Cairns brewery tour proves the power of the pandemic pivot
A tour of Cairns breweries and distilleries shows the resilience of the holiday hub during the pandemic.
It’s quite a leap from hosting surfing safaris in Papua New Guinea and scuba diving in the Solomon Islands to taking visitors on tours of Cairns craft breweries and distilleries. For Konrad Borowiecki, the past 14 months have been all about adaptation. At a time when Australians are constantly being reminded of our limits via border closures and lockdowns, Borowiecki, of No Limit Adventures (a company name that now seems painfully ironic), has learned to roll with the punches.
He’s offering domestic travellers daytrips to the Daintree, reef expeditions, 4WD jaunts to Cooktown, plus a luxury package in Cairns. I join him and six other guests on the brewery tour, launched last September. We meet at Cairns landmark The Pier Bar for lunch and, naturally, a beer: the ubiquitous Great Northern, which will serve as an unremarkable benchmark for what’s to come.
When the tour proper begins, it’s soon apparent Borowiecki isn’t the only one who’s been performing the dreaded pandemic pivot. Sam Kennis and Darren Barber opened Wolf Lane Distillery at the end of 2019 only to find themselves making hand sanitiser in the column still amusingly nicknamed Column Farrell. Happily, the operation is back on message, producing three gins: a tropical variety, a navy-strength option with quite a kick, and a pretty magenta version featuring Davidson plum.
We try them all, finishing up with a velvety coffee liqueur made using single-origin beans from far north Queensland. Kennis says they try to reuse the botanicals wherever possible. Plums get a second chance to shine in gin jam, while other ingredients are incorporated into meat rubs and candles.
From Wolf Lane, it’s a 20-minute drive by minibus north to Smithfield, where Macalister Brewing Co is housed in a big, breezy industrial shed that looks across canefields to forested mountains. Industrial chemist Rob Macalister was teaching at the local high school when he was encouraged to enter his home brew in a competition. He won, and set about proving his triumph wasn’t all froth and no substance. He completed a four-year post-grad in brewing science, and with wife Rachel Callin, sold the family home to embark on a 12-month, craft-beer, fact-finding mission around Australia.
Established in 2017, the operation has quadrupled in size since Macalister began making his wide range of unpasteurised, unfiltered, preservative-free brews. “We feel like a proper, grown-up brewery now,” says Callin cheerily.
The logo for Barrier Reef Brewing says a lot about owners and animal-lovers Cameron McPherson and Caroline Passingham. It features a sea turtle with a shell shaped like a hops flower. McPherson, a veterinary surgeon originally from Cairns, met his partner while living in Britain, a time that not only fuelled his passion for marine life but for the brewing process.
Since returning, they have dived deep into the science of yeast propagation and pH levels, producing a core selection of four ales, a lager and an IPA. They maintain their love for the ocean; a website link connects visitors with the Cairns Turtle Rehabilitation Centre, which helps sick and injured turtles.
Last stop on the tour is Coral Sea Brewing, a pioneer of the city’s craft brew scene, having started production five years ago. Covid-19 has left its mark on this substantial operation too, in the shape of a quirky Tiki-style tap room tucked down a laneway. The bar opened last July in an effort to counter the downturn in business wrought by the virus in Queensland’s holiday heartland.
As co-owner Fred Paddock, a pilot who returned to Australia from the Middle East when the pandemic hit, says: “I couldn’t imagine not having it now. It gives the brewery a bit of a home.”
In the know
The Cairns Breweries and Distilleries Tour runs Thursday to Saturday, 12.30pm-6pm; $150 a person, including lunch, tours and transport, for two to 20 people. No Limits Adventures can consider requests for the tour on other days.
Penny Hunter was a guest of Tourism Tropical North Queensland.
