If you make your way along Lacey Street in Croydon today, you'll notice something has changed. The building at number 13 remains the same, and you can still drop inside for a beer and a feed, but the signage for The Public Brewery has gone, replaced by that of the site's new owners, Dainton Beer.
The Carrum Downs-based brewery today opened their second Melbourne Taphouse after taking over the brewery and venue launched by The Public Brewery's founders, initially as a craft bottleshop, back in 2013. The move sees them honour a promise made to anyone that invested in their second crowdfunding campaign in August this year, which saw them raise close to a million dollars.
"During that raising, we said that if we hit the minimum amount we would open a venue before Christmas," CEO Will Smith told The Crafty Pint. "This is us meeting that commitment."
It also sees them hit a target they'd set for themselves when they raised $250,000 in an earlier crowdfunding campaign in April 2019. They'd planned to use the funds to help them open a second venue – at the time they were eyeing up a sour beer brewery and venue on the Mornington Peninsula – before a couple of proposed sites were knocked back by council and then COVID arrived.
Instead, as wholesale demand rose rapidly for the brand and they reached capacity, Will says they decided to invest that money in an expansion at the brewery. A three-vessel, 30 hectolitre brewhouse was replaced by a four-vessel, 42 hectolitre one, and more fermenters were installed, putting them in a position where they hit 700,000 litres output in the last 12 months with a system capable of hitting more than 1.2 million – and going much higher with further investment.
In taking over The Public Brewery's site – but not the brand or its beers – they not only gain a second retail space for their brand and a chance to tap into a new local audience, but they also inherit a pilot brewery courtesy of the 500 litre kit onsite.
"We don't have one [in Carrum Downs]," Will says. "Our limited releases are 10,000 litres first go, so it will be nice for the brewers to experiment on a new style they're not 100 percent certain of."
Will says there was an element of opportunism in the acquisition – they received an email notifying them the venue was going on the market as they were preparing for this year's equity crowd-funding. In a statement to suppliers announcing the sale, The Public Brewery team said: "This decision did not come lightly, but one we felt was the best move going forward."
As for the new owners, Will says: "[The venue] matched our brand and what we do and the aesthetic. It's a great location right on the trainline in an up-and-coming part of the eastern suburbs."
For now, other than the signage and the switching of most of the taps to those of Dainton, they're not planning to change much – at least until after Christmas. The Public Brewery had built a strong local following over the years, so visitors will still find one tap dedicated to their beer as well as cans in the bottleshop. And the menu will remain the same for now too.
Looking ahead, the hope is to add more taphouses down the line, once they've got the hang of running multiple venues.
For Will, today's opening continues what's been a big four years since he joined the brewery, initially as general manager. He joined them from Collins Booksellers, where he spent five-and-a-half years as GM and financial controller, which followed three years at Ernst & Young as a senior accountant.
"It's been an absolute whirlwind, with exponential growth, upgrading the brewery, the pandemic," he says, adding: "We're not planning any more big announcements before Christmas. We want to make sure the venues are performing at their best."
James Smith launched The Crafty Pint in 2010, two years after moving to Australia from the UK. He was taken to Mountain Goat within weeks of landing in Melbourne, joined their indoor cricket team, and is still navigating the rabbit hole that is craft beer to this day.
The beers that turned you on to good beer:
- Watching pints of McEwan's 80 Shilling settle when visiting family in Edinburgh.
- Pints of flat Bass from the jug at the Cap & Stocking in Kegworth.
- A first Paulaner Hefeweizen when working in Munich in 1998: “This smells of bananas!”
- Castle Rock Harvest Pale – how could a 3.8 percent ABV beer be so good? (It turns out it was an early example of the three Cs – Cascade, Centennial and Columbus – in an English bitter).
- Dogfish Head 90 Minute IPA poured through hops at the Sunset Grill in Cambridge, MA, in the company of a man who turned out to be the Beer Nut (while we were both covering a double murder case at the time).
- Ordering a Mountain Goat Hightail on my first day as an Aussie resident as it was local and I’d never heard of it; “A dark Australian beer; well I never…”
- Murray’s Icon 2IPA at Beer DeLuxe Fed Square, recommended by a guy I’d not long known who's now the main man at Fixation, served by Mik Halse, now head of sales at Hawkers. How could an Australian beer smell as good as that?!?
You've got three beers to turn someone else on to good beer; what are they and why?
- Any really good, fresh and balanced West Coast style IPA. Punchy hop aromatics are the most obvious way to capture someone's attention and these IPAs, done well, present the key components in beer (if you're sticking to just water, malt, hops and yeast) in harmony yet with the volume turned up.
- Saison Dupont. Arguably a selfish choice here as I bloody love the broad saison style and dearly hope it will finally take hold in Australia one day. Given a choice, I'd probably crack one enlivened with Brettanomyces like Molly Rose Matilde for myself but, when it comes to turning on someone new, you've got to go with the classic.
- Rodenbach Caractère Rouge. Because if you don't enjoy or can't appreciate this beer, I'll never win you over. And because Filip, the fruit and wood specialist at Rodenbach that designed it, is a beautiful human.
The last beer you enjoyed:
Fixation IPA at The Incubator.
Three things that represent you:
- The Soft Bulletin by The Flaming Lips
- Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
- Golden Plains
NB All articles written by James in the first eight years of the site appear as By Crafty Pint. Today, that's used for collaborative efforts by the wider team.
