New South Wales

After operating a small (250-litre) pilot brewery at Rydalmere since mid-year, Riverside Brewing Company have recently moved to larger premises at North Parramatta. The company has also installed a larger 2,000-litre brewery, obtained from Mountain Goat in Melbourne, who have themselves recently up-sized (see below). Riverside will officially launch its products this summer.

Also in the pipeline, Illawarra Brewing Company is moving to larger premises at North Wollongong, around the corner from their present cramped home, and 4 Pines has ordered a new 50hL DME brewing system, to be installed at Brookvale, a few kilometres away from their existing brewery and harbour-side bar at Manly. Brewing will continue at Manly after the new brewery comes on line probably early in 2012.

Victoria

The old family-owned wine-making business, Booths Taminick Cellars, near Glenrowan, has recently become the home to a new small brewery. The beer side of this business, which goes by the name Black Dog Brewery, is operated by James Booth. He and his father, Peter, are winemakers for the family business. At present, beers are produced in tiny 75-litre batches.

In the Melbourne suburb of Richmond, Mountain Goat Brewery has installed a new 25hL DME brewhouse to replace their old system, acquired in 1999 from the then recently defunct Geebung Polo Club Brewery at Auburn. This old plant has been given a new home by Riverside Brewing at Parramatta. At Brunswick East, Temple Brewing Company opened for business on 19 December, just in time for Christmas.

After occupying the former Stockade Brewery premises at Dandenong South for the past nearly-seven years, Matilda Bay Garage Brewery has quietly moved to a new and bigger site closer to Melbourne. The equipment from Dandenong South has been re-installed in a building formerly occupied by Cadbury Schweppes in Bertie Street, Port Melbourne (south side of the Yarra River), and beer production resumed there in December. This new brewery will differ from its predecessor in that it will soon include a public drinking facility.The Matilda Bay brewery remains, however, geographically confused; it is named after a place in Perth, is ostensibly based at Port Melbourne, and most of its beer production takes place in Tasmania.

And at Geelong, work has commenced on the new Little Creatures Brewery, being developed at the historic Valley Woollen Mills site in Swanston Street. It is planned to begin brewing there in late 2012. Little World Beverages, the parent company of Little Creatures, entered into an agreement to purchase the site late in 2010. Elsewhere in Geelong, the Scottish Chiefs Tavern closed recently and has been reopened as a Taco Bill Mexican eatery. The microbrewery on the premises, which first came into production in early 1990, has been used for the last couple of years by Dan Cunningham of Barwon Heads to produce his Beacon brand of beer.

South Australia

McLaren Vale Brewing Co. has recently taken delivery of a 35-hL DME brewing system, to be installed in an industrial shed at Willunga, near McLaren Vale. The company launched its first beer, Vale Ale, in November 2007, but this and its other products have been brewed in New South Wales, at Australian Independent Breweries, Smeaton Grange. It was hoped to begin brewing at Willunga before the end of 2011, but early 2012 is now the expected date.

Western Australia

Back in 2010, Brew 42 moved from its original home at Allanson near Collie to the Lake Clifton Tavern and Motel near the eastern shore of Lake Clifton, between Mandurah and Bunbury. Since then, another brewery has opened beside Lake Clifton. It is associated with the Cape Bouvard Winery, several kilometres north of Brew 42. The brewery part of Cape Bouvard Winery and Brewery, with a tiny 200-litre brew length, opened in July this year, and is another venture of Peter McAppion, who is also associated with the Black Salt Brewery at North Fremantle.

At Willyabrup, in the Margaret River district, The Grove Vineyard, Winery and Liqueur Factory has recently added beer brewing to its already diverse range of activities. Brewing commenced there in March 2011, using a 90-litre batch-size ‘nanobrewery’, and starting with a Blood Orange IPA. Presently, three beers are available on tap at the brewery.

Another new microbrewery in the south-west is the Boston Brewery, recently opened at the Willoughby Park Winery near Denmark. The basis of this brewery is the original equipment from the Colonial Brewery at Margaret River, which installed a new brewhouse in 2010. Also due to open soon (this summer) is the Cheeky Monkey Brewery and Cidery at Margaret River.

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