Sailors Grave Brewing

Sometimes, even with hindsight, it's hard to work out why some things catch one's eye more than others. Case in point being Sailors Grave Brewing.

The Orbost brewery first came to our attention when we spotted a regional newspaper article on Chris and Gab Moore's plans to open a brewery in an historic, rundown butter factory in remote East Gippsland. Given there were plenty of brewing companies launching every month at the time, there was no reason for this to stand out.

Yet, for some reason, it lodged itself in the Crafty brain like an earworm. Perhaps it was because one of our writers is from Gippsland and has a passion for Australian history. That said, as the writer in question pointed out, Gippsland is bloody huge and Orbost is nowhere near where he's from. But, when he put together the story, it turned out his great, great grandfather was the original boss of the butter factory and he knew the last guy to run it before it closed in the 50s.

Then, when we published his story, we realised the Crafty clan would be passing through Orbost for the first time two weeks hence, thus had to opportunity to call in and grab some of the beers that had barely reached Melbourne at the time. The cosmos seemed to be dropping hints of some sort...

Cutting to the chase, call in we did and took a tour of the brewery, at which the Moores have done a great job of bringing part of the old factory back to life and creating something like nothing else you'll stumble across in this part of regional Victoria: its facade bears their uniquely childlike and colourful branding (of which more later) that stands out a mile from the rest of the town's buildings. We left with a case of the first three canned beers (canned on their own line) and an invitation to stay on their family farm on the way back through. This might seem a trivial detail but the stop allowed us to sample the last bottle of a three-year-old homebrewed lambic style beer that hinted at where Chris wants to take Sailors Grave.

So what else do we know about the brewery? We know that the Moores founded successful Darlinghurst restaurant The Commons and ran it for four years before selling up, starting a family and moving back to the coast. We know that they spent some of the intervening years touring the States visiting rural breweries doing cool stuff to get inspiration for their own grand plan. And we know that they have a singular vision that looks set to help them stand out in the ever busier marketplace – and not just because of where they're based.

The beers, for one, are far from common or garden. Their session ale is a gose using locally farmed seaweed, their first limited release was a mandarin Berliner Weisse using fresh fruit from a local farmer that responded to their shout out on Facebook, and they followed that with a whisky sour take on the style, as well as a saison featuring ingredients from the family farm. It's a farm that was started by Gab's parents, local abalone farmers, hence their desire to showcase as much of the region's produce in their beers as possible.

Then there's the look and feel of the brand. They wanted something innocent and different from everything else seen on shelves and decals and found a children's book illustrator whose work they loved on Pinterest. He lived in Cornwall so, in lieu of payment, they invited him to come and live with them for a while, thus enjoying a holiday in Australia, getting to know them well and, ultimately, coming up with the brand and packaging for the first 20 beers (yes, they've thought that far ahead).

As for the name Sailors Grave, it references a local reef that's brought down many a ship in the past and is a theme that continues through the beers too.

Within a few months of opening, it was clear it wasn't just the eyes of The Crafty Pint that had been captured, as they'd garnered a fair bit of buzz around Melbourne's beer circles and were started to dip into the Sydney market too. Since then, they've continued to send their beers far and wide, including into overseas markets (they've got a fan base in Japan, and now release a series of beers fermented on sake lees).

The diversity of releases has only become broader, as have the collaborators either contributing ingredients or ideas for their beers, a list that includes restaurants, other drinks producers, and Dark Emu author Bruce Pascoe.

In 2021, they unveiled hugely exciting and ambitious plans for a new development in their spiritual home of Cape Conran. Dunetown will not only become home to a new brewery and venue, but other likeminded businesses will be welcomed too, creating a unique tourist destination; read more about that [here](

You can now enjoy their beers at source too, with the opening of a cellar door at the Orbost butter factory: six taps plus much more in cans, as well as food trucks and, on occasion, suitably inventive events. Funky beers and a warm welcome overlooking the Snowy River – what's not to like?

Name
Sailors Grave Brewing
Address

7 Forest Road
Orbost
VIC 3888

Open Hours

Friday: 2pm to 9pm
Saturday: midday to 9pm
Sunday: midday to 6pm
And by appointment

Tours

By appointment


This is a directory listing. To find out more, head here

The Specials

Sailors Grave Sea Bird & Suleimelon The Magnificent
Sailors Grave Bloody Caesar, It's A Big Dill, The Fool
Sailors Grave & Friends Let Them Eat Cake, The Fruit Thereof & Double Sunk
Sailors Grave Biru Sake & Satsuma Plum 2023
Sailors Grave UNI
Sailors Grave Leviathan & Eternal Sunshine
Sailors Grave Swamp Thing & Sunken Bounty
Sailors Grave Black & Blue & Nitro Honey Bush Braggot
Good Land & Sailors Grave Good To The Grave
Sailors Grave, Brewski & Beermash Strawberry & Rhubarb Pie
Sailors Grave In The Rip 2022 & Silver King
Show 50 more

Sailors Grave Brewing Regulars

Sailors Grave Sou' East Draught

Published May 23, 2017
Sailors Grave does have supporters in its local region in the far east of Victoria – even some that drink its beers as well as those that appreciate the arrival of a quirky new business making use of East Gippsland's abundant produce. But there are plenty more for whom the thought of a raspberry grisette or seaweed gose is, as things stand, about as appealing a thought as a punch in the face. All in good time... So the Moores decided to create a beer with their local pubs and clubs in mind: the… Read more
Style
Beer
ABV
4.8%

