about Binjai Brew and garner a loyal following.
“We want them to be able to see us making their beer, having fun doing what we do, in the same way that we want to see them enjoying our beer, and being able to ask us how it’s made,” says Heetesh. “We really don’t want to be faceless and nameless; we want them to be able to come up to us and ask us about beer.”
In the medium term, they want to be able to open their own microbrewery. In the long term, they want to promote craft beer that is responsible and sustainable. “We also want to do our part, and to achieve zero-mile beer. Basically, because we bring ingredients in from all over the world, that leaves a huge carbon footprint. Eventually we’d like to make sure we reduce that drastically through sourcing locally and reducing waste,” says Rahul.
Right now, though, they are just having fun making good beer.
