A few months ago, a spy got in touch to tell us he had seen what could only be brewery tanks being craned over a wall close to his house in Clifton Hill. It turned out his eyes were not deceiving him and that his local corner pub – previously a rather more run-of-the-mill suburban Melbourne pub, complete with live music venue to the rear and a TAB – was about to undergo a reinvention as the city’s latest brewpub.
Today, the Clifton Hill Brewpub is up and running, with five of its own beers pouring through five of its 16, almost entirely craft, taps and bolstering the suburb’s claim to be the craftiest in Australia, what with the owners of Mountain Goat, one of the brewers from Moon Dog, the man behind La Sirene and two members of the Good Beer Week team all calling it home; not to mention the presence of quality venues such as The Terminus and the Royal Hotel Clifton Hill nearby. It would seem this latest venture from the family that has owned the pub for more than three decades is going rather well too – they may have five of their own beers on tap now but not that long ago they had none; within weeks of commencing brewing, they had sold out of all of their own beer.
The rebranded, redesigned pub – minus live music and TAB – opened in September but a licence to brew only came through in January. Since then, the five hectolitre brewery system that sits between the front bar and dining area, set up by brewery consultant and La Sirene founder Costa Nikias, has been put to work creating a range of beers that are only sold in house. To date, they include the Queens Parade Pale Ale (their entry-level beer), a delicious chocolate, nuts and mocha Dark Ale, a fruity, bitey American Pale Ale, a flavoursome, full-bodied yet dry Weizen and a fifth that we are yet to sample. An Irish red ale is also being brewed for this year’s Great Australasian Beer SpecTAPular, while they are hosting no less than three Good Beer Week events, all of which suggests they are rather serious about their foray into the craft beer world.
“Anthony [Molan, the owner] sourced Costa as he was after someone that could offer the whole package: designing and installing the brewery as well as the beers,” says manager Peter Fairley. “The original brief wasn’t for him to run the brewery as well but he stepped in and has been managing it with his assistant brewer from La Sirene, Tristan Barlow, while one of the other members of staff from the pub studies brewing at the University of Ballarat.”
Infiltrating and taking over – the steady expansion of their own bank of taps through the front bar
While the live music venue at the rear has been turned into a large dining and function area, the pub still hosts acoustic music in the front bar several times a week. For the most part, however, the focus is now on quality drinking and quality food in a venue that has undergone a total refurbishment – a gentrification, if you like – that reflects the transformation of Clifton Hill itself in recent years.
Change has been taking place in the Thirsty Camel bottleshop that is attached too. In fact, it was watching the rapid growth in popularity of craft beer within the bottleshop – where once there was a single fridge, now there is an entire wall of Australian and international craft beer with plans to expand further – that helped inspire the change within the main venue.
“We could see there was a changing beer scene and wanted to adapt to our changing clientele as well,” says Peter. “The aim was to brew beers that we would only sell here to create our own market.
“In time, we would love one bank of eight taps in the bar to be all our own products but keeping the decals facing up [in other words, in stock] is the issue because of the capacity we have. Still, having five taps of our own one when we’ve only been brewing since January is pretty good.”
While limited space does restrict their capacity, building the brewery within the pub has plenty of advantages. It is clearly visible from both the front bar and the restaurant thanks to the banks of glass that surround it – something that frequently leads to guests getting up mid-meal and peering in as the brewers go to work. What’s more, you would struggle to find beer anywhere in Australia that travels less distance between where it is brewed and where it is served; approximately eight metres, to be precise.
Costa admiring his handiwork as the latest batch of Queens Parade Pale takes shape
“It’s doesn’t get fresher than from there to here,” says Costa when we catch him at the venue in between his work with La Sirene (which we’ll be visiting at its new brewery in Alphington next week) and travelling the globe installing breweries. “We just want to create some really clean beers that appeal to the people around here.”
At The Crafty Pint, we have felt for years that the brewpub model is one that will thrive in Australia. Admittedly, we had been thinking more along regional lines – after all, how many country towns have a beautiful old pub that has fallen on hard times and closed because the TAB and pokies went to another one down the road and is thus ripe for reinvention as a brewpub with a handful of hotel rooms? But seeing the transformation of this venue in Clifton Hill and hearing that they are already struggling to keep up with demand for their own beers suggests we may soon welcome many more in the major centres too. Here’s hoping, anyway.
The Clifton Hill Brewpub is at 89 Queens Parade.