Sailors Grave Drowned Man IPA

If there's one thing the early releases from Sailors Grave tell us, it's that Chris Moore prefers to deal in subtleties. Although, with the Drowned Man – tagged a session IPA – you have the exception that proves the rule. At less than 5 percent ABV, it's certainly in session territory and, with Chris having a palate that appreciates bold bitterness, it packs a punch that takes it into IPA territory. It's an all US hop affair, with these contributing citrus, pine and spicy characters, while, as… Read more
Style
Session IPA
ABV
4.8%

Sailors Grave Southern Right Ale

The darkest drop in Sailors Grave's core range is the Southern Right Ale. It's a beer inspired by German altbiers and the rich malt profiles of some French farmhouse ales, but you could also look at English ESBs for a point of reference. Either way, it's a beer in which malt takes centre stage. A blend of specialty malts deliver flavours and aromas that range from caramel and toffee to biscuit like to distinctly nutty – hints of beer nuts and toasted hazelnuts and pecans too. It's loaded up with… Read more
Style
Altbier
ABV
4.8%

Sailors Grave Down She Gose

As a statement of intent – and a spot of zeitgeist capturing – announcing your brewery to the world with a gose, the old German sour wheat beer style that's enjoying a global renaissance, is a pretty bold move. Making it a gose that features seaweed among its ingredient list cements the message that this isn't a brewery that's going to play things safe. It's a beer that acts as a microcosm of Sailors Grave: it stands out from the crowd; it's subtle; and it makes a feature of locally sourced produce… Read more
Style
Seaweed Gose
ABV
4.5%

Sailors Grave Brewing Specials

Sailors Grave Sea Bird & Suleimelon The Magnificent

Published May 29, 2023
What do beer styles mean these days? Sometimes plenty: when brewers are attempting to recreate a classic, perhaps, or when judges sit down to decide the trophies in an awards competition. Sometimes bugger all: when brewers are embarking upon wild experiments or conjuring hybrids that are part of the reason "Specialty Beer" categories can become swollen at such beer awards. Take Sailors Grave's Sea Bird. It's called a Belgian pale and is indeed pale and fermented with a Belgian yeast strain.… Read more
Style
Hazy Belgian Pale & Melon Gose
ABV
Both 5.2%

Sailors Grave Bloody Caesar, It's A Big Dill, The Fool

Published April 23, 2023
It doesn't hurt to set expectations here by laying out some of the less-than-traditional ingredients to be found within this autumnal trio from Sailors Grave: Goshen Country Roma tomato water, Wapengo Rocks wild organic oysters, Force Of Nature Crystal Apple, Little Potato, Lemon and Armenian cucumbers, Chappy's Organic Dill Seed Spice Mix, strawberries, rhubarb, cinnamon, cardamom and vanilla. If you're reeling a little, rest assured that they feature in a trio of beers, not just one. The first… Read more
Style
Tomato & Oyster Gose, Pickle Gose & Imperial Cream Pie Sour
ABV
5.0% & 5.2% & 6.6%

Sailors Grave & Friends Let Them Eat Cake, The Fruit Thereof & Double Sunk

Published March 17, 2023
Now, I was well aware that this year – recent weeks, in particular – had been insanely busy, but it took the arrival of a third Sailors Grave limited release in my fridge at once to realise that, gee, it was even impacting my beer-drinking. And that simply won't do... In typical Sailors Grave fashion, there's little to obviously link them – except here they're all collaborations of one sort or another. Let Them Eat Cake sees them become the first Aussies to trial innovative infused malts from… Read more
Style
Variou Styles As Indicated
ABV
7.0% & 6.5% & 5.0%

Sailors Grave Biru Sake & Satsuma Plum 2023

Published February 15, 2023
It's been a while – three years, if our record-keeping is in decent shape – since we last made our acquaintance with Biru from Sailors Grave, a beer fermented on sake kasu (lees*) and finished with satsuma plums. The beer returns slightly altered from its 2020 iteration, a little higher in alcohol content and now in 440ml cans too. While the liquid started out as a "pale tart beer", it's testament to the impact of the fruit that by the time it reaches your glass Biru pours a crimson… Read more
Style
Fruited Sour Ale
ABV
5.3%

Sailors Grave UNI

Published December 22, 2022
UNI isn't a new release from Sailors Grave, but it's one we've somehow omitted to tackle on past appearances and which is likely to be a little different with each release due to the nature of its making. What's more, it feels like it's about as Sailors Grave a beer as one could conceptualise. Not only is it a gose but it features wild harvested Mallacoota sea urchins from a local diver (which brings to mind brewery co-founder Gab's family history as abalone farmers) as well as lemon myrtle from… Read more
Style
Gose with Sea Urchins & Lemon Myrtle
ABV
4.5%

Sailors Grave Leviathan & Eternal Sunshine

Published December 8, 2022
Sailors Grave have always been great storytellers, using the medium of beer and brewing to shine a light on producers and causes close to their hearts. With this pair they've inadvertently brought to mind a couple of my favourite storytellers too. In the case of Leviathan Kolsch – complete with a leviathan of the depths seeing off a couple of unfortunate souls in a sort of dark Dr Seuss vision on its labels – it's a flashback to Nick Cave and Warren Ellis' transcendental performance at Hanging… Read more
Style
Kolsch & Hazy IPA
ABV
5.0% & 7.5%

