At Macquarie, Associate Professor John Dumay specialises in business strategy, intangibles and intellectual capital – but they’re not his only areas of expertise. John also has postgrad qualifications in food science and beer brewing and runs, together with his son Dave, Brookvale’s aptly named Dad & Dave’s Brewing.

We sat down with him to learn more about the business, and what lessons from academia he has taken to the brewhouse.

---

How did your passion for beer brewing start?
On my first Father’s Day, after my son Dave was born, I got a home brew kit as a gift. I’ve always loved beer, but being a young father with a mortgage and not much money, I started making it at home. At a very young age, Dave would help me by putting the sugar into the bottles and help pack away the bottles. It was a father and son activity we did together.

When Dave turned 18, he was working as an apprentice, didn’t have any money and had a liking for beer. He then found my old recipe book from all those years earlier, started making those beers, and fell in love with brewing. Dave has an absolute passion for it, and it’s that same passion that I myself had many years ago when Dave was still incredibly young.

How did that passion manifest into your own craft brewery?
Dave and I decided to get into the beer business together shortly afterward, given how much of a passion we both had for it. However, we decided to go to university first, and that was the smartest thing we ever did ­– it really opened doors for us. In 2012 we both graduated with postgraduate qualifications in food science and beer brewing from Ballarat University, and that’s when Dad & Dave’s Brewing began as a business.

What similarities are there between your brewing life and your academic life?
The craft brew industry is incredibly collaborative, not competitive – both in Australia and abroad. The nemesis for the craft brew industry is the big breweries, and we all want to beat the big breweries, not each other. So we help each other out as best we can, and collaborating is a big part of that.

That’s how I work in my academic life, too; people call me a ‘serial co-author’ because I publish a lot, but I’m not always the first author on the paper. It’s important to me to be as involved and collaborative as I can be to continue developing professionally.

How has the business influenced your role as an academic, and vice-versa?
The brewery has become part of my academic life; I often get invited to give talks about the brewery from an academic perspective. I currently have two papers I am writing about craft beer breweries that I visited in Europe, one of which is about how the craft brewing industry contributes to tourism and regional development.

My areas of expertise, particularly in strategy and intangibles, go hand-in-hand with the work and are a key part of the business model we used to establish the brewery. I took a lot of what we say in theory and teach in the classroom and was able to put that into practice in the business.

What’s next for Dad & Dave’s Brewing?
We’ve just passed the five-year small business litmus test: do we have a business? And we do, so now the next thing is to keep growing and expanding it. It’s been a really fun experience, and getting to see Dave’s passion in action makes it all worthwhile.

---

You can follow Dad & Dave’s Brewing on Facebook and visit the brewery at 2/1 Chard Road, Brookvale.