Fixation Brewing Co (Lion/Kirin)

Brewer

Name
Fixation Brewing Co (Lion/Kirin)
Address

414 Smith Street
Collingwood
VIC 3066

Open Hours

Thurs: 4pm to 10pm
Fri: 2pm to 10pm
Sat: midday to 10pm
Sun: midday to 6pm
Takeaway
2pm to 5pm

Around 2014, we'd often hear refrains along the lines of: "Everyone's got an IPA these days." Yet it didn't take much investigation to discover that, a few exceptions apart, this was far from the case. Sure, there were plenty of one-off or occasional draught only releases hitting taps, but in terms of breweries with an IPA as part of their core range? Not so much.

However, taking a lead once more from the States, it wasn't long before reality started catching up with the hype. Just as in the USA, where IPA has become the biggest selling style within the craft beer sector, more and more Aussie brewers are upping their orders with hop suppliers and creating their own contemporary updates of one of history's most storied beers: the India pale ales with origins in 19th century England.

If you were looking for confirmation of the increasingly central role such beers are playing in Australia, the arrival of Fixation Brewing Co in late 2015 was as good as any. A joint venture between the Stone & Wood Group and former Mountain Goat sales guy Tom Delmont, it not only launched with an IPA but announced plans to brew nothing other than variations on the style.

This was more than a case of canny operators looking at market trends and jumping in with both feet, however – of all the genesis stories we've come across in our time in the Aussie beer world, few have been as serendipitous as this.

Less than a fortnight before avowed IPA fanatic Tom was to learn that his then employer, Mountain Goat, had been sold to Asahi, thus abandoning the independence that was so important to him, he'd wandered into Stone & Wood's Byron Bay home. Not knowing his way around, he walked into the office rather than the public area and found two of Stone & Wood's founders, Jamie Cook and Ross Jurisich, there. They got chatting about beer, the local industry, trends and so on, before going their separate ways.

What he didn't know then was that, following a trip to the States in early 2015, Jamie, Ross and co-founder Brad Rogers had been discussing the potential for an IPA brand in Australia. Thus, the chat with Tom fresh in their minds, when news of the Goat sale reached them the pieces began to fall into place. Just weeks later, Tom and his family were in Byron Bay overseeing the first brew of Fixation's flagship IPA.

Tom continues to travel to northern New South Wales for brew days, working closely with the brewers on recipes, with the first bottles of the IPA hitting shelves in May 2016.

The original plan for this bit of hoppy serendipity was to go slow, ensure every keg was consumed soon after leaving the brewery and build an audience slowly. Within months, it was clear that not only were their suspicions for IPA's potential in Australia bang on but that a hop hungry audience was going to need them to speed things up. And fast.

As production increased, quality was maintained, with Fixation's beers all collecting gold medals and the brewing company itself winning trophies, including Champion Medium Craft Brewery at the 2017 Craft Beer Awards and the new Consistency In Excellence medal at the 2018 Australian International Beer Awards.

Then, in September 2018, the next stage – and potentially the most exciting – in the Fixation plan was revealed: a brewpub called The Incubator in Collingwood's Smith Street. It's a home for the brewery and also a place for its brewers to experiment on a 600 litre system with ten taps destined to pour all manner of IPAs, from the hazy to the high ABV and from the fruity to the rye.

The brewpub's opening has seen the number of limited releases – both on tap there and appearing in cans, often under the Freshly Hatched banner – increase significantly, at the same time as the brewery's core beers have continued to bring awards success.

In August 2021, Fixation became part of the craft portfolio at Lion/Kirin following the sale of parent company Fermentum to the multinational.

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Stories featuring Fixation Brewing Co (Lion/Kirin)

Core Range

Fixation Brewing Little Ray Hazy IPA
Hazy IPA
5.2%
Fixation Brewing Obsession Session IPA
Session IPA
4.6%
Fixation Squish Citrus IPA (can)
Citrus IPA
5.9%
Fixation Brewing IPA
West Coast IPA
6.4%
Fixation Brewing Easey Street
Mid-Strength
3.7%

Limited Releases

Fixation Brewing Freshly Hatched: Ghost Chips NZ Hazy IPA
NZ Hazy IPA
8.0%
Fixation Brewing Freshly Hatched: Double Down Brown
Coffee India Brown Ale
7.0%
Fixation Brewing Freshly Hatched: 24 Hr Mini Golf
Oat Cream DIPA
8.4%
Fixation Freshly Hatched: Mez Dorado IPA
Spiced Kettle Sour IPA
6.8%
Fixation Brewing Pink Guava & Airing Of Grievances
Fruit Beer & Hazy IPA
5.8% & 6.8%
Fixation Brewing Freshly Hatched: 30666
Imperial Red IPA
9.666%
Fixation Brewing Straight To DVD, Deep Green, Sparkle & Fade & Piece Of Cake
Various IPAs
6.5% & 7.0% & 8.2% &
Fixation Brewing Freshly Hatched #3: Danker Things
TDH Hazy IPA
7.0%
Fixation Mighty Boy, 100, Blues For The Red Sun & Social Space
Various IPAs
4.8% & 6.4% & 7.0% & 8.5%
Fixation Brewing You Tell Me, Symbiotic Robotic & Blush
NEIPA & Black IPA & Sour IPA
6.8% & 5.4% & 4.7%
Fixation Brewing You're On Mute, Hearing Colours, Oi! & Seismic Wave
IPAs
& 5.2% & 6.7% & 5.8%
Fixation Brewing Fall & Quick Fix
Oat Cream IPA & Kveik IPA
6.3% & 5.9%
Fixation Brewing Danker Things & Half Cut
Hazy IPA & Hazy Mid-Strength
7.0% & 3.5%
Fixation Brewing Dreamseeker IPA
IPA
7.2%
Fixation Brewing Totally Rad, Don't Brett On It & Paw Paw Pow
Radler, Brett IPA, Fruit DIPA
3.2% & 5.7% & 7.8%
Fixation Recliner & NSR & Hop Tingle & Midnight Sun IPAs
IPAs
5.8% & 5.2% & 6.5% & 6.8%
Fixation Brewing TNT Express
IPA
6.2%
Fixation Brewing Wet Hop 2019
Wet Hop IPA
6.9%
Fixation & Wizard State Of Mind Hazy IPA
Hazy IPA
Fixation Brewing Dew Respect & Max Volume IIIPA
Milkshake IPA & Triple IPA
7.0% & 11.2%
Fixation Brewing The 86 Hazy IPA
Hazy IPA
6.2%
Fixation Brewing Tropical IPA
Tropical IPA
5.9%
Fixation Brewing Rye IPA
Rye IPA
7.5%
Fixation Brewing The Fix (Bottles)
Double IPA
8.2%
Fixation SQUISH Citrus IPA
Citrus IPA
5.9%
Fixation Brewing The Fix
Double IPA
8.2%