Sailors Grave Swamp Thing & Sunken Bounty

Published September 30, 2022
Besides forcing me to fight the urge to put on The Grid's novelty-techno earworm of the same name [don't fight it, feel it, James], the arrival of Swamp Thing from Sailors Grave offers another chance to see how the brewers fare when tackling a more-normal-than-their-standard-fare, hop-driven beer. Past experience has shown that, while they favour the esoteric, the East Gippsland crew tend to do such things with aplomb. In this case, you have a black IPA with the appearance of a robust porter and… Read more
Style
Black IPA & Nitro Coconut Stout
ABV
6.5% & 5.2%

Sailors Grave Black & Blue & Nitro Honey Bush Braggot

Published August 9, 2022
I'm the sort of person so lacking in maturity that, upon meeting someone who told me their mother hailed from Malta at the weekend, I couldn't help but rehash one of the awful jokes my dad used to have on repeat in my youth – the one that ends with the line: "Poke them in the eyes." As such, I seem to be unable to consider Sailors Grave's Black & Blue without thinking about the gag: "What's black and white and red all over?" This despite the fact the beer is called Black… Read more
Style
Fruit Berliner Weisse & Nitro Honey Braggot
ABV
5.0% & 5.4%

Good Land & Sailors Grave Good To The Grave

Published August 1, 2022
Travel back just a few years and you'd have struggled to line up a collaboration brew between Gippsland brewers; Loch and their trad English styles and Bullant with their Bruthen brewpub were pretty much the brewing scene for this vast swathe of Victoria. It's a very different situation now, one that's been celebrated by Traralgon-based Good Land Brewing on the occasion of their first birthday. As part of the festival they hosted at their brewpub, they invited the team at Sailors Grave to join them… Read more
Style
Dark Rye Farmhouse Ale
ABV
6.0%

Sailors Grave, Brewski & Beermash Strawberry & Rhubarb Pie

Published June 15, 2022
While Pint of Origin Week (or not-Good Beer Week, whichever you prefer) was light on international visitors compared to the glory days of GBW, when it came to international beers vast swathes of the planet were represented with aplomb. And at Beermash – host of Scandinavia's beers once again in 2022 – they went above and beyond and asked some of their featured brewers to create collabs with locals. We've already written about the Edge / Omnipollo creation, and here's the one conceived by Sailors… Read more
Style
Fruit Cream Sour
ABV
6.6%
Stockists

And Sailors Grave stockists

Sailors Grave In The Rip 2022 & Silver King

Published May 9, 2022
Cast your minds back to summer and, were you one of those who tucked into the Great Brew Challenge boxes from NZ Hops, you'll have tried Sailors Grave's Bitter Bitter Bitter – their take on De Ranke's classic XXX Bitter. When invited to take part in a more recent celebration of hops – Bridge Road Brewers' High Country Hop festival – they returned to similar territory, this time using fresh organic Centennial hops from Ryefield Hops within a Belgian IPA. Similarities between the two beers pretty… Read more
Style
Wet Hop Belgian IPA & Corn Lagerq
ABV
5.8% & 5.2%

Sailors Grave Tall Table Beer

Published February 28, 2022
Table beers are appearing with greater frequency than ever before in Australia right now. OK, so there’s still bugger all of them, but I’ve seen maybe four of five new ones appear in the past few months, and coming from a base of near-zero, that means we’re well into record-breaking territory. Sailors Grave released one back in 2019 too – This Is Not A Table – but this one is a bit of a milestone for the Gippsland crew. It’s the first commercial release featuring a new house culture that… Read more
Style
Table Beer
ABV
5.0%
Stockists

Initially, only available on tap at Sailors Grave's cellar door

And in their Deckhand subscription boxes

Sailors Grave Dry-Hopped Raspberry & Elderflower Grisette

Published February 9, 2022
Sailors Grave have released so many beers in their relatively short existence, and have a tendency to bring limited releases back as and when they feel like it, that it can be hard to recall with ease whether some are debutants or old faces making a return visit. Their Dry-Hopped Raspberry & Elderflower Grisette sits in the latter category, although when cans turned up in the latest delivery of their Deck Hands member's packs, I did have to double check it was the beer I thought it was. Indeed… Read more
Style
Grisette
ABV
4.3%

NZ Hops 2022: Molly Rose & Sailors Grave

Published January 14, 2022
Scroll down for links to more NZ Hops beers There's a risk inherent in a project like this – inviting a stack of brewers to create beers showcasing hops first and foremost – that you'll end up with a parade of IPAs. You can also assume that when it comes to Molly Rose they'll follow a different path; not this time, however, as the Collingwood brewers contribute one of eight IPAs within the dozen beers. That said, we know how diverse the world of IPA is these days, and here Molly Rose use a strain… Read more
Style
Kveik IPA & Belgian Pale Ale
ABV
6.2% & 5.8%
Stockists

You can order packs from Carwyn Cellars here

Then join NZ Hops for a virtual tasting with growers and brewers on February 5

Sailors Grave Squid vs Whale V & Grapefruit & Chrysanthemum Flower Ale

Published December 8, 2021
It's fair to say that a beer loaded with a "maelstrom of hops" that weighs in at 7 percent ABV isn't the sort instantly associated with Sailors Grave, yet Squid vs Whale has proven so popular it's now up to its fifth edition. V comes in a smaller can than its predecessors, but packs no less character. If memory serves correctly, it doesn’t seem as dense visually but delivers familiar oat cream characters. It's all about rich, creamy oranges and apricots from start to finish, with said… Read more
Style
Oat Cream IPA & Fruited Farmouse Ale
ABV
7.0% & 5.4%

