Page 18 - Food&Drink March 2022

BLUE SKY
Getting up to mischief
It started with a premium artisanal cold brew coffee and has grown to include small batch soft drinks and very tasty collaborations. This is Mischief Brew. Kim Berry talks to cola creator extraordinaire Dan Cox.
AFTER seven years of managing bars in Melbourne, Dan Cox ended up in Adelaide due to matters of the heart. While the relationship didn’t last, Cox was soon ensconced in the community, pub, and brewery that is Adelaide’s The Wheatsheaf Hotel – the Wheaty.
“I have always been interested in natural wines and quality produce. It has been great to watch the progressiveness of food and beverage here, there are a lot of young wine makers and others doing creative things. It will be so interesting to see what happens over the next couple of years,” Cox says.
Apart from his love of hospitality, Cox had a driving goal – to be self-employed and financially secure.
“I started my own business across the road from the Wheaty at George Street Studios. It was more a hobby project of building a cargo cart with a beer tap on the front. It just ran on gas and ice and it could have any beverage on it – beer, kombucha, or coffee.
“I was taking it to markets and catering functions, and then started playing around with brewing back at the Wheaty,” he says.
It was around then that Cox met his business partner Scott Giles. The pair were dating sisters, who happen to be identical twins.
Giles had developed Mischief Brew Coffee – a cold press coffee with a cult following.
The pair joined forces and were selling at Adelaide’s festivals, markets, and universities. But it was not without its challenges. The coffee was an expensive offering; a small batch product, unique sized bottle (330ml), required cold storage, and had a short shelf life.
“That said, the branding was amazing,” says Cox.
And then, as with so many, Covid forced the pair’s hand.
“We lost everything, all our catering gigs, it put us back to square one. But that is what brought us to what we’re doing now. Covid gave us time to think about what we wanted to be and the brand we wanted to create,” Cox says.
It just so happened that Cox had been experimenting with making soft drinks, kombucha, and tonics “just for fun”.
The pair set themselves the parameters of producing four classic mixers: cola, lemonade, tonic, and soda.
Cox says making the cola was a case of starting from scratch. “I had no idea what went into
it let alone how to make it shelf stable. So, I started reading about the origins of cola and looking at old recipes. Then it was just a case of trial and error,
creating batch after batch. “It took about a year and now I’ve got that
knowledge it is really exciting to think about what we can do next,”
he says.
Cox had also
formed a relationship with Greg Grigoriou and Delinquente Wines – a vineyard
focused on small batch, minimal
intervention wines from Southern Italian grape
18 | Food&Drink business | March 2022 | www.foodanddrinkbusiness.com.au
Bespoke soda sensation: small batch brewing, esoteric branding, and crafty collaborations.