Eighteen taps, 50-plus wines, arcade games, ancient ales, gluten-reduced beers, board game nights… Mixtape certainly know how to stand out on Sydney’s ever-busier Inner West Ale Trail.
Opened in February 2022, the Marrickville brewbar is the brainchild of husband and wife tag team, Jason Newton and Gabi Purnell, who wanted to create a vibrant and versatile venue that offered something for everyone.
“We really want to cater to as many people as we can,” head brewer Jason says. “We have 18 taps but, if you don’t like beer, we’ve got plenty of wines, whisky and gin too. We offer a mix of drinks and a mix of food from our kitchen for a really mixed crowd – so, Mixtape.”
(For the youngsters reading, in this context a mixtape is a handcrafted compilation of songs recorded onto analogue tape – kind of like a zero-gig Spotify playlist that takes hours to make).
The brewery and venue isn’t Jason and Gabi’s first foray in beer. In 2012, they opened Spooning Goats, a kinkily-named craft beer and cocktail bar in a Sydney CBD basement, famous for its Star Wars murals, video game comps and Jason’s large toy collection.
It closed during the spicy COVID cough of 2020, but the couple were already planning a brewery bar as early as 2016 – they just couldn’t find the right site.
“We looked at this location here twice,” Jason says of Mixtape’s home between Sauce and Grifter. “First it was a joinery and then a car wrapping place. Then the zoning changed which allowed a brewery and we were like, ‘Holy shit! We can get this place!’”
So they did. Like its namesake, the 160-person capacity warehouse is fun, eclectic and brimming with personality. There’s cozy vintage couches, plenty of hanging plants, an old school arcade game machine and custom tables in the shape of cassettes. You’ll also spot Jason’s humble 300 litre brewhouse on one side and a commercial kitchen pumping out tasty tacos, pizzas and falafel plates.
“We wanted the space to be bright and green with plants, so it felt like a beer garden but inside,” Gabi says.
Without doubt, Mixtape’s main attraction is the stunning 7.6 metre bar that pulls you in like a tractor beam with its polished copper top, classic old pub tiles and 18 taps. Overhead, two TVs display the beer list while old tape decks and Star Wars toys adorn the shelves lined with whiskies and gins.
In true mixtape fashion, the beer list features classic hits (pales, IPAs, lagers), new fan favourites (hazies, XPAs, sours) and some truly experimental cuts you might never have heard of (we’ll get to that soon). Jason’s beers feature on half the taps while the others boast hand-picked bevs from his favourite breweries like Deeds, Hawkers, Hop Nation and more.
“I rarely make the same beer twice, but I do try to make my pale and IPA recipes fairly regularly – just with different hops,” he explains. “I could make a core range all the time, but I think I’d get bored.”
“If I don't want to make a certain style, I feature it on the guest taps,” he adds. “Like, I don't like lagers and I don't have the passion or the time to make a good one. So I’d rather buy a lager from someone who makes it a bloody brilliant one and pour that.”
Instead, Jason uses that time and tank space to tinker with more experimental drops: a nitro take on the Mexican rice drink Horchata, for example; a spiced dark beer; a raw (non-boiled) wheat ale; even a take on the ancient gruit style featuring mugwort, wormwood, juniper, sage and yarrow he named Searing Smite.
They add the Clarex enzyme to all Mixtape beers so they’re gluten reduced, offer low sulphite wines for people with allergies, and have been researching lactose substitutes so drinkers with intolerances can drink milk stouts.
“We want to be all inclusive in our drinks that we offer to everyone,” Jason explains.
The food and drinks are just part of the appeal here, however: they’ve gone all in with a wild array of events and entertainment. They’ve hosted free VHS movie screenings, board game nights (BYO or use theirs), and Triple J Hottest 100 nights with a chosen year’s video clips projected on a screen.
“We’re just trying to do events that are fun and don't cost people heaps of money,” Jason says. “We encourage our staff to come up with events too – there’s even a list behind the bar.”
They’ve also hosted whisky and natural wine tastings, degustation menus too, with plans for live music and Dungeons & Dragons nights in the pipeline (gruit on standby!). For Jason and Gabi, it’s all about being a welcoming venue that’s bigger than just its brewery.
“We just want to be one of the best beer bars we can be and create a space where people want to come back to.”
Jason Treuen
