Tumut River Brewing Co

Located on the banks of the Tumut River, with picturesque views over clear waterways, mountains and bushland, there are plenty of reasons why the town of Tumut could easily be a prime spot for anyone keen on a getaway in the Snowy Mountains region.

Yet, due to its long history as a timber mill town, Tumut never quite enjoyed the tag of tourist destination, despite its abundance of natural beauty just a couple of hours from Canberra.

It was a desire to showcase the town that in part led Tim Martin and Simon Rossato to launch Tumut River Brewing Co in 2013 following an inspirational trip to visit the Dalgety Brewing Co. The former quit his job at the local paper as the pair set about clearing the regulatory hurdles, getting their hands on a wholesale licence a little over 12 months later and launching their first beers at the Royal Hotel in July 2014.

On the outskirts of town, they converted an old tyre shed into a brewery, driven by the idea that good beer, good food and a good place to enjoy both would soon enough start bringing people to town. While it wouldn't open to the public until that summer, they began offering growler fills and got their locals on board from the off, inviting them to help christen the beers that would take names such as Blowering Blonde, Redneck Ale and Ginja Ninja.

Soon enough, it was an idea that proved worthwhile. Sure, locals took to the notion of being able to enjoy their fresh beer at their own brewery but many from further afield began stopping in too. Whether it was those who wanted to escape Canberra for a day, or people keen to spend the weekend exploring the Snowy Mountains, Tumut River Brewing Co soon became the sort of spot you would schedule into your trip.

Tim and Simon didn't just wait for the people to come to them, either. They hit the road with a mobile bar, becoming regulars at the region's festivals. Wasting little time, within a year of releasing their first beer, they'd embarked upon a crowdfunding campaign that enabled them to buy Cavalier's bottling line, invited their fans to help with the design of six-pack holders and were soon brewing and packaging nine beers.

It's a story that's continued on an upward curve since. In late 2016, they added an eight-tap caravan to their on-road fleet and upped their commitment to festivals and events and, while plans to move to a larger site fell through, they were instead able to expand operations on their existing site. The Tumut River team took delivery of a new brewery in March 2017, one that not only allowed them to increase production but also help other small, independent operations get beer to market, including Barellan Beer and Borambola Wines' Tuckerbox Lager.

Arguably the biggest step since launching, however, came in October of that year when their licence was upgraded. It allowed them to install a 24-tap system and build a kitchen, meaning that any time you call in (and they're open seven days a week) you'll be able to choose from a mix of TRBC beers – brewed with locally grown and kilned Voyager malt – plus beers and ciders from other producers in the region. Not that it's slowed their commitment to hitting the road: on the day the expanded brewery and taphouse was opened in May 2018, Tim was pouring beers from the caravan at Batlow Ciderfest...

Add in pizzas made with local ingredients, house-roasted coffee and regular live music that can flit from jazz to punk and it makes the brewery the kind of local operation that helps showcase the region while offering newcomers an extra reason to visit in the first place.

Sure, natural beauty is one thing, but enjoying a fresh pale off tap or taking home a six-pack of recently bottled beer has a beauty all of its own.

Name
Tumut River Brewing Co
Address

1-5 Capper Street
Tumut
NSW 2720

Phone
1300 042 337
Open Hours

Mon to Thurs: 12pm to 9pm
Fri: 12pm to late
Sat: 10am to late
Sun: 10am to 9pm

Tours

Sat & Sun: 11am (pre-bookings essential)


This is a directory listing. To find out more, head here

Tumut River Brewing Co Regulars

Tumut River Brewing Your Shout Easy Ale

Published July 9, 2020
Less a new release than a tweak and a new name for the beer formerly known as Aussie Ale, Your Shout – now an Easy Ale – still makes use of malt from Voyager Craft Malt in the Riverina and hops grown locally in the Snowy Mountains. And it still reminds me more of the UK than anything Aussie. Arguably its standout feature is its appearance, with those Voyager malts giving it a beautiful deep amber colour. That said, they also contribute heavily to its traditional ESB like character, producing… Read more
Style
ESB
ABV
5.0%

