Moon Dog Craft Brewery
Moon Dog's own site says it plainly: "OG is no longer open as a public bar and now serves as a one of a kind functions & events space available for private hire."
Why go
You do not. This page describes 17 Duke Street, Abbotsford, where Josh and Jake Uljans and Karl van Buuren started brewing on repurposed dairy tanks in 2010 and opened their first brewery bar in 2014 (Moon Dog). The Crafty Pint's brewery page records what happened next: Moon Dog World in Preston, then Footscray, then a 1,500-capacity brewpub beside Marvel Stadium, then Frankston, with the OG becoming a function space for hire once Doglands opened
(The Crafty Pint). Listings that put a tiki grotto at this address have the wrong building. The tiki bar, the waterfall, the lagoon and the retractable roof are seven kilometres north in Preston, inside the old Nylex plant, and they always were.
Order this / avoid
- Order: a beer at one of the four Moon Dog rooms that pour. World is at 32 Chifley Drive, Preston. Wild West is at 54 Hopkins Street, Footscray. Doglands is at 685 La Trobe Street, Docklands. Beach Club is at 490 Nepean Highway, Frankston.
- Avoid: walking to Duke Street for a pint, and any listing that still calls this a taproom.
What locals & experts say
- Will Ziebell, The Crafty Pint, in 2020, on the bar while it still traded:
Moon Dog World in Preston might be hogging the limelight these days but there's much to love about drinking a beer in the understated spot in which the Moon Dog story began. The Duke Street venue sits in the shadow of CUB and is an indoor-outdoor-tropical delight, complete with palm trees, some of the comfiest old couches in Melbourne and pictures of John Candy on the wall.
3 That is a/news/piece, which on this site is independent editorial. - The Crafty Pint's brewery page, which is a different thing and says so: it closes with
This is a directory listing.
Paid directory pages are signed off by the business, so it is cited here for the sequence of venue openings and for placing the tiki bar in Preston, and not as a judgment.2 - Co-founder Josh Uljans to The Crafty Pint in 2023, on the Docklands site that ended this one:
It's just a kick of the footy away from the stadium.
4
Good to know
- Where: 17 Duke Street, Abbotsford, in the shadow of the CUB site.
- Status: closed as a public bar. Private hire only, so the door is either locked or someone else's party.
- Sites: five Moon Dog premises in Melbourne. The premises here is the Abbotsford original, branded Moon Dog OG by the company. The other four trade.
- Awards: Moon Dog holds Champion Large Brewery from the 2022 Indies and a Champion Modern Pale Ale trophy for Old Mate from the 2023 Indies. Those belong to the company, not to this address, and are recorded here rather than in
awards:for that reason. - Safety: Victoria publishes no venue hygiene rating. Safe Food Victoria's s.53D register of convictions, fifteen entries at its 21 July 2026 update, does not list this business.5
Verdict
listed — There is no pint to be had here. Moon Dog's own site says the OG is no longer open as a public bar and now runs as a private-hire function space, and The Crafty Pint's brewery page says the same thing in the same words about what happened once Doglands opened. Listings still sell it as an open Abbotsford taproom with a tiki grotto, which is two errors: the tiki bar, the lagoon and the retractable roof are at Moon Dog World in Preston, in the old Nylex plant, and the Duke Street bar was never that. What Duke Street was, when Will Ziebell walked the suburb for The Crafty Pint in 2020, was palm trees, the comfiest old couches in Melbourne, pictures of John Candy on the wall and a pizza truck out front, with the pilot brewery still going out the back. Josh and Jake Uljans and Karl van Buuren started brewing here on repurposed dairy tanks in 2010 and opened the bar in 2014, so the history is real and worth a sentence. The beer is worth drinking and it is poured in Preston, Footscray, Docklands and Frankston. Go to one of those.