The brewery whose beers even ghosts can’t leave alone.
Home Base: Brunswick, Melbourne
Brews: Thunder Road Pacific Ale, Thunder Road Pale Ale and Thunder Road IPA
The Stats: Opened its doors in 2012. Picked up Champion Medium Sized Brewery at the Australia International Beer Awards in 2014 and 2015.
Thunder Road Brewing is haunted. Well, the 1850s bluestone cottage on their site is. The two resident ghosts are Mr Burkett – a Quarryman – and James Duff, who respectively passed away there in 1880 and 1915. The ghostly inhabitants are very protective of the brewery and keep careful watch over everything. Every so often, Thunder Road leave a full glass or two of their beers on the cottage dining table for the duo, and apparently, they’re always gone by morning.
If ghosts are polishing off their brews, you can bet there’s something special about them.
The Thunder Road philosophy is Beers Without Borders – a sort of ongoing quest to create new flavours and still brew the best craft beers on the planet. Smashing together traditional brewing expertise with challenging new brewing methods.
Made with Australian hops, their beers vary from refreshing, aromatic, bitter and lightly hoppy, to yeasty, dark and heavily hopped.
Thunder Road’s head brewing team consists of Jonathan Kauri and, one of Australia’s few female brewers, Liz Johnson. They currently brew in Australia and Europe.