Tumut River Brewing Bounty Hunter 2020

Published July 9, 2020
If you were to pick up a can of Tumut River's Bounty Hunter and have your eyes alight on the words below the logo – "DARK ALE" – you may well be in for a surprise. The real clue is in the name at the top. Sure, it is a dark ale, but it's got rather more than a dark brown hue and chocolaty, toasty malts in wait for you. It's their Bounty chocolate bar-inspired release, one that first appeared in 2019 and has been requested by many since. It comes with desiccated coconut flavours and… Read more
Style
Choc Coconut Dark Ale
ABV
5.1%

Tumut River Brewing Co Ginja Ninja

The Ginja Ninja is Tumut River's biggest seller: a ginger beer brewed with apple juice. It starts out with the brewers collecting 1,000 litre of fresh juice from a local orchard, before the ginger is added at the brewery. There's heaps of prickly ginger on the nose, plenty of sticky sweetness, some herbal characters and a little back palate heat in there too. For all that – and its 5.3 percent ABV – it could just as easily pass for a soft drink.… Read more
Style
Ginger Beer
ABV
5.3%
Bitterness
4 IBU

Tumut River Brewing Co Full Grunt APA

While many Aussie brewers have been moving into ever paler territory with their pale ales, the Tumut River offering is more akin to the American pale ales of yore. It's as much a showcase for malts from small NSW producer Voyager as it is the American hops. Full Grunt sits at the darker end of the style spectrum, with toasted malt, dark caramel and even hints of chocolate at play alongside the floral and citrusy hop aromas, underpinned by an earthy bitterness.… Read more
Style
American Pale Ale
ABV
5.0%
Bitterness
45 IBU

Tumut River Brewing Co J W Pilsner

Brewer's notes: Our J.W. Pilsner is a traditional Czech Pilsner that focuses on voyager Pilsner malt and finishes with a nice biscuit note. Using only traditional Saaz hops, this beer is fresh, crisp and clean.… Read more
Style
Low ABV Czech Pilsner
ABV
3.0%
Bitterness
25 IBU

Tumut River Brewing Co Hitchhikers Guide To Galaxy

Hitchhikers Guide To Galaxy is designed as a showcase of the most popular of the new wave of Aussie hops, coming with a far lighter malt bill than the Squealing Pig APA as well as a lower alcohol content, putting it into session ale territory. The Galaxy fires off lively limey, citrusy aromas while delivering a touch of resinous character on the palate, but with a bitterness that, particularly compared to the other Tumut River pale, is restrained.… Read more
Style
Australian Pale Ale
ABV
4.2%
Bitterness
42 IBU

Tumut River Brewing Bad Mofo

Tumut River Brewing’s Bad Mofo was inspired by the big and bad beers of America’s West Coast. Originally, it was brewed for the Melbourne band The Tarantinos when they headed up to Tumut for a gig but it proved popular enough that it’s now released at least a few times a year. Like many of the brewery’s beer, the malt base is mostly from Voyager Craft Malt in the Riverina region of NSW, with Munich playing the lead role with some locally-grown rye included too. With a mix of Mosaic and El… Read more
Style
IPA
ABV
7%
Bitterness
80 IBU

Tumut River Brewing Co Specials

Tumut River Brewing Rose Gose Rosé & Harald’s Helper

Published November 16, 2022
Has anyone ever pointed out to you that all the Cs in Pacific Ocean make a different sound? Cool, right? Well, all the words in Rose Gose RosĂ© are pronounced differently. It’s a visual rhyme, like Sean Bean. Also cool.* Let’s break down the name… "Rose" is to celebrate the first birthday of Rose, the daughter of the brewers' friends Kristin and Dino Martiniello. Kristin and Dean own a lovely little gastropub called Herbert’s at Evatt, and it’s a place you’ll always find TRBC… Read more
Style
Spiced Gose & Dunkel
ABV
5.0% & 6.3%
Bitterness
13 & 22 IBU

