In recent years, breweries have been opening in all manner of places across Australia – and soon you'll find one at Melbourne Airport too. Collingwood-based brewing company Stomping Ground today revealed they're to build their third brewery in Terminal 3 after operating a pop-up beer garden between Terminals 3 and 4 over the past two summers.
It will be only the second airport with its own brewery in the Southern Hemisphere and continues Stomping Ground's phenomenal rise; they don't celebrate their third birthday until next month and only recently confirmed plans for a second brewpub in Melbourne's south-east.
And it means travellers will be able to choose from more than 20 locally-brewed beers when passing through the airport – up to four brewed onsite and the remainder coming from their main site in Collingwood and the forthcoming Morris Moor operation.
“Melbourne is our home and we're incredibly excited to be bringing Stomping Ground to the airport," says Justin Joiner, co-founder and director of venue operations at Stomping Ground.
He says the plan for the brewing side of the operation is for it to "essentially be a fun R&D setup for small batch keg beers mainly for our own venues", with head brewer Ashur Hall overseeing brewing across all three sites.
"We certainly plan to give others in our brewing team opportunities to flex their brewing muscles too," Justin says.
It turns out today's announcement was two years in the making: back then, the Stomping Ground team approached the airport about opening a venue there. While there were no leasing opportunities at the time, it did lead to their pop-up venue and, subsequently, an invitation to tender for a permanent venue inside the airport. They did so with global food service and hospitality company Delaware North and made a winning pitch.
The airport bar will sit roughly halfway along Terminal 3 (the Virgin Australia Domestic Terminal) on the site currently occupied by Fly Bar, which will be expanded by roughly a third for Stomping Ground. As well as the beer – including tinnies for takeaway – they'll be offering their full beer hall food menu.
While the team behind Stomping Ground have broad experience in the wider hospitality and events scene – Justin's business partners Steve Jeffares and Guy Greenstone are also owners of The Local Taphouse in St Kilda and run the annual multi-city GABS festival – this new venture will pose new hurdles.
"The airport is unlike anywhere else we have operated," Justin says. "Whilst the challenges aren't insurmountable, nothing is as simple as it would be in our existing venues. Security is the obvious one, especially since the venue will be airside.
"Everything – including each bag of malt – will have to be scanned through security as you would your hand luggage."
It goes further, too, due to the nature of airport life.
"It is really like a mini city with tens of thousands of staff working around the clock to keep things going," he says. "We've learned that you need to be really organised as it's hard to just do things on the fly – deliveries need to planned and booked in with loading docks, staff need security passes, car park access, Sky Bus discounts, the list goes on.
"Being able to learn the patterns of trade [operating the pop-up venue] has been interesting as well: the airport tends to be very busy at times our city venues aren't, and quiet when they are."
The Stomping Ground team believe this will be just the fifth brewery within an airport anywhere in the world, the others they've come across being Airbräu (Munich), Cigar City Brewery (Tampa), Tivoli Brewing at Tom's Urban Kitchen (Denver) and Airport Craft Brewers (Johannesburg).
The opening of the brewery bar is part of a move by the airport's management to revamp their offering and bring in some of the best known names from Melbourne's café and bar world. Joining Stomping Ground are Pickett’s Deli and Moors restaurant from Melbourne restaurateurs Scott Pickett and Shane Delia respectively, EARL Canteen, Cobb Lane, Axil Coffee Roasters and Proud Mary.
Melbourne Airport chief of retail Andrew Gardiner said: “Melbourne is one of the world’s top food destinations so it is important that our food and beverage offering reflects the amazing variety of food found across our wonderful city."
James Smith launched The Crafty Pint in 2010, two years after moving to Australia from the UK. He was taken to Mountain Goat within weeks of landing in Melbourne, joined their indoor cricket team, and is still navigating the rabbit hole that is craft beer to this day.
The beers that turned you on to good beer:
- Watching pints of McEwan's 80 Shilling settle when visiting family in Edinburgh.
- Pints of flat Bass from the jug at the Cap & Stocking in Kegworth.
- A first Paulaner Hefeweizen when working in Munich in 1998: “This smells of bananas!”
- Castle Rock Harvest Pale – how could a 3.8 percent ABV beer be so good? (It turns out it was an early example of the three Cs – Cascade, Centennial and Columbus – in an English bitter).
- Dogfish Head 90 Minute IPA poured through hops at the Sunset Grill in Cambridge, MA, in the company of a man who turned out to be the Beer Nut (while we were both covering a double murder case at the time).
- Ordering a Mountain Goat Hightail on my first day as an Aussie resident as it was local and I’d never heard of it; “A dark Australian beer; well I never…”
- Murray’s Icon 2IPA at Beer DeLuxe Fed Square, recommended by a guy I’d not long known who's now the main man at Fixation, served by Mik Halse, now head of sales at Hawkers. How could an Australian beer smell as good as that?!?
You've got three beers to turn someone else on to good beer; what are they and why?
- Any really good, fresh and balanced West Coast style IPA. Punchy hop aromatics are the most obvious way to capture someone's attention and these IPAs, done well, present the key components in beer (if you're sticking to just water, malt, hops and yeast) in harmony yet with the volume turned up.
- Saison Dupont. Arguably a selfish choice here as I bloody love the broad saison style and dearly hope it will finally take hold in Australia one day. Given a choice, I'd probably crack one enlivened with Brettanomyces like Molly Rose Matilde for myself but, when it comes to turning on someone new, you've got to go with the classic.
- Rodenbach Caractère Rouge. Because if you don't enjoy or can't appreciate this beer, I'll never win you over. And because Filip, the fruit and wood specialist at Rodenbach that designed it, is a beautiful human.
The last beer you enjoyed:
Fixation IPA at The Incubator.
Three things that represent you:
- The Soft Bulletin by The Flaming Lips
- Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
- Golden Plains
NB All articles written by James in the first eight years of the site appear as By Crafty Pint. Today, that's used for collaborative efforts by the wider team.
