Chris Shanahan: Brew pubs not so new

In brewsnews.com.au beer historian Brett J Stubbs reminds us of the long history of brewpubs in Australia.

Stubbs writes, “it is a little appreciated fact that they were commonplace in the Australian colonies in the nineteenth century, as they were then in the United Kingdom”.

When the first fleet sailed into to Sydney Cover, stubs says, 27,000 brewing victuallers produced 43 per cent of British beer, “and nearly half of all publicans brewed their own beer”.

Brewpubs persisted longer in the UK than they did in Australia, with 4,500 still in existence in 1900 and four limping through to the 1970s when the Campaign for Real Ale sparked a resurgence.

To this campaign, says Stubbs, “we owe the revival of the concept in Australia”, noting the late Geoffrey Scharer’s George IV at Picton (1987) and Phil Sexton’s Sail and Anchor at Fremantle (1984).