Tumut River Brewing Co Bert's Honey: Anniversary Edition

Published September 27, 2022
A year ago, Tumut River brewer Bert got married, and the brewery made a beer to celebrate the occasion: Bert’s Honey. This year, they’ve made another version of the beer to celebrate Bert and Kat’s anniversary, complete with gushing dedication on the label by TRBC owner Tim. A little recipe tweaking of last year’s version - and the use of regular carbonation this year instead of nitro - has helped this choc honeycomb beer shine. Vanilla, honey and milk chocolate are all there on the nose,… Read more
Style
Honeycomb Ale
ABV
5.5%
Bitterness
15 IBU

Tumut River Brewing Deliverance '22

Published August 17, 2022
Yikes. Tumut River Brewing Co’s Deliverance has always been a hefty hitter, loaded with hops and usually coming in at 8 percent ABV. But they’ve beefed up their 2022 version even more. It now sits at a neat 10 percent ABV and 100 IBU, and comes jam-packed with Azacca, Mandarina Bavaria and Eclipse hops – as well as a boatload of specialty malts from Voyager. The rusty red body gives off a ripe fruit pungency that spreads across all parts of the tongue with the first sip. There’s a crooning… Read more
Style
Imperial Red IPA
ABV
10.0%
Bitterness
100 IBU

Tumut River Brewing Portstar Smoked Porter & May Contain Nuts

Published July 28, 2022
It’s always funny when two beers look so similar but taste so different, like when identical twins have wildly different personalities. I compared these beers side-by-side, and they showed the same dark brown pour, although the foam on May Contain Nuts was a bit tighter and a shade darker. (Even twins have subtle differences in appearance.) But then it came time to meet them properly, and they revealed their vastly distinct personalities. The cherrywood-smoked malt in Portstar gave it a waft of… Read more
Style
Smoked Porter & Peanut Butter Stout
ABV
5.2% & 7.5%
Bitterness
25 & 17 IBU

Tumut River Brewing Tea Innit

Published June 8, 2022
With all the crazy beers Tumut River have brought out in recent times (WHO PUTS BLACK GARLIC IN A BEER??), I thought this one was going to be relatively simple by comparison, and that I would come through this process confusion-free. Alas, I was wrong. First up, I have to confess: I’m baffled by the way the English use the word "innit". In my mind, it’s a simple contraction of the words “isn’t it”, and I’d understand it being used as such. But I hear it replacing other words… Read more
Style
English Brown Ale with Tea
ABV
5.3%
Bitterness
25 IBU

Tumut River Man-Gose Wild & Hot Cross Pilsner

Published April 27, 2022
Our James Smith first wrote up this beer in 2020 after he wondered how long he could spend on the Murray River to escape a Melbourne lockdown. Now in 2022, this beer arrived at my house while I was holidaying on the Murray. How fortuitous that this beer seems to be always made for the wild at heart while the Murray is on the mind. Now for something that you may actually care about: this 2022 batch of Man-Gose Wild has brought a slightly wilder character than the previous “soft drink for grown-ups”… Read more
Style
Mango Gose & Lager
ABV
Both 5.0%

Tumut River Brewing Co We Killed Kenny & Falling Leaf

Published March 14, 2022
Two beers brewed with special occasions in mind. The first is for when St Patrick’s Day comes around and you find yourself craving an Irish red ale. We Killed Kenny is a vibrant take on the style: while many Irish reds are a rusty brown, this is almost a glinting ruby, and while many examples are more dry and roasty, this one’s more sweet and malty. As soon as you pour you’ll be mesmerised by the colour (that gorgeous red!), but once you can move forward you’ll find the aroma wafting from… Read more
Style
Irish Red & Mid-Strength Ale
ABV
5.0% & 3.5%

