Gage Roads and 4Pines are the latest in the growing trend of craft brewers growing beyond their brewery sheds into venues, the incoming bringing two new innovations for Sydney.
Western Australian beer legends Gage Roads open their new space tomorrow (24 September) in the Sydney craft beer haven of Redfern, in a sleek renovation of a converted warehouse, dubbed the Atomic Beer Project (ABP).
In keeping with its reputation in innovation, the Gage brew-pub goes beyond brewing and drinking beer, incorporating an Asian-inspired restaurant and a co-working space, which is bookable during the day and serves breakfast dishes and coffee.
The interior design by YSG was committed to preserving the building’s heritage while contrasting it with bold colours, including an ‘atomic’ green bar top, moulded as one piece by Pyrolave.
The kitchen is the domain of head chef Jordan McLoed, wielding experience from across the Pan-Asian region, offering dishes such as Chargrilled Riverine Sirloin and Pork and Squid Salad.
Multi-award-winning Gage Roads boasts a stable of popular brews, its best-known being Single Fin. The brewer takes its name from an idyllic region between Fremantle and Rottnest Island, where “We saw a lot of ourselves”.
Gage Roads is using ABP to launch a whole new line of ‘conceptual’ beers it calls Atomic.
Long-time head brewer, Nick Ivey, is understood to have driven across the Nullarbor to Sydney, where he unloaded the brewing kit from the shipping containers himself and worked with tradesmen to install it – while he and his partner were also expecting a kid.
Ivey has personally crafted every one of the eight beers on tap and is even using a reverse-osmosis filter to match the water in Sydney to what Gage Roads uses in WA. The core range consists of an XPA, pale ale and IPA. The other five taps will be used for limited releases.
Ensuring the ultimate freshness, six of Atomic’s beers will be pouring straight from their tanks.
Meanwhile, in a different style of mash-up, Victorian-based Signature Hospitality Group (SHG) has teamed with 4Pines brewery to transform the former King St Brewhouse turned All Hands Brewing House, on King St Wharf.
SHG began in Geelong in 2010 and is best-known for its The Sporting Globe (TSG) venues, now counting 10 locations in Victoria, Queensland and WA. Eyeing expansion in NSW, it purchased the King Street Wharf pub from Red Rock Leisure in February for $20 million.
The large-format venue boasts a massive beer garden and overall capacity of 850-pax. It will soon close for a considerable refurbishment, with plans to reopen before Christmas.
The venue itself will be owned and operated by SHG, while award-winning Manly sweethearts 4Pines will take the reins in the pub’s 12-hectolitre microbrewery.
It will see a TSG-style fit-out, offering dozens of screens and custom booths with their touchscreen boothTVs.
The brew-pub will offer 20 taps, set to include 4Pines small batch creations brewed onsite.