Sailors Grave The Bloody Butcher, Icarus Star & Sake Kasu - Nashi & Shincha Tea

Published October 13, 2021
There's no slowing down the experimentation and collaboration at Sailors Grave, with multiple different beers flying out of their home in quick succession for spring 2021. Among the latest is The Bloody Butcher, a corn lager brewed with the grain growers at Teurong Farm on the Mornington Peninsula which uses their Nixtamalised Bloody Butcher corn, along with Saaz hops from Ryefield. Red corn might not be too standard a beer ingredient (though it’s certainly standard enough when we're talking about… Read more
Style
Various
ABV
4.5% & 6.5% & 4.5%

Sailors Grave Brewing Rite & Deep Into The Forest

Published August 16, 2021
Sailors Grave’s Deckhand is the Orbost brewery’s membership club which sees them ship a dozen beers every couple of much to their thirsty fans, or salty seadogs as they're occasionally known. It typically includes a mix of core range beers, limited releases and new beers and included in August's box are these two new ones, which are also more widely available. Rite is the latest in the brewery's collaborative Jerra Ngia - story you, story me - series with Nura Gunya; an education and cultural… Read more
Style
Native Cherry Wood Smoked Porter & Stout
ABV
5.2% & 5.5%

Sailors Grave & Meatsmith The Bone Yard

Published May 28, 2021
Melbourne specialist butcher and wine merchants Meatsmith have a close relationship with East Gippsland brewers Sailors Grave and, for Good Beer Week 2021, hosted an event together called The Bone Yard. The name has also been given to their first collab, a beer featuring some of Meatsmith's brother as well as kelp (so, not one for vegetarians), making it the second "meat beer" we've featured on the site in one month, following Willie The Boatman's lamb souva beer that debuted at GABS. Here… Read more
Style
Umami Ale
ABV
5.0%

Bridge Road, Range Brewing & Sailors Grave DDH Oat Cream Mango Pale

Published May 21, 2021
For quite some years, Bridge Road Brewers hosts a hop harvest festival in Beechworth, the High Country Hop. As part of that, they now invite some other brewers to join them to pour beer at the festival and join them in a collaborative brew. For 2021, Range and Sailors Grave were the friends who came along and added their experience, talent and creativity to the mix (unfortunately Range missed 99 percent of the festival, having been required to spend most of it in their hotel room awaiting a COVID… Read more
Style
DDH Oat Cream Mango Pale
ABV
5.8%

Sailors Grave In The Rip, Honey Bush Braggot & Rhubarb Harvest Ale

Published April 13, 2021
Three separate autumn 2021 releases from Sailors Grave really capture the Orbost brewers love for harvesting and collaborating. In the Rip is a Belgian pale ale made with Centenniel hops from the family-run Ryefield (who you can read more about here). Both the Belgian yeast notes and the fresh hops provide quite punchy fruit notes so it’s a little hard to tell what’s causing which flavour dive in and find honey, light stonefruit and lemon or lime rind in a beer that has overall herbaceous notes… Read more
Style
Various
ABV
4.5%, 5.6% & 5%

Sailors Grave #Fuckenthing

Published April 9, 2021
Close to two years ago, Chris and Gab Moore at Sailors Grave lost a close friend. In 2021, as a celebration of his life, they've created a beer in his honour. Andrew King was a rep for Genovese Coffee while the Moores were running a restaurant in Sydney and the beer, #Fuckenthing, features Ethiopian Kedamai from that roastery, with each can in the four-pack covered different artwork and phrases from Andrew’s Instagram. As for the beer, while many brewers making beer with coffee opt for a stout… Read more
Style
Raspberry, Coffee & Cream Gose
ABV
5.4%

Sailors Grave First Harvest Hayzy, AMA & Magic Pudding

Published February 15, 2021
Could there be anything more Sailors Grave than plastering "Brewed With Silage" on the label of a beer? Choosing to brew a beer with "pasture grasses fermented anaerobically with naturally occurring lactic acid bacteria" in celebration of a bumper hay crop nails so much of what the East Gippsland brewers are about: farmers unafraid to experiment with any natural ingredient they can get their hands on, and eager to celebrate the natural bounty of their home region. The beer in… Read more
Style
Hayzy Pale, Gose & Christmas Ale
ABV
6.1% & 5.0% & 5.8%

Sailors Grave Dark Emu Dark Lager

Published November 25, 2020
Gab and Chris Moore at Sailors Grave have collaborated with many people and in may ways over their relatively short existence to date. Yet this project with Bruce Pascoe – which we wrote about here – is one that's particularly close to their heart. While that article goes into more detail about the genesis of and reasons for Dark Emu – the project, the beer is here now too. The key element is the use of mamadyang ngalluk and burru ngalluk grass seed harvested by Yuin people on the banks of… Read more
Style
Dark Lager
ABV
4.8%

Sailors Grave Hot Dram & Original Sin Snakebite

Published October 21, 2020
The arch-collaborators are at it again – both Sailors Grave and Blackhearts & Sparrows – with the pair joining forces once more for Hot Dram and the former also releasing a beer-cider hybrid with fellow East Gippsland producers Gurneys. Hot Dram is a whisky sour-inspired beer: a Berliner Weisse initially split in two – one portion infused with caramelised oranges, the other aged in Starward whisky barrels – then blended. It's a hazy golden pour with just a hint of apricot blush and a… Read more
Style
Barrel-Aged Berliner Weisse & Snakebite
ABV
5.8% & 6.7%
Stockists