Tumut River Brewing Sugar Baby Fairy Floss Sour

Published February 2, 2022
Did I miss the news story about a cargo plane that got into trouble over regional New South Wales and had to dump its freight of confectionery just outside Tumut, and for some reason the only way to dispose of the variety of sugary treats was for the local brewery to make beer out of it all? Or is the crew at Tumut River Brewing Co just clever enough to know punters like their limited releases to invoke novelty and nostalgia? Whatever the genesis of Sugar Baby (as well as a bunch of past TRBC releases),… Read more
Style
Sweet Sour Beer
ABV
5.5%

Tumut River Brewing's December '21 Quartet

Published December 8, 2021
The new releases keep flowing at Tumut River. Let’s start with Staring at the Sun NEIPA. TRBC first brewed this beer at the end of 2020 as a way of looking forward to a bright future in 2021. We all saw how that turned out. So they’ve had another crack at the end of 2021; while we’ve gone through half the Greek alphabet of COVID variants since then, there’s still a chance that 2022 will be slightly brighter than the two preceding years. And, if it is, we’ll all be staring at the figurative… Read more
Style
Various Styles
ABV
7.2% & 7.0% & 4.5% & 5.0%

Tumut River Brewing's Quirky Spring '21 Quartet

Published October 15, 2021
My goodness. You might expect a brewery in a small town between Canberra and Wagga Wagga to make straightforward and easy-drinking beers, but Tumut River Brewing don’t hold back when it comes to playing with interesting recipes. We’ll start with the most straightforward of this lot: Hopped As Bru, a New Zealand pale ale pumped full of Nelson Sauvin hops. That said, with an aroma that sits in the middle of a Venn diagram of nectar, fairy floss and cough syrup, it’s hardly boring. Then, when… Read more
Style
Various Styles
ABV
5.0% & 5.0% & 5.9% & 5.0%
Bitterness
40 & 10 & 20 & 15 IBU

Tumut River Brewing Bubba Gum Sour, Ripe Cherries Dark Ale & Voodoo Child Amber Ale

Published September 17, 2021
Did anyone else ever eat Bubble Tape as a kid? No, it’s not a packaging material – it’s a six foot strip of bubblegum that comes in a round plastic container. Before you eat it, you can pretend it’s a measuring tape, and use it while your dad is using his measuring tape to measure spare tires or power drills or whatever it is that dads measure with measuring tape. (Does it show that I’m not a very handy person?) Anyway, when I poured a glass of Bubba Gum Sour, it may have looked exactly… Read more
Style
Fruit Sour, Dark Ale & Amber Ale
ABV
5.0% & 5.2% & 5.0%

Tumut River Brewing With Or Without You, Bert’s Honey & You Am IPA

Published August 6, 2021
There's some rhythm and rhyme running to these three tins from Tumut River Brewing and what better way to greet lockdowns in three cities with some music blasting? The NSW brewery first made With Or Without You (or a version of it) when they opened in 2012, and they haven’t stopped revisiting it since. With three red malts bringing the colour - Redback, Aurora and Shepherd's Delight - this Irish red shines like rust at sunset. It smells of golden syrup spread on wholewheat crackers with just a… Read more
Style
Various
ABV
4.5% & 5.5% & 6.5%

Tumut River Man-Gose Wild

Published July 9, 2020
As word came through that New South Wales was closing its borders to Victorians (leading to an earlier-than-planned dash south from Broken Hill) and that Melbourne was going back into lockdown, the name of this beer has taken on even greater personal significance. Already a nod to the wild ride that is 2020, the prospect of being cooped up for another six weeks has led to discussions around just how long we could survive on solar power, cold showers and occasional runs to the nearest town to stock… Read more
Style
Fruit Gose
ABV
4.6%

