There wasn’t the public buzz and excitement of the day in May 2013 when his 21 taps began pouring. It also lacked the financial rewards those balmy January nights produce when his Newcastle East venue is heaving with locals and tourists alike.

Yet to Crooks, the day he completed his three-year supply contract with global soft-drink giant Coca-Cola Amatil and linked with the Central Coast’s Southern Syrups was a personal triumph. Dealing with the American multi-national was something Crooks says “he almost lost sleep over.”

His dream bar was now serving drinks from wholly-independent companies.

“I would have loved to have done that when we opened, but it was Coke or Schweppes,” Crooks tells Weekender. “There was no independent guys. With Coke, being Coke, they stitch you into a three-year contract, which has lapsed, so from that moment we got out of there. It probably means nothing to no one.”

Crooks is right. Most punters are unperturbed about what soft drink is served in a bar. Yet it reveals succinctly that drives Crooks the businessman, the entrepreneur, the visionary, the craft beer king.

Independent thinking is central to what makes Crooks tick. The 41-year-old is renown as Newcastle’s craft beer innovator. The man who predicted the bar-room evolution in taste and variety before the majority of the Hunter’s publicans believed it was possible.

Yet speaking to Crooks over a black lab milk stout from Mona Vale’s Modus Operandi it becomes clear the idea and creation of craft beer is more important to him than intense hop flavours or mouth feel. And don’t call it “craft” beer.

“The craft beer name is being hijacked for a marketing gimmick in some ways by the bigger guys, which is very much what we’re opposed to,” he says.

All 21 of the constantly-rotating taps at the Grain Store pour Australian independently-made beer. It is among a handful of bars to successfully achieve this feat in this country, which is dominated by the financial muscle of the big two in Lion (Tooheys New) and Carlton & United Breweries (VB).

The Grain Store has extended this mantra to the wine list, spirits, the kitchen menu and the almost 200 dégustation dinners it has hosted. Independent thinking has also brought success. On Monday night the Grain Store won best regional beer cafe or wine bar at the NSW Restaurant and Catering Awards for Excellence in Sydney.

“Things are changing, people are making more educated decisions about where their dollar ends up and that’s how we can do what we do,” Crooks says. “Almost everyone I buy from, I know them personally and I know their children and where they come from. It’s a phone conversation to a person, whose actually made the beer the day before. It’s a different world to the old-school world of a beer order from one multi-national, then the other multi-national.”

A downside is his wife, Kristy, places orders with hundreds of suppliers.

“From that point of view it’s not easy, but that’s a sacrifice to being true to what we do.”

Where does Crooks’ passion for independence originate? The man himself is not certain. But it’s been a life-long obsession. Crooks has beer in his veins. Raised in Tanilba Bay, schooled at Raymond Terrace High - Crooks is a fifth generation publican. 

His grandfather Brian Crooks, who he says “probably writes more letters into the Herald than anyone else,” was the long-time publican at the Oriental Hotel, now Carrington Place, in Carrington.

 Crooks began his publican career at 22 in 1997 when he became the owner-operator of the Oriental Hotel, 15 years after his grandfather.

“Every guy’s dream is to run their own pub, but there’s sacrifices that go with that,” he says. “It’s not a job, it’s a lifestyle.”

Crooks is also no bandwagon-jumper to craft beer appreciation. Even as a teenager at parties Crooks was that guy with the “weird beers.” If he couldn’t source craft beer, then it would be Coopers or Pilsner Urquell.

“I didn’t drink mainstream beer,” he says. “It was pretty handy being a young bloke and you had beer that everyone else thought tasted like crap, because they wouldn’t drink your beer.”

After beginning at the Oriental, Crooks managed Paddington’s Captain Cook Hotel, Bondi Icebergs and the University of Newcastle’s Bar On The Hill, before he made his indelible mark on the hospitality industry at the Albion Hotel in Wickham.

Slowly from 2008 to 2013 Crooks led a consortium who re-branded the pub as the Albion Alehouse and introduced a rotating list of craft beers to the taps.

The pub, which once sold 12 kegs a week of Tooheys New, was down to two when Crooks made his last order to Lion in 2011. The decision to completely dispense with mainstream beer outraged many regular drinkers, who continually attempted to order New, but the gamble prospered. The Albion Alehouse developed a strong following among beer connoisseurs and became one of the leading venues in the inaugural Newcastle Craft Beer Week in 2011.

