Hop Nation Brewing Co.
Four of the taps are Lukr side-pulls with a wider bore than a normal faucet, so the pilsner comes out under a dense creamy head instead of a thin one.
Why go
Sam Hambour and Duncan Gibson were making wine in Central Otago when they started homebrewing against each other. They founded Hop Nation in 2015, bought a brewing system from Sawmill Brewery near Auckland, and opened the doors of an 1880s Footscray soap, candle and ammunition factory in mid-2016 (The Crafty Pint). The winemaking never left: there is a Site Fermentation Project of beer-and-wine hybrid sours, barrels along the wall, and a still in the middle of the warehouse producing gin and whisky. Nineteen taps run under a ten-metre pitched roof with brick arches, and the taproom pours new brews before the rest of the city gets them (Broadsheet). Good Pizza works out of the same room on long-ferment dough.
Order this / avoid
- Order: the Rattenhund pilsner, poured off a side-pull. Footscray Draft is the house beer of the postcode. Ask what is out of the Site Fermentation Project.
- Avoid: Monday to Wednesday, when it does not open, and bringing a dog, which state law forbids anywhere food is handled. Much of the beer is now brewed on the Mornington Peninsula, so this is a taproom with a brewhouse rather than the whole production.
What locals & experts say
- Broadsheet on the dispense: four Lukr side-pull faucets
have a larger diameter than stand taps, giving a unique creamy head to Hop Nation lagers like the Rattenhund pilsner.
3 - The Crafty Pint's venue write-up describes the revamped warehouse as feeling like
stepping into a chapel... one which Hop Nation have dedicated to all things fermentation.
That page is a paid directory listing the business signs off, per their own How We Operate.2 - The brewery's own count is 19 taps. Broadsheet says 17 and The Crafty Pint says 18. Three sources, three numbers, and the venue's current page is the one used here.1
- Nobody has judged it from outside. No award surfaced on 1 August 2026, no critic has reviewed it, and none of the 74 chef picks in Melbourne's corpus names it.
Good to know
- Where: 6/107-109 Whitehall Street, Footscray. Ten minutes' walk from Footscray or Seddon stations, 50 metres off the Maribyrnong River bike trail.
- Timing: Thursday 3pm to 9.30pm, Friday and Saturday noon to 10pm, Sunday noon to 9pm. Shut the rest of the week.
- Booking: online, with tables held back for walk-ins. Groups over ten by email.
- Access: wheelchair accessible, stated by the venue.
- Dogs: not permitted anywhere on the premises.
- Food safety: no entry for this business on Safe Food Victoria's register of convictions as at its 21 July 2026 update.4
- Near MCEC: no. Footscray, about 6km from South Wharf.
Verdict
could-visit — Go if you are in the west or riding the Maribyrnong trail, and go for the lager. Four of the taps are Lukr side-pulls with a wider bore than a standard faucet, which is why the Rattenhund pilsner arrives under a dense creamy head rather than a thin one, and that is a dispense decision somebody paid for. Sam Hambour and Duncan Gibson were making wine in Central Otago when they started homebrewing against each other, founded Hop Nation in 2015 and opened this 1880s soap and ammunition factory as a brewery mid-2016. There is a still in the middle of the room making their gin and whisky, barrels along the wall, and a Site Fermentation Project of beer-and-wine hybrid sours that only two winemakers would think to run. Good Pizza does long-ferment dough in the same building. It sits at could-visit rather than higher for a plain reason: no award, no critic and no chef in the Melbourne survey has assessed any of it, and much of the brewing now happens on the Mornington Peninsula.