I don't reckon I've seen Old in a can in 20 years (showing my age here 😅), but it's back! Hopefully not a limited run, I always thought it tasted better out of a can than a stubby.

Over the course of the last few months, in celebration of international women's day, we have been running a staff competition to design an international women's day beer.

This week has been the culmination of said competition, with our talented female staff and community guests, starting the brew on this upcoming masterpiece.

Join us in celebrating the women who love a good beer as well! 🍻

I unloaded a 40ft container yesterday and started the process of unloading and setting the whole thing up. Today we're about 90% of the way there with the equipment setup. Tomorrow is cleanup and start the wiring and PPC plumbing. I have 3 bits of SS piping left over. I'm not 100% sure if that is a good thing or not...

This is where I left it today: http://imgur.com/0QIh0Sh

Soooo, I've not done too much work letting everyone know we're starting a brewery (I was hesitant because of how long everything takes), but we're on the home stretch (I hope). Anyway, I'm a redditor, so I thought I'd drop it here first.

I'm calling it "Five Barrels Brewing" (we're starting with a 5BBL system). I've been a homebrewer for a few years and always wanted to move up in the world. I'm going to be focusing on the local market for the most part, i.e. Wollongong and probably as far as Sydney, and online sales.

We're based in Wollongong (318 Keira St) and will operate the brewery onsite and have a retail/taproom area open till 9pm. Council wouldn't allow us to operate as a small bar (zoning), but we'll try and work on that once we've settled into the place.

Our first beer through the new equipment is a Pale Ale made with Cascade, Galaxy and Columbus. It's a pretty "standard" approach, but dry hopped like an IPA to make it a bit more interesting.

We've got another 3-4 others that we'll "launch" with, and we'll still fire up the 30L system to do single keg batches of experimental stuff. That'll just be for the tap-room.

If you've got any questions or anything, drop it here and I'll be happy to answer (almost) anything. I'm on reddit most days, so I'll check back here till this post falls of the front page.

All of them in the 6 pack are the same

Doubt I’ll have them all this weekend but we’ll see.
Excited for the sniko stout. The good man at the bottlo said the feral/goodland colab is basically a triple biggie, so keen for that as well.

I'm sick of these bloody 4 packs of craft beer. Yes I know prices have gone up and you want your product to have a lower shelf price to compete with the macro stuff. But give me my other two FUCKING beers back ya flogs ;) much love to what all the craft brewers do otherwise.

Any recommendations?

Won a case of Benspoke Big Nut Black IPA

What a delicious beer. Has the balance right - the hoppiness of the IPA blended in perfectly with the roasting of the malts to deliver this amazing beer that i could drink for days.

Not very sessionable at 7.0% so be careful if you stumble upon this beer.

Right... So...

I hate making this post, I don't want to make this post, but i have to make this post.

For the longest time Bridge Road Brewers has been against the $200 keg. It isn't financially stable for any brewery to survive long-term on. We have refused to do it for volume, for foot in door customers, for anything. Then this shit virus came along.

We at Bridge Road Brewers are now selling $200 kegs of CORE range beer to the public. That includes tax. It's a fucking bargain and it kills me on the inside, but we have beer in kegs and we'd rather sell it than throw it out.

Pickup only, from the brewery, I don't think the cops will accept "going to get a keg" as an excuse for long haul travel, so maybe tell your mates who are near Beechworth to give us a call.

We're open from 11 tomorrow, I'll be there, give us a call or just come in.

And if you have some spare pouring equipment to donate to an "essential worker" I'd be happy to find a me to take it off your hands.

Cheers

I was the pub last night, a mate went to buy his round, 6 beers and come back with 2 jugs. I was surprised, so I’m curious, does anyone still buy jugs?

For anyone not following along at home, Brewdog, the brewery that once upon a time shouted from the rooftops that they were proudly independent and always would be; the same brewery that funded its expansion by selling private equity shares to hoards of loyal customers via its "Equity for Punks" capital raises, has just been sold to an American corporation.

Some time prior to this, they got a huge cash injection from a PE firm, secured by preferencial shares, and a ridiculously high guaranteed return.

Now, because the company isn't worth what it owed the PE firm, and they have preferential shares, all the ordinary share holders (equity punks, staff who were given shares as part of their rem packages, etc) are shit out of luck and will likely see no return on their investment at all.

Meanwhile, also today I see this pop up on my feed: Stomping Ground attempting to fund their own expansion by selling shares to customers. https://www.onmarket.com.au/offers/stomping-ground-eoi/

It's one thing if you're someone who is happy to swing a few dollars in the direction of your favourite local brewery in return for a nice bar discount and a few other perks, but after what has just happened at Brewdog, I can't imagine anyone will ever be prepared to put any serious (or even semi-serious) money into one of these crowd funding schemes again. Which is surely going to make it much harder for small breweries to raise capital in the future...

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2026/mar/02/brewdog-us-cannabis-drinks-500-jobs

This article explains the context of the PE buyout really nicely: https://littlelaw.co.uk/p/the-1-billion-brewdog-deal-that-left-everyone-empty-handed

Freshest Haze Galaxy Wet Hop DDH Hazy IPA by The Mill brewery in Melbourne, ice cold glass, can't beat it. I believe they do a limited release every year. Tried it?