“If you go back eight years when we started implementing a few things at the Albion, people thought, especially older publicans, that it was a fad and it would fizzle out,” Crooks says. “But’s it not. It’s not a fad or a trend. It’s just a different way.”

The Albion also proved a launching pad for Hunter brewers. Hunter Beer Co’s kölsch and Murray’s Angry Man pale ale were heavily used by Crooks. Yet both brands were well established at their own micro breweries at Nulkaba and Bob’s Farm.

One Newcastle brewer who received his big break at the Albion was Lachlan MacBean from Grainfed Brewing Company. MacBean, who learnt his trade working at Bluetongue, was pulling schooners at the Albion in December 2012 when Crooks tapped Grainfed’s Sneaky One pale ale.

Nine kegs were sold in nine days and the one-man home operation was off and running. MacBean has since extended Grainfed to five different brews, which are sold across 20 venues in the Hunter. Two weeks ago the Grain Store hosted a Grainfed Father’s Day breakfast.  

“To have someone like Corey as a venue operator that says, ‘The big boys are owned by foreign companies, so let’s support Australian, let’s support independent,’ has been a massive help to me,” MacBean says. “That’s his mantra. You’ve got to be 100 per cent Australian and independent to get a look in. We had a relationship to start, but if my beer wasn’t quality he wouldn’t take it.”

Despite the success of the Albion Alehouse, it was never Crooks’ end game. By 2012 he was actively searching for his own beer cafe to take his embrace of Australian-made ale a step further.

Crooks identified the disused former View Factory site on the corner of Scott and Telford Streets. However, his hopes of acquiring the one-time Toohey’s brewery were dashed when owners Michael and Alecia Walters took the 131-year-old building to auction, with an asking price of $2.4 million. Fortunately for Crooks, it passed in at $1.9 million and he negotiated a 10-year lease.

It was the biggest financial risk of Crooks’ career. Yet the father of two, who admits to having a “gambling mentality”, had confidence in his vision for the Grain Store.

“It this didn't work, everything we had in our life was gone,” he says. “We remortgaged our home and did everything to make this happen. That’s what many people don’t realise - if you’re not a gambler you can’t become an entrepreneur, you can’t succeed.”

Crooks is not alone in riding the craft beer wave. The Hunter has become an ale mecca. Warners At The Bay bottle shop boasts one of Australia’s most extensive ranges, Bitter & Twisted Boutique Beer Festival at Maitland Gaol regularly sells out and venues like FogHorn Brewhouse, The Hop Factory, Happy Wombat, Blind Monk and The Pourhouse have carved out their own niche.

It has been eight years since the controversial lock-out laws were introduced to curb the city’s high rate of alcohol-fuelled violence. The Grain Store, and a host of other CBD restaurants, bars and cafes are at the forefront of Newcastle’s changing night-time economy, which has germinated since 2008.

If there is anything Crooks is half as passionate about as beer, its Newcastle. He almost sounds like Malcolm Turnbull when talking about his home town. 

“It’s an exciting time to be in Newcastle,” Crooks says. “We’re not there yet. It used to be quite embarrassing. Maybe five years ago, when you had a visitor you had to duck and weave through parts of Newcastle because it looked like a bloody bomb had hit and everyone had scattered.”

Newcastle Now executive manager Michael Neilson said his business improvement association had identified craft beer as a “creative industry” and it was vital in the revitalisation of the city centre. 

“We’ve been quite interested in driving those creative industries because there’s been a real undercurrent of creativeness in the city for a long time,” Neilson says. “Unfortunately that doesn’t always generate jobs, so we’ve identified this creative industry that we’re driving towards the city.”

One gets the feeling Crooks isn’t one for tucking into a hammock with a beer and basking in his success. Challenges drive the man. However, with two young sons in Cooper, 8, and Koby, 6, he is content momentarily.

Down the track Crooks wants to expand beyond the Grain Store and even operate his own micro brewery, to bring his support of independently-made craft beer full circle.

“The Grain Store is it’s own little thing, and it works, and I wouldn’t try to muddy the waters with this, but certainly in the future, it’s the next challenge,” Crooks says.