Rocky Ridge Brunswick.

Rocky Ridge Brunswick

Rocky Ridge brew off grid on a hundred-year-old family dairy farm in Western Australia, and buying this Brunswick brewery in 2024 meant they stopped trucking beer across the Nullarbor to sell it in Melbourne.

Why go

Hamish Coates and Mel Holland started Rocky Ridge in 2017 at Jindong, a Margaret River locality with fewer than a hundred people, on land the Coates family has farmed for a century (Broadsheet). Thunder Road had brewed on Barkly Street since 2011 and closed in February 2024. Rocky Ridge bought it, kept the crew and several of the beers, and reopened the taproom on Friday 13 September 2024 with a 30-hectolitre brewhouse now working for them. The room seats 130 with the tables ringed by stainless steel on all four sides, and there is a mezzanine looking down on the brew deck. Head brewer Richard Blazey runs up to eight new beers a month. The bar was rebuilt with the taps set lower so the person pouring can see you over it.

Order this / avoid

• Order: whatever the limited release is. Past ones include Microwave Glowstick, a neon green sour with edible glitter through it, and a banoffee pie stout brewed with the Perth bakery Butter Crumbs. Revolution Raunch if you want the smoked dark one. Otherwise take one of the old Thunder Road lines, still brewed by the people who made them.
• Avoid: Monday and Tuesday, when the doors are shut. And do not plan around the tacos: CDMX had the Airstream for six months from September 2024 and the current operator is not published anywhere.

What locals & experts say

• Mel Holland, co