Hot on the heels of craft accelerator Founders First’s investment in Ballistic Beer, it has partnered up with another Queensland brewery, Slipstream Brewing Co, to aid its expansion.

The Founders First investment will allow Slipstream to invest in the expansion of its Yeerongpilly venue as well as its brewing operations.

It will also enable the brewery to expand its distribution of cans and kegs and access the Founders First Indie Craft Collective national sales team.

“We’ll be taking on the whole site where we are at the moment so we will have additional brewery space and a new cellar door,” Slipsteam founder Deale Stanley-Hunt told Brews News.

“What we want to have is a better serviced venue.”

It’s early days for the development and details have yet to be firmed up of the expansion, but Stanley-Hunt said the investment of Founders First is pivotal for Slipstream’s future plans.

“I think they’ve got a lot to offer. With Founders First they invested in our business, so they want to do everything possible for the brewery, to grow the sales in the brewery, they’re a bit of a different setup than a classic distributor – they’ve got skin in the game so to speak.

“They’ve got a lot of background and experience in the industry, that they can add to our business – marketing, social media, all sorts of components should we require them I guess. They’ve got it all so it’s a nice fit.”

The partnership will prompt a number of changes in the business, including the end of its relationship with distributor Calibre.

“We’ll be departing that relationship which we’ve been in for the last two and a half years onto a more national footprint,” explained Stanley-Hunt.

He said the company had a view to expanding nationally eventually.

“We will be building local and regional sales and when the time is right we’ll go into national distribution,” he said.

Slipstream launched in 2017 and was the brainchild of homebrewer Stanley-Hunt, along with wife Elisa. He brought on Ian Watson, formerly of Fortitude and Murray’s to lead the brewing operations that year.

Stanley-Hunt said he had first heard about Founders First from industry discussions and approached them to help Slipstream’s growth plans, and said he was “really impressed” with how the partnership model had worked for Foghorn Brewhouse.

Founders First has recently undertaken a series B fundraising. It was planning to raise $10 million but it closed, oversubscribed, at $13 million. Total capital raised in 2019 amounted to more than $21 million.

Along with Ballistic Beer and Foghorn, Founders First has also partnered with Sydney’s Sauce Brewing and Jetty Road this past year to aid with expansion plans and distribution network growth.