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Moon Dog's Marvellous Medicine
One of the great joys that's come from running The Crafty Pint has been watching so many of the businesses that have helped shape the beer landscape – breweries, beer bars, bottleshops, suppliers, events – grow from their very inception. And few have brought greater joy than Moon Dog.
Plans for both this publication and that brewery were being forged at the same time – in the late 2000s – and both launched within the same 12 month period at the start of the next decade. It was a time in which the local craft beer scene went from gathering momentum to exploding into the public consciousness, with events such as Good Beer Week and GABS making their debuts, and many of the key players brewing or pouring their first beers.
A fortuitous conversation with the person running the original Carwyn Cellars led me to make contact with Moon Dog co-founder Josh Uljans before they'd sent their first single keg release into the wild, and it's afforded me a relatively front row seat from which to observe the unfolding of their story.
It's one that started with beers unlike pretty much anything seen on these shores before, complete with names and labels most definitely unlike anything seen on these shores before: Perverse Sexual Amalgam, Henry Ford's Girthsome Fjord, Nordic Saddle Buffer. Following a period in which they turned their OG brewery into a venue, underwent their first expansion, and launched a core range, the story continues with a series of megavenues unlike anything seen on these shores before.
For Episode 014 of The Crafty Pint Podcast, we joined two of the three founders, Karl van Buuren and Josh Uljans (whose older brother Jake is the third), at the latest of those: Doglands. The 1,200-capacity venue sits on the Marvel Stadium concourse and is set to open for major events and game days; The Jungle Room, a 70-seat restaurant within the same space, will open seven days a week.
As with their original home in Abbotsford (which after this weekend will become a function space rather than public bar) and Moon Dog World in Preston, Doglands is infused with tropical vibes and built around a circular bar which may as well be the dictionary definition of "centrepiece". Its opening comes just months after they launched Moon Dog Wild West in Footscray and just weeks (they hope) before they open a fourth such venue overlooking the bay in Frankston.
We head back to the very start of the Moon Dog story, which begins at a school in Ivanhoe, before tracing their evolution from craft beer's wildest outlier to a multi-beverage and hospitality business that's one of the largest indie operators in the land.
Josh and Karl discuss their embrace of hard seltzers and the wider world of RTDs, the challenges and advantages that come with building a portfolio of vast venues, the importance of remaining true to yourself and your brand – whatever you end up doing, building and retaining great teams, and having fun along the way.
At the start of the show, we reflect on some of the other stories from the week just gone, including the heartwarming tale of the changing of the guard at the Sunshine Coast's oldest brewery, where the owners' youngest daughter has taken up the reins, and the launch of a new Beer Cocktails series on The Crafty Pint.
The chat with Moon Dog starts just after the ten-minute mark and you can watch or listen to the episode here or on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and YouTube. Please like and subscribe – and if you are enjoying the show, please rate and review it too as this can help us reach more people.
Cheers!
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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.