And all other Blackhearts stores

Sailors Grave Embers & Law Of The Tongue 2020

Published July 15, 2020
They've brewed all manner of beers over their short existence to date yet if you were to ask a beer lover what they thought of when they pictured a Sailors Grave beer, they're most likely to come up with something farmhouse, funky or foraged (or all three). Along the way, however, the Moores have put out some more "normal" beers and, when they do, they're often really bloody good. Think of the Squid vs Whale lactose IPA series or the hop-heavy Fields V2 hazy farmhouse pale. You can now… Read more
Style
Red IPA & Smoky Oyster Stout
ABV
6.2% & 5.8%

Sailors Grave Sake Kasu & Satsuma Plum, Lager Lager Lager & Garden State

Published May 11, 2020
If you were a recipient of the Quarantinnies boxes in which Sailors Grave's latest Sake Kasu beer appeared, you've probably necked it already. But given it's such a tasty drop we thought we'd best include it in this round up of their autumn 2020 releases. Looking not dissimilar to a heavy pinot noir in the glass, this combination of imported sake lees and plums from within a shirt stroll of the Moores' house holds back little on its sour, acidic side and the fruit is to the fore too, yet there's… Read more
Style
Sake Sour & Pilsner & Spiced Pale
ABV
5.0% & 5.0% & 4.7%

Watts River & Sailors Grave Horse To Water

Published April 22, 2020
About midway through 2019, Sailors Grave made a detour on one of their many journeys between East Gippsland and Melbourne to stop in at Healesville. There they brewed a beer with Watts River and, given the combined love for farmhouse style beers and brewing with Brett the breweries share, there was only really one way that collaboration was going to go. Horse To Water is a farmhouse ale that was brewed with pineapple sage before healthy doses of actual pineapple and Brettanomyces were added to the… Read more
Style
Pineapple Farmhouse Ale
ABV
6.2%

Sailors Grave & Blackhearts Minted Watermelon Cool-Aid Sour Ale

Published April 13, 2020
Blackhearts & Sparrows have been collaborating with local producers more and more in the past couple of years and one of their favourite partners is Sailors Grave. The kindred spirits joined forces over summer once more, this time to produce the snappily titled Minted Watermelon Cool-Aid Sour Ale. It was launched earlier in the year, but given how 2020 has been it's slipped through the cracks a little, meaning you'll still find it at Blackhearts stores if that's your kind of thing. And what is… Read more
Style
Watermelon & Mint Berliner Weisse
ABV
4.7%
Stockists

And other Blackhearts stores

Sailors Grave Crystal Healing 2020

Published January 24, 2020
Crystal Healing first appeared in March 2019 and, when it did so, came in two formats. There was the collab with Stomping Ground and Little Latin Lucy, a gose featuring crystal apple cucumbers, then the canned version that went further afield and featured additional ingredients in the form of karkalla (pigface) and prickly pear. The former wasn't seen outside the venues and the odd event, but now it's back and in cans. The karkalla-and-prickly pear-less version retains that wild, windswept, rustic… Read more
Style
Fruit Gose
ABV
4.8%

Sailors Grave Skull Rock Gose

Published November 14, 2019
Sailors Grave launched with a gose as part of their initial lineup, back when the beer style was still starting to gain traction in Australia, and have returned to it many times since. Here, with Skull Rock, they do so again, albeit in a manner that's rather different to those that have gone before. Sure, they've used the beer as an opportunity to showcase East Gippsland's bounty, with locally grown Alestar malt joined by indigenous Karkalla (AKA pigface) and Mentha australis (AKA native river mint).… Read more
Style
Gose
ABV
4.5%

Sailors Grave Squid vs Whale Hop Maelstrom 4

Published October 18, 2019
Cramming mountains of hops into a beer isn't the sort of activity you typically associate with Sailors Grave. But it's what they do with their Squid vs Whale beers – as the Hop Maelstrom subtitle tells you. It's now into its fourth iteration, with Galaxy, Idaho Gem and Citra the weapons of choice for the lightly lactosed IPA this time around. Apparently, brewer Chris Moore suggested to the team he may have gone a little too far with the hops this time. [Isn't that the whole point of the industry… Read more
Style
IPA
ABV
6.4%

Sailors Grave This Is Not A Table & Into The Pines 2019

Published October 18, 2019
How do you make a low ABV farmhouse-inspired table beer any more Sailors Grave? How about dropping a reference to Magritte? In character, This Is Not A Table ticks plenty of the boxes they've made for themselves, rather than those you might have come across in other table beers (think honey like malts and Belgian golden ale esters). Instead it's leaner and more earthy, initially hay like but with a cloudy creaminess once quaffed then a farmhouse and Cashmere-Sorachi Ace hop-derived zestiness. The… Read more
Style
Table Beer & Brown Ale
ABV
3.5% & 5.4%

Sailors Grave Prodigal Sun & Root Beer

Published August 23, 2019
The ever innovative Sailors Grave are proving popular collaborators and seem happy to accept the invitations coming their way. Here are two more joint ventures, with Prodigal Sun a psychedelically-livoried concoction conceived with Earl's Juke Joint in Newtown. Inspired by the venue's El Chooky cocktail, it comes with a suitably Sailors Grave genesis: kettle soured and laden with red malts, various citrus fruits, coconut and bitter aperitif as well as Citra and Cascade hops. It kicks off with a cherry… Read more
Style
Spiced Dark Sour & Boozy Root Beer
ABV
4.6% & 5.0%

