For the most part, the ever-growing band of people who have taken advantage of Cavalier’s “community brewery” is as you’d expect. The brewery based in Melbourne’s west, which allows others to buy and install their own tanks there and use their brewery, has attracted a colourful mix of brand new brewing companies looking to get their foot in the door and more established ones needing some extra capacity for one-off brews. It has also attracted a couple of ladies best known for parmas (or parmis, depending on where you’re reading this).
Earlier this year, Fiona Melbourne and Melissa Leaney – better known as the pair behind Melbourne establishment Mrs Parma’s – decided to make their own beer. After almost eight years serving Victorian craft beers alongside comforting delights such as the fiery Parmageddon, the Red Dirt red ale became the latest step in a journey that began when they met in Alice Springs, continued through many fine dining restaurants before seeing them opt for an old school pub (with New World beer) approach to life.
“We figured it was about time we started making some,” says Mel. “It just gives us another string to our bow – another opportunity to stick our fingers back into the pie because we felt we had stepped back a little bit and been working more on the business rather than in it.”
Rather than pay a contract facility to knock something up for them, they contacted the team at Cavalier and asked about buying their own tank. Originally discussions were over a 1,000 litre tank; somehow it became 3,000, with Mel laying the blame squarely at the feet of her eager partner.
“I think Fi just wanted to call herself a brewer,” she says. As such, when brew day came around: “I have never seen her so happy!
“We want to do beers that are left of centre to fill up the profile of our taps. Things that are not so normal. The plan is to do a lager in summer and to bring a few different brewers in to work with us.”
The plan is to brew “four or five” beers a year, all of which will only be available at Mrs Parma’s. It represents a slight – and rare – tweak to proceedings at a CBD venue that is a true one-of-a-kind. For a start, it predates pretty much every good beer venue in the city as it has been serving nothing but Victorian beers since opening in 2006. And it is located at the end of Melbourne’s grid where you’ll find many of the city’s trendiest fine dining eateries, yet has survived – thrived even – longer than most on a diet of little more than parmas done multiple ways.
“We have plonked ourselves in the middle of the market,” says Mel. “We are giving people part of the Australian staple diet.
“We’re not going to be in and out of fashion and we’re not going to do fine dining. Fi and I have already lived that, so when we opened Mrs Parma’s we just wanted a place that was really accessible to everyone like the good old pubs were.”
It has proved a successful formula, with their longevity and unstinting support of the local industry ensuring they have ready access to limited release beers to pour alongside staples on their 10 taps. They even mirror terminology of the industry they partner with, calling their parmas “handcrafted” and embellishing their core range of parmas with their own limited releases – even creating crazy one-offs for Good Beer Week each year.
Mel and Fi celebrating the first glass of Red Dirt
“We were the first and only venue that was only serving Victorian beers when we first started. It was pretty tough at the start,” she says. “We had Carlton Draught because it was still classed as a Victorian beer. When they [CUB] sold out [to SABMiller] it was D-Day for us because we thought it wasn’t Victorian any more.
“We worked really hard to build good relationships with brewers from day dot. When we started out it was a case of one in, all in. We’d help each other and that hasn’t dissipated over the years.”
What has changed is drinking habits. So it’s not just been “See ya!” to Carlton but also “G'day!” to a wider range of often bigger and more challenging beers on tap and in bottle over the years. That said, the aim when designing their own beers is to create something that is “connected to the food” but also sessionable. And following good feedback from regulars on the Red Dirt (named after the Red Centre where they first met) they are now lining up a Scotch ale for next month. They have lined up their first collaborator too: Brendan O'Sullivan of Boneyard Brewing, thanks to a longterm association with his Boneyard partner-in-crime, Chris Badenoch, who worked at Mrs Parma’s in pre-Masterchef Australia days.
“We’ve been mates with him for ages,” says Mel. “We got in touch with them as we really liked their beers. It’s good for us to be able to get involved with more brewers and understand their uniqueness.
“Ultimately, we would like to fly in some brewers [to create beers for us] and will work on that a bit later.”
Red Dirt is on tap now. Look out for Hopscotch around the end of August / early September.