Tumut River Brewing Deliverance Red IPA

Published February 4, 2020
Deliverance is a red IPA the team at Tumut River Brewing like to brew a few times a year; a fact that suggests a boat trip down the Tumut River may well be akin to taking a canoe down the Cahulawassee. What is clear, however, is the heady mix of tropical fruit – papaya, melon and mango – the beer serves up against its sweet malt body. Sitting at 8 percent ABV, there’s a warming booziness in there too, while a round 100 IBU count tells you this isn't for the faint-hearted. Just like a trip down… Read more
Style
Red IPA
ABV
8.0%
Bitterness
100 IBU

Tumut River Brewing Deliverance Red IPA

Published February 4, 2020
Deliverance is a red IPA the team at Tumut River Brewing like to brew a few times a year; a fact that suggests a boat trip down the Tumut River may well be akin to taking a canoe down the Cahulawassee. What is clear, however, is the heady mix of tropical fruit – papaya, melon and mango – the beer serves up against its sweet malt body. Sitting at 8 percent ABV, there’s a warming booziness in there too, while a round 100 IBU count tells you this isn't for the faint-hearted. Just like a trip down… Read more
Style
Red IPA
ABV
8.0%
Bitterness
100 IBU

Tumut River Brewing Co Deliverance Red IPA & Coffee Milk Stout

Published July 16, 2019
For winter 2019, Tumut River showcased both local malts and locally-roasted coffee in Mocha Stout. Like many Tumut beers, makes use of Voyager malt, with house-roasted coffee beans and lactose completing the picture. There’s a rich, cherry-like coffee flavour that comes through first before it’s joined by roasted notes, chocolate and a sweet and smooth finish. Will Ziebell… Read more
Style
Red IPA & Coffee Milk Stout
ABV
8% & 4.4%
Bitterness
100 IBU & 30 IBU

Tumut River Brewing Co Peaches & Cream

Published March 1, 2019
This seasonal from Tumut River might bear the tag "pale ale" and, indeed, it does present pale and there are some hops in the mix, but in essence the beer side of things (in the traditional sense, at least) is merely there as a launchpad for the stars of the show: peaches and cream (well, lactose). Put the glass to your nose and you'd swear you were about to take a swig of freshly squeezed peach juice, while the lactose adds a little creamy sweetness without taking away from the peaches.… Read more
Style
Peach & Lactose Pale Ale
ABV
5.0%

Tumut River Brewing Co Bounty Hunter

Published January 19, 2019
Maybe it's the association in the name, but if anyone who's eaten a Bounty chocolate bar is able to tuck into Tumut River's chocolate coconut porter and not imagine they're consuming one in liquid form, I doff my cap. Aromas of desiccated coconut are dominant, coming wrapped up in chocolate (and with a cola like layer in the mix too). Once it hits your palate, however, you might be surprised to find it's not as full-bodied or creamy as those aromas would have you expect. Indeed, it's relatively lean… Read more
Style
Chocolate Coconut Porter
ABV
5.1%

Tumut River Brewing Co Aussie Ale – SUPERSEDED

As the name suggests, Tumut River's Aussie Ale is the one designed as their BBQ beer, their “gateway drug” to craft beer. As with all their brews, it's made with all local Voyager craft malts, which lend the beer its dark copper colour as well as a sweetness reminiscent of English ales. Bitterness is kept low with some fruity esters completing the picture.… Read more
Style
Australian Draught Ale
ABV
4.8%
Bitterness
26 IBU

Tumut River Brewing Co Portstar Smoked Porter

Brewer's notes: Like most porters this beer is about the malt. You’ll get strong dark malt flavours including roasty, toasty and even hints of coffee. Unlike most porters you’ll get a smell and taste of smoked cherrywood; smooth and subtle and a thinner, lighter finish making it easy to drink and great around the campfire.… Read more
Style
Smoked Porter
ABV
5.0%
Bitterness
20 IBU