Brisbane’s brewpub scene is set to expand even further with Sea Legs Brewing breaking ground and beginning construction this week.

The brewery, positioned under the Story Bridge and facing Brisbane’s other brewery-in-waiting across the river,Felons, sees a group of like-minded mates on a mission to make good beer.

Australians Tim Wyatt and Chris Davies join with Canadians Dave Machin and Harvey McKibbon and American Jon Fuchs for the project. The friends come from backgrounds in engineering and construction, with chemical engineer Fuchs to take on the brewing role, as well as naming rights.

The name and slogan of the brewery came from one particular night when Fuchs said he had a few too many IPAs. “Sea Legs, find yours” is a homage to navigating your journey and finding your feet, and also to a great night,” Fuchs explained.

The team has had to battle zoning laws and appeals from residents to finally get to the construction phase.

“We have been working through planning, development approvals and appeals for about a year now, but we are now in the clear, and are kicking off construction and hoping to commence operations in September this year,” Wyatt said.

“We’re fairly well advanced, we’re really literally a couple months away from having all of the construction done and at a point when we’re sort of brewing our first beers.”

In light of so many breweries opening, Wyatt envisaged that Sea Legs would’ve opened much earlier.

“We’ll have to fight a few of these other breweries in terms of market share,” he said, but isn’t worried about the bigger competitors.

“We hope to be more ‘boutiquey’ compared to the larger operators,” Fuchs says.

The guys have sourced much of their equipment direct from China. The venue will be home to a three vessel 1,500-litre gas fired brewhouse, two 1,500-litre fermenters and two 3,000-litre fermenters. There will also be four 1,500-litre bright and a 100-litre pilot brewery system.

“We’ve had our equipment ready-to-go since October last year,” Wyatt explains.

He says that there is a fair bit of work still to go, but the clock is now ticking for them to complete the fit out, get the brewery up and running and get the first beers underway.

“We have done a fair bit of cleaning up and painting inside ourselves to date, but now it is time to let Chris (Davies) get to work and turn the bare building into the Sea Legs Brewing Company brewpub,” Wyatt says.

The design concept focuses on an industrial space with string lighting, greenery, a polished concrete floor, acoustic panelling and a combination of low and high table seating.

Sea Legs Brewing is located at 89 Main Street, Kangaroo Point, Brisbane.