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MELBOURNE | The Mill Brewery is Collingwood’s newest craft brewery, and one of its smallest. It’s owned by Mirek Aldridge, who is also the head brewery, and is the culmination of several years of homebrewing experience with the dream of one day owning a brewery. Mirek started with a 70 litre homebrew set-up, and while brewing is now done a much larger 600 litre system, the old set-up is still used to test batches and brew one-off kegs.
The space is, as is often the case with these things, and old warehouse and reminded us of some of the smaller San Diego breweries in North Park that we visited when we were over there. The brewing equipment takes up the back third of the venue, there’s a bar to the side, a ping pong table, arcade machine, and some seating and hand made redgum tables inside and out the front. It’s feels a bit like someone’s garage that they’ve put together themselves, and in fact Mirek did the fitout himself.
There are eight taps, with six of them featuring The Mill’s core range beers, plus a few seasonal, collaborations, and one-off brews, and two of them featuring a guest beer and a cider from other breweries. We’ve visited a few times, and find that the highlights are the beers that tend towards the darker end of the scale. Standouts include the Dark Lord, a 6.66% Black IPA, that’s been double dry hopped with loads of Galaxy and Citra hops, and the Vanilla Porter, a 4.5% porter made with with caramel and chocolate malts, and Vanilla beans. Tasting paddles are offered if you’re looking to try a few things before committing to a whole beer.
In a move we’re glad to be seeing more of in Melbourne, The Mill isn’t one of those places that excludes non-beer drinkers. Those looking for a glass of wine when their beer loving mates drag them along will be happy to know that a lot of thought has gone into the wine list which includes a diverse range of Australian and New Zealand wines.
There’s no kitchen here, but a rotation of food trucks out the front provides options for those who are hungry.
The Mill Brewery
40 Sackville Street
Hawthorn
Victoria 3066
Australia
Telephone: 0417 324 363
E-mail: [email protected]
Website
Open
Fri: 1:00pm to 11:00pm
Sat – Sun: 1:00pm to 11:00pm