Sailors Grave Fields V2 & Harvest Ale & Sake Kasu Persimmon

Published June 17, 2019
You likely know to expect the unexpected when it comes to Sailors Grave by now. But, even so, would you have expected them to put out one of the better locally-brewed hazy, juicy releases? Maybe, if you'd tucked into their Squid vs Whale IPAs, but more likely not. Yet, with Fields V2 – the second in their "Hoppy Hazy Juicy Farmhouse" series, they're up there. Bringing an intensity that wasn't there in V1, it's as if someone has pierced an overripe Navel orange and squeezed it right under… Read more
Style
Various styles
ABV
5.7% & 5.0% & 4.7%

Sailors Grave Fields vol.1

Published March 26, 2019
If there's one thing you can say with certainty about Sailors Grave, it's that they don't release enough new beers every year. Who are we kidding? I suspect Gab and Chris have an underground army of Doozers working away day and night on beers to keep the Moore family happy and thus less likely to devour the underground home the workers have so lovingly built while tending to the various yeast and lacto strains and overseeing the multiple ferments underway in their East Gippsland caves. At least,… Read more
Style
Hoppy Farmhouse Ale
ABV
5.4%

Sailors Grave Blood Moon Altocumulus & Crystal Healing

Published March 26, 2019
Picture the scene: you're sat in the Stone Circle at Glastonbury, awaiting sunrise over the valley below, when the friendly hippy you've been chatting to offers you a swig of their drink. Six hours later, you're in the Green Fields with beads in your hair, chanting, and handing out free massages to passers-by. And you're not totally sure how you got there. If such an occasion needed beers to go with it, Sailors Grave should be able to step up to the oche: Into The Pines, Tangerine Dream, Dead Will… Read more
Style
Berliner Weisse & Gose
ABV
4.6% & 4.7%

Sailors Grave Summer Farmhouse 2019

Published February 22, 2019
The first of Sailors Grave's seasonal farmhouse ales for 2019 has snuck out of the Orbost brewery just in time to still be seasonally appropriate. The quartet of annual releases typically operate upon a saison-esque base from which the team launches into a flight of fancy armed with fruits, flowers, weeds and whatever they can get their hands on in Gippsland. In this case, at play are lees from Lightfoot & Sons Chardonnay, strawberries and rhubarb "from Joe's garden" and foraged fennel… Read more
Style
Spiced Farmhouse Ale
ABV
5.2%

Sailors Grave My Little Juicy Farmhouse

Published February 15, 2019
When someone uses the phrase, "You can't judge a book by its cover" it's usually to suggest you'll find more depth and complexity once you dig beneath the surface. But what about a cover that speaks of a "big creamy citrus hit", "mild funkiness", "a cocktail of yeasts", "local Chardonnay lees", homegrown grapefruit and "foraged wild plums"? What could possibly be lurking within such a mélange of ingredients, for it is they that make up… Read more
Style
Farmhouse Ale
ABV
5.4%

Sailors Grave & Blackhearts & Sparrows Refreshing Cherry Ale

Published January 17, 2019
Around this time in 2018, the entities that are Sailors Grave and Melbourne purveyors of fine booze Blackhearts & Sparrows joined forces to create a beer together. It was inspired by American orange cream soda and was a lively, refreshing affair. And now they've looked to do something similar, albeit with cherries, inspired, quite possibly, by the fact the bottleshop group's beer buyer is called Cherry. As we've come to expect from the Gippsland crew by now, ingredients are handled with a degree… Read more
Style
Cherry Cream Sour
ABV
4.6%

Sailors Grave Summer Pudding

Published January 17, 2019
Over the unofficial Melbourne Cup long weekend in 2018, the Crafty Pint crew and friends were joined in the campsite by the family behind Sailors Grave. Thus we had access to a beer fridge larger than a coffin and the sort of low ABV fruity refresher ideal for long, lazy days (not to mention some quite spectacular dancing, but that's for another occasion...). Tucked at the bottom, underneath the various cans, was a mini-keg filled with a yet-to-be-released beer: their submission for the Carwyn Canvent… Read more
Style
Berry Cream Sour
ABV
4.8%

Sailors Grave Blood and Sand & Grapefruit and Yuzu

Published October 12, 2018
On a recent stop to see Gab and Chris at Sailors Grave, they revealed they had one new beer a week coming out at the minute (although hope to slow things a little after the current rush of madness). And these are two of the newbies seeing the light of day for the first time this spring. Blood and Sand is a collaboration with Lark Distillery, albeit one far removed from that announced by Wolf of the Willows around the same time. While the latter features an imperial smoked porter, here the former… Read more
Style
Cocktail Ale & Fruity Farmhouse Ale
ABV
5.7% & 5.4%

Sailors Grave & 3 Ravens Over His Banes

Published September 28, 2018
Considering both breweries have a penchant for creating unusual beers that make full use of foraged and left of centre ingredients, it was surely only a matter of time before Sailors Grave and 3 Ravens brewed a beer together [Don't forget the head brewers' shared passion for long beards – Editor]. Over His Banes takes its name from the Scottish ballad Twa Corbies which was itself based on the English folk ballad, The Three Ravens. The Scottish version is somewhat darker than the original, a fact… Read more
Style
Sahti
ABV
5.9%

Sailors Grave Featherlight Berliner Weisse & Into The Pines Forest Ale

Published July 26, 2018
There are many things that can be said about the Sailors Grave team. One is that they continue to provide an education to us here at Crafty Towers as their oeuvre grows. Here, it's their first light beer, Featherlight, forcing a bit of research. It's a Berliner weisse featuring passionfruit and Coast Everlasting; the former we get, but Coast Everlasting? Turns out it's another plant they've taken a fancy to from their coastal Gippsland home. Given we've not knowingly sniffed, rubbed, eaten or made… Read more
Style
Light Sour Ale & Mushroom Ale
ABV
2.7% & 5.4%

