Beer Travel - Emerald Hill Brewery
As we observed a good 18 months ago the Melbourne micro seen is starting to bubble. New Wave flag bearer Mountain Goat kicked off the Friday night drinks-at-the-brewery gig good while back and now South Melbourne's Emerald Hill is having a go. Situated in a small warehouse on Ross St (see map) the set up is very simple - uncluttered bar serving the wheat and pale on tap, fermentation tanks running down the western interior wall and some comfty couches and pews up the front. Cricket projected onto the wall was a nice touch on a pleasant barmy night.
Beers run at about $7.00 for a pint. As we have noted elsewhere they aren't world beaters but they are getting better and are certainty at least middle quartile for Oz boutiques.
More details at this web site....
Update 30/01.....just found a decent article on the brewery from Willie Simpson (The Age) from November 2006......
Small Beer, Willie Simpson, 21 November 2006The Age
"IT MIGHT well be the city's narrowest and most exclusive bar. The Emerald Hill Brewery in South Melbourne is wedged into a space the length of a cricket pitch and a mere five metres wide, and the bar is only open on Friday nights.
Melbourne's latest craft beer operation fired up in April and is run by Carl Jacobson (pictured), a chemical engineer by training. Jacobson is the brewer, but he gets plenty of back-up from his fellow investors, who are scattered around the globe.
One shareholder is our marketing person and they're based in Hong Kong," Jacobson says. "Our design engineer is in London." Several Emerald Hill partners who live a little closer to home helped construct the brewery/ bar, which Jacobson says was "an empty shell between two buildings" when they took over the lease late last year.
The bar's main feature is a solid hunk of recycled timber. A few comfy couches and armchairs provide seating for bar patrons, augmented by a pair of wooden pews that "came from a church in Essendon that was being turned into a child-care centre", Jacobson says.
The brewery equipment was built in Brisbane and sits on a concrete plinth opposite the bar (further narrowing the limited space). It includes three 2000-litre fermentation tanks, which bubble away in the background during my visit. "We're harking back to how beer used to be made," Jacobson says.
The brews we sampled included a cloudy wheat beer with nice banana notes and a chewy mid-palate. "We're going for a southern Bavarian hefeweizen style," he says. "My home-brewing mates' wives really love it." The pale ale uses English and Australian hops and is robustly bitter and yeasty.
Jacobson says he caught the home-brewing bug years some ago after tasting a colleague's brew. More recently he took his home brew around to prospective investors, telling them: "This is what we can make on a stove.
Apparently it wasn't too difficult to find backers, while Jacobson did most of the business planning, dealing with councils and tradesmen, and the paperwork. The bar officially opened for business in mid-June and, apart from the Friday night sessions, has also been hired for several private functions.
Emerald Hill is the original name of the South Melbourne town hall site, which apparently was once a green island surrounded by swamp. Jacobson says they plan to expand into other outside tap outlets and supply hand-bottled product into bottleshops and bars, but at last report they were still waiting on packaging to be printed. "
(both Emerald Hill beers available @ Cloudwine for $3.00)
Beers run at about $7.00 for a pint. As we have noted elsewhere they aren't world beaters but they are getting better and are certainty at least middle quartile for Oz boutiques.
More details at this web site....
Update 30/01.....just found a decent article on the brewery from Willie Simpson (The Age) from November 2006......
Small Beer, Willie Simpson, 21 November 2006The Age
"IT MIGHT well be the city's narrowest and most exclusive bar. The Emerald Hill Brewery in South Melbourne is wedged into a space the length of a cricket pitch and a mere five metres wide, and the bar is only open on Friday nights.
Melbourne's latest craft beer operation fired up in April and is run by Carl Jacobson (pictured), a chemical engineer by training. Jacobson is the brewer, but he gets plenty of back-up from his fellow investors, who are scattered around the globe.
One shareholder is our marketing person and they're based in Hong Kong," Jacobson says. "Our design engineer is in London." Several Emerald Hill partners who live a little closer to home helped construct the brewery/ bar, which Jacobson says was "an empty shell between two buildings" when they took over the lease late last year.
The bar's main feature is a solid hunk of recycled timber. A few comfy couches and armchairs provide seating for bar patrons, augmented by a pair of wooden pews that "came from a church in Essendon that was being turned into a child-care centre", Jacobson says.
The brewery equipment was built in Brisbane and sits on a concrete plinth opposite the bar (further narrowing the limited space). It includes three 2000-litre fermentation tanks, which bubble away in the background during my visit. "We're harking back to how beer used to be made," Jacobson says.
The brews we sampled included a cloudy wheat beer with nice banana notes and a chewy mid-palate. "We're going for a southern Bavarian hefeweizen style," he says. "My home-brewing mates' wives really love it." The pale ale uses English and Australian hops and is robustly bitter and yeasty.
Jacobson says he caught the home-brewing bug years some ago after tasting a colleague's brew. More recently he took his home brew around to prospective investors, telling them: "This is what we can make on a stove.
Apparently it wasn't too difficult to find backers, while Jacobson did most of the business planning, dealing with councils and tradesmen, and the paperwork. The bar officially opened for business in mid-June and, apart from the Friday night sessions, has also been hired for several private functions.
Emerald Hill is the original name of the South Melbourne town hall site, which apparently was once a green island surrounded by swamp. Jacobson says they plan to expand into other outside tap outlets and supply hand-bottled product into bottleshops and bars, but at last report they were still waiting on packaging to be printed. "
(both Emerald Hill beers available @ Cloudwine for $3.00)
Labels: Beer Travel
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