Sydney's Sausage Queen Has Launched a Brewery in the Inner West

Chrissy Flanagan, Sydney's 'Sausage Queen', is branching out. Not to other varieties of minced and stuffed meats, but to something different entirely: beer. While it seems a little bizarre at first, Flanagan says it makes a lot of sense — the two are a natural pairing.

Flanagan, along with her business and life partner Jim Flanagan, has been matching homemade sausages with local Sydney beers at her Dulwich Hill Sausage Factory for over a year. "I'm a long-term beer lover," says Chrissy. "And as a manufacturer of sausages, and an owner of a restaurant, it has always been about beer and sausages."

The meat monarch has turned her hand to making lesser-known styles of beer, and ones infused with native Australian ingredients — just like her sausages. "We use a lot of native flavours in our sausages and it's something we're doing with our beers," explains Chrissy.

At the aptly named Sausage Queen Brewing you can pair kangaroo sausage, spiked with dorrigo pepper and aniseed myrtle, with the Native Gose, a briny and salty German beer made with desert lime and red gum smoked salt. The Native Gose is one of three beers Sausage Queen Brewing will initially sell. The other two are the Lemon Myrtle Saison — a big classic Belgian saison, with lemon myrtle complementing the beer's natural yeasty funk — and the Boss Ale. The latter is a cross between a Belgian farmhouse ale, a fruit-driven pale ale and a wheat beer.

To make the beers, Chrissy and Jim have teamed up with two of their favourite up-and-coming Sydney brewers. Peter Giugni, of the relatively new Bottlebrush Brews, is working with the duo to make the Lemon Myrtle Saison and the Native Gose. Giugni started brewing beers in his shed at home, before taking home the silver medal at Frenchies' Brewers Unearthed Beer competition earlier this year.

For the Boss Ale, the Flanagans have partnered with Jay Cook of Marrickville's Bucket Boys. The beer — a tribute to unconventional bosses — was first launched in March this year, as a one-off collaboration with the Marrickville beer shop and sometimes brewery, and Chrissy couldn't wait for it to return. "It's genuinely the best beer I've had in my life," she says.

At the moment, the beers are being brewed offsite, while the team at the Sausage Factory awaits approval on a pending DA and wholesale producer licence. Once it's approved, a microbrewery will be set up inside the Dulwich Hill space. At first the small 250-litre tank will be fermenting beers for consumption in-store and for takeaway growlers and squealers only. Then — once they've got their "feet under the table" — Chrissy plans to start distributing cans and kegs to bottle shops and pubs, starting with her favourite: the Boss Ale.

From there, you can expect Sausage Queen Brewing to expand pretty quickly, as Chrissy and Jim have done with the Sausage Factory — their snags are now stocked in more than 35 shops and supermarkets across Sydney.

Find Sausage Queen Brewing at 380 New Canterbury Road, Dulwich Hill. It's open Wednesday and Thursday from 6pm, and Friday to Sunday from 4pm. 

Images: Sarah-Jane Edis. Updated: October 29, 2018.