Sailors Grave Wild Strawberries & Sea Fret

Published July 17, 2018
Late last year, the Peach Melba Pavlova Cream Sour became a surprise hit for the team at Sailors Grave, so much so that the beer has been followed by a number of similar releases. Indeed, you could argue that fruity, creamy sours are becoming something of a house style for the East Gippsland operation (well, apart from the farmhouse ales, goses, stouts...). They created another for the 2018 GABS festival and, again, it proved so popular they've kept on brewing it, even if such a beer sounds as unlikely… Read more
Style
Cream Sour & White Ale
ABV
4.7%

Sailors Grave's Dead Will Rise Mexican Lager

Published March 21, 2018
If you've climbed aboard the wagon marked Sailors Grave, you'll know that it's best to approach every new beer wondering what the twist is going to be: "Just what surprises lie in wait for me this time...?" Thus it was we approached Dead Will Rise, a Mexican lager brewed with 150kg of sweet corn from local Gippsland family, the Cotters, and prepared by "old man Joe". Given maize is a regular feature in such lagers and they've put it front and centre (and back and sides) of the… Read more
Style
Hoppy Mexican Lager With Sweet Corn
ABV
4.7%

Sailors Grave Australian Gothic & Summer Farmhouse Ale 2018

Published February 5, 2018
For all that they've cast their net wide when sourcing ingredients for their beers – wild weeds, seaweed, smoked oysters and so on – Sailors Grave's beers have tended to present them with a gentle subtlety. As time passes, however, some of the beers are coming on rather more stridently: still offering complexity but putting their message across more boldly. And that's the case with these two summer releases. Sure, neither farmhouse ale is big on the booze front, but nor do they hold back when… Read more
Style
Farmhouse Ales
ABV
5.4% & 5.2%

Sailors Grave & Blackhearts & Sparrows Orange Cream Summer Ale

Published January 18, 2018
We're not quite sure how the family behind Sailors Grave manages to sleep, given they welcomed a third child into the world late in 2017, make many of the long round trips from their East Gippsland brewery to customers in Melbourne and Sydney themselves and put out so many one-off beers on top of their core range. Must be something in the coastal air they breathe or the fresh abalone their relos farm... Still, neither the Crafty Pint team nor their growing band of fans is complaining. Among those… Read more
Style
Orange & Lactose Summer Ale
ABV
4.6%

Sailors Grave Chinotto Birra

Published December 28, 2017
Is anything off bounds for the Sailors Grave team when it comes to seeking inspiration for new beers? It's only a few weeks since their peach melba/pavlova sour became the talk of Aussie beer circles and already they've switched local desserts for Italian soda... Having snapped up the entire crop of Chinotto oranges from past collaborators Mountain Yuzu, they set about designing a beer that would recall the soft drink popularised by San Pellegrino's dark brown, bittersweet version. To do so, they… Read more
Style
Spiced Amber Ale
ABV
5.6%
Stockists

Other stockists TBC

Sailors Grave Peach Melba Pavlova Cream Sour & Tangerine Dream

Published December 13, 2017
Sailors Grave comes bearing two more beers with an acidic underbelly and fruity additions as 2017 draws to a close. One is as much of a mouthful to ask for as it is to describe: the Peach Melba Pavlova Cream Sour. Taking inspiration from a couple of classic Antipodean summer desserts and combining them with some of brewer Chris' favourite ingredients, lactose and souring bacteria lactobacillus, this kettle sour also features peaches, raspberries and vanilla. Not as fattening as the dishes it looks… Read more
Style
Cream Sour & Citrus Berliner Weisse
ABV
4.8% & 4.4%

Sailors Grave Spring Farmhouse Ale 2017

Published November 6, 2017
Each season, Sailors Grave puts out a new farmhouse ale showcasing ingredients obtained from other small producers or foraged on their travels. In the case of the 2017 release, it's a bit of column A and a bit of column B. The former comes in the form of High Country bergamot from Mountain Yuzu; the latter is a veritable smorgasbord of wild weeds – nettles, mallow, dandelion, cleavers, milk thistle and borage – collected by co-owner Gab Moore from her garden and the banks of the Snowy River that… Read more
Style
Farmhouse Ale
ABV
5.9%
Stockists

The Public Brewery

Sailors Grave Squid Vs Whale

Published November 6, 2017
Squid Vs Whale is Sailors Grave's biggest beer to date, so what better way for a nautically themed brewery to mark the occasion than name it after a battle between two of the biggest predators on the planet? Admittedly, at 6.7 percent ABV, it's a long way from challenging for the title of Biggest Beer In Australia but it comes packing plenty of firepower. Subtitled "the hop maelstrom" and described as "the closest to a NEIPA we will get", you can imagine what's on the agenda:… Read more
Style
Lactose IPA
ABV
6.7%
Stockists

The Public Brewery

Sailors Grave Nuts & Law Of The Tongue

Published September 11, 2017
For the most part, the one-off and seasonal beers coming out of Sailors Grave have been farmhouse style ales. But, as they prepare to welcome another junior brewer into the world, they've sent out a pair of a more straightforward bent; well, as straightforward as you can reasonably hope to expect from them. One is Nuts, a beer with a name and label that recalls the humour of which so many real ale brewers in the UK seem fond. To wit, it's a brown ale brewed with chestnuts and hazelnuts grown at Gourmet… Read more
Style
Nut Brown Ale & Smoked Oyster Stout
ABV
4.8% & 5.8%

