Historic Mount Gambier building to be reborn as Woolstore Brewery
It is almost time for first beers to be poured in Mount Gambier’s newest microbrewery – housed in a historic building right in the heart of town.
Mount Gambier
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Something is brewing in Mount Gambier with a historic building in the heart of the city set to open as a microbrewery early next year.
Inspired by their family holidays, owners Kylie and Chris Ind are busily converting the iconic Margaret Street building into Woolstore Brewery.
“We found ourselves over the years more and more ending up at little local craft breweries,” Mrs Ind said.
“Both my husband I were sitting at this brewery one day and went this is what Mount Gambier needs.”
The husband and wife team quickly realised the old wool building overlooking the Railway Lands was the ideal location for their grand plan.
Built between the 1930s and 1950s, the building was once a bustle with farmers delivering bales of wool before loading them straight on to the train from the deck.
“There’s people who can remember coming here in the ‘60s in the ‘70s to drop off wool or to drop off skins because people used to bring like rabbit skins and things here too,” she said.
“The last owners turned it into self storage units. There was self storage units in most of it for probably 20 years or so and then we took it over a couple of years back and continued running the storage.”
With planning approved in August 2019 and building in September 2020, Mrs Ind said it was all hands on deck transforming the building with the tap room including full brewery fit out and a deck set to open in late January or February.
“It’s taken us a really long time partially because it is such an old building we want to preserve as much of the history as we could and that has meant jumping through more hoops,” she said.
“I think in some ways COVID slowed us down a bit because the whole industry was in so much trouble but in some ways too it’s been good because we’ve had time to really fine tune what we’re going to do.”
Aiming to open with three beers brewed onsite and snacks, Mrs Ind said they want the venue to feel like going to a mate’s place for a beer.
“When you walk in, you’ll be able to see the whole process and meet the people that make it and see how it’s made and ask questions,” she said.
“We’re going to start with a core range, which people probably pretty familiar with pale ales, IPAs, something hazy and then some form of stout obviously, living in Mount Gambier we need a winter beer.
“Down the track we would hope to be able to have some seasonal beers on tap.”
A larger hospitality space is also in the works and Mrs Ind said the brewery will eventually offer a larger range of substantial snacks with a focus on local produce.
“We hope within the next 12 months or two years after that we’ll open up the second shed, which will have a big restaurant type of space and then we’ll be able to do functions,” she said.
