Mackay’s Red Dog Brewery brewhouse opens in CBD
SNEAK PEEK: A new craft brewery on the city fringes is serving up more than its six brews in the latest arsenal reviving the CBD. See inside the new business.
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A new craft brewery on Mackay’s city fringes might just be the cure to its ale-ing prosperity.
Red Dog Brewery will open on Friday, April 1, but it’s no joke – the brewhouse is the real deal.
The industrial-feel brewery at the corner of Chain and Victoria Sts has a 5400-litre brewing capacity with six mainstay brews to be ready for the grand opening.
Co-owner and brewer Jamie Woods said seasonal or limited brews would be added, but the amber and pale ales, pilsner, kolsch, coffee porter using Primal Coffee, and IPA would be on tap and running aplenty.
With partners Jason Egan and Matt Lawton, Mr Woods has built the brewery and taphouse from the ground up, using his own recipes and hop blends.
“We brew all the beer onsite and you essentially sit here where it’s made,” Mr Woods said.
“We got it as a bare-bones shed, we stripped it right back and built it from the ground up.”
Mr Woods said the beers had been under development for about two years, going through a pilot program to learn the process before refining the six varieties.
“We just started straight up to create a professional brewing system on a smaller scale with this in sight; this was our future plan,” he said.
“We’re an all-grain brewery. We get in brewers malt and we crush the grain so it starts off from a kernel of grain and ends up in the glass as beer.”
The beers are unfiltered, and specially designed equipment is used to mash the brews that follow traditional guidelines.
Mr Woods said the Red Dog Brewery team was grateful for the support in getting the craft brewhouse open, adding it “took a village”.
“It’s the locals’ brewery,” he said.
“It’s not just me and it’s not just the partners in the business, it has been a collaboration.
“Without those people, we wouldn’t be here.”
Mr Woods said Red Dog Brewery, which has an artisan producer liquor licence, will also sell and serve small batch distilled products including Greater Whitsunday Vodka.
“We’ve got a few others from all over the place,” he said.
We’re going to cater for a lot of different people; even if you don’t drink beer, you can still get something you won’t find anywhere else.”
The brewhouse, which will also sell and fill growlers, is the latest in new dining experiences to open in the Mackay CBD area.
Rare Bar and Grill will soon open its doors nearby with fresh seafood, quality meat, exotic cocktails, and “an atmosphere like no other”.
The restaurant will be more like an aquarium, with lobsters, crabs and fish in large fish tanks to greet customers as they enter the lobby.
Rare Bar and Grill co-owner Luke Bauer said it could not have been better timing for him and his partner Shayna Smith to open their restaurant in Mackay’s busiest street just as the Covid-19 pandemic peak eased.
Metro CBDs around the country have been suffering after so many Covid lockdown, with workers preferring their work-from-home arrangements.
But businesses in Mackay’s city heard say foot traffic is returning to pre-Covid levels.
Mina Dang, owner of the popular Flavours of Vietnam restaurant on MacAlister Street, has been in business three years, struggling through the dark months of March and April 2020 before blossoming into a “flat-out” restaurant at full capacity across 2021.
Two months after the surge of Omicron into Queensland, she says she is at 80 per cent capacity.
Jan Simpson of M’Lady’s on Wood Street has operated in the CBD for more than 25 years and says the district is in a comparatively healthy position.
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