Sailors Grave Winter Farmhouse Ale

Published August 20, 2017
It's fair to say Sailors Grave has got off to a pretty unimpeachable start. Not even a year old, the East Gippsland brewery has won admirers for its beers and its artwork while working closely with its home region's producers. However, this could be the moment at which the good work is undone... Sure, the ethos remains the same, with this winter seasonal following in the tradition of its predecessors in combining a farmhouse style ale with foraged ingredients; they've even brought Pinot Noir barrels… Read more
Style
Barrel Fermented Red Saison
ABV
5.6%

Sailors Grave Breakfast Stout

Published July 18, 2017
With hindsight, it was surely only a matter of time before Sailors Grave was going to address the issue of the drunken sailor. The brewery's name and nautical stylings almost demand it and their reimagining of traditional children's book illustrations throughout their branding seems a good fit for bringing an old folk tune to life. So here is Breakfast Stout, complete with drunken sailor lolling on the can and a snippet of the lyrics explaining how such a beer can offer him the much needed "hair… Read more
Style
Breakfast Stout
ABV
5.0%
Stockists

Other stockists TBC

Sailors Grave Brewing Milky Way

Published June 5, 2017
There's still some way to go before East Gippsland brewery Sailors Grave turns one, yet already they've turned out quite the collection of Berliner Weisse beers. There's been a couple of dry-hopped affairs (one with mandarins, one with blueberries), a whisky sour and, now, one starring custard apples from the Glasshouse Mountains, lactose (milk sugar) and vanilla beans and soured with yoghurt. Milky Way was their submission for the GABS 2017 festival beer lineup and is a homage to the Japanese fermented… Read more
Style
Apple & Milk Berliner Weisse
ABV
4.0%

Sailors Grave Autumn Farmhouse Ale

Published May 24, 2017
As part of their pre-opening research, the couple behind Sailors Grave took their young kids on a tour of the States, calling in on many breweries, particularly those in regional areas not dissimilar to their Orbost home in East Gippsland. Among them was Jester King and, while it will likely take years and no little skill to develop cultures and complexities akin to those of the Texan maestros, you can already see influences in the beers released by Chris and Gab Moore, not least in their desire… Read more
Style
Farmhouse Ale
ABV
5.9%
Stockists

And good beer retailers in Victoria, Sydney and WA

Sailors Grave Dry-Hopped Raspberry & Elderflower Grisette

Published March 15, 2017
Serendipity is a fine thing. Such as when a brewer rocks up to drop off some beer samples in cans when you're packing for a music festival to which you're allowed to take cans. When it turns out the beer is not only practical but the sort that could easily slip into the "breakfast beer" category – and what are music festivals like Golden Plains if not the sort of place where a breakfast beer, or at least early lunch beer, is not just acceptable but pretty much de rigeur? – then the… Read more
Style
Raspberry & Elderflower Grisette
ABV
4.3%
Stockists

Other stockists TBC

Sailors Grave Altocumulus Blueberry & First Harvest Grisette

Published February 7, 2017
East Gippsland brewery Sailors Grave continues down its idiosyncratic path with its first two seasonal releases of 2017. Both make use of the natural resources local to the brewery and both offer something for fans of off kilter beers. One is the second in the Altocumulus dry-hopped Berliner Weisse range. Its predecessor, featuring mandarins, made our Best New VIC Beers of 2016 list; here, the mandarins are replaced with blueberries, with Amarillo and Cascade the chosen hops. Clearly, they didn't… Read more
Style
Berliner Weisse & Grisette
ABV
4.0% & 4.3%
Stockists

Foodworks Orbost

The Public Brewery

And select VIC retailers

More stockists...

Sailors Grave Whisky Sour Berliner Weisse

Published December 15, 2016
For their second limited release Berliner Weisse, Sailors Grave took one of the world's classic cocktails as inspiration, adding locally sourced Meyer lemons, candied oranges, Maraschino cherries and rye whisky to the mix. And it's a combination that makes for a quirky beer, even by the brewery's early standards. It pours a pale, hazy straw colour with what appears to be the faintest of pink hues. On the nose, you'll pick up hints of sourness, bitter cherry and rye whisky, while joining the lemony… Read more
Style
Whisky Sour Berliner Weisse
ABV
4.3%

Sailors Grave Grapefruit & Marigold Saison

Published December 1, 2016
They're not just showcasing locally sourced produce from other East Gippsland businesses at Sailors Grave – they've got the family farm to plunder too. That's where they gathered the grapefruits and marigolds that have been added to this saison. The result, perhaps unsurprisingly, is one of the fruitier local takes on the style. Juicy grapefruit mixes with sweet, honey malts, subtle spicy esters, citrus and a touch of banana in the aroma, while this hazy yellow drop comes with a smooth and pretty… Read more
Style
Saison
ABV
6.0%

Sailors Grave Altocumulus Dry-Hopped Mandarin Berliner Weisse

Published September 19, 2016
Sailors Grave's first limited release, and one that launches what will be a series of different Berliner Weisse bearing the Altocumulus name, is a cracker. It started with a shout out on Facebook for 40kg of fresh mandarins, which were delivered to the brewery within hours by a local farming family, and saw the beer make our list of the Best New Victorian Beers of 2016. The fruit gets things off to a flier, with clouds of mandarin rising from the glass, with Amarillo and Cascade hops adding further… Read more
Style
Mandarin Berliner Weisse
ABV
4.0%