Region & History

Anyone who wants to know how Melbourne came by its beer has to go back to the gold rush. Starting in 1851, fortune seekers flooded into Victoria, the city grew from a settlement into a metropolis within a few years, and everyone was thirsty. The Victoria Bitter brand traces itself back to 1854: that's when Thomas Aitken is said to have brewed the first beer of this name at the Victoria Brewery.

Many small breweries merged into a corporation. In 1904, six companies joined forces to form Carlton & United Breweries, known as CUB: Carlton Brewery, Castlemaine Brewery in Melbourne, Foster Brewing Company, McCracken's City Brewery, Shamrock Brewing and Malting Company, and the Victoria Brewery. The Foster's name later survived in the Foster's Group, which CUB belonged to.

The ownership changed hands several times after that. In December 2011, SABMiller took over the Foster's Group, and in October 2016, CUB passed to Anheuser-Busch InBev along with SABMiller. In June 2020, the sale to Japan's Asahi was finalized. Asahi combined CUB with its own beverage business, creating what it describes as Australia's largest beverage company.

The countermovement began in 1997 in Richmond. Cam Hines and Dave Bonighton founded Mountain Goat there, and their first beer, the Hightail Ale, was released in October 1997. In 2015, Asahi bought this brewery too. Mountain Goat shows that a craft name, meaning a handcrafted image, and corporate ownership can go hand in hand.

Today, small breweries crowd into old warehouses in Fitzroy, Collingwood, Abbotsford, and Brunswick. Travel guides count around thirty in the Melbourne area. There is no protected designation of origin for Australian beer; no Australian entry appears in the EU list. Victoria Bitter is a brand, not a protected region.