When Thomas Cooper started brewing in 1862, he was a one-man enterprise and very inexperienced. He supplied only private customers. Whereas the large breweries produced mostly draught beer at that time, Thomas bottled his beer using any kind of bottles available. By 1867 he had more than 120 customers, but he didn’t sell to hotels as it was against his principles. There were ten breweries in business in Adelaide at that time, and a further twenty-two in country areas.
During 1867 Thomas Cooper began to have serious problems with his brews. Time and again his batches were not up to standard, and he had to offload these wherever he could at lower prices. With the problems persisting, he was brewing less and selling less. Expenses exceeded income, debts mounted, and by 1869 his land and buildings were reclaimed. All his hard work and expectations, after almost eight years, were reduced to nothing. He had his wife and large family to keep, and he had to rent premises on the corner of Charles Street (now Phillips Street) and High Street, Kensington. He was not declared insolvent, and had the determination to continue brewing. With a small loan Thomas set up a very modest brewing plant in 1871 and tried to make ends meet. Then, in 1872, his wife died, leaving him with seven children to look after.
By 1878 business began to improve, and his son John, then twenty-one years old, started work at the brewery. In February 1881 Cooper purchased land in Statenborough Street, Upper Kensington, and a brewery was constructed using some of the equipment from the High Street premises. Son John began to introduce improved methods of production, and the quality and consistency of their beer improved greatly.
Cooper’s continued as a small family concern, still bottling, and showing no interest in supplying hotels. The business expanded very little during the 1880s and the difficult years of the 1890s, and output represented only about 1 per cent of the state’s consumption in 1900. Thomas Cooper had retired, and following his death in December 1897 the business then operated as a partnership with the four older sons — John, Christopher, Samuel and Stanley. Other sons, Frederic and Charles, worked at the brewery, and John’s eldest son, Frank (grandson of Thomas), was made a partner in 1918.
John Cooper now headed the business. Hotels were being supplied, and this accounted for 40 per cent of sales in 1910, rising to 76 per cent by 1918. The Coopers had no interest in buying hotels, nor did they make draught beer, being content to sell their products in bottles.
Cooper & Sons Ltd was formed in 1923, although the business still remained a Cooper family concern. When John Cooper died in 1935 at the age of seventy-eight, he had been head of the company for nearly forty years, and its guiding hand for even longer. Since then, successive members of the family have assumed control. In 2001, the brewery was relocated to Regency Park.
As well as producing lager beers, Cooper’s has also used the top-fermentation method, a process that has varied little from that of the 1880s. Until recently Cooper’s Sparkling Ale has been the only true ale produced by a major brewery in Australia, and its popularity has been acclaimed internationally.
Today the company’s products are marketed throughout Australia, and exported to many countries. Cooper & Sons Ltd operate a brewery that is unique in Australia, being the only major brewery still privately controlled by the descendants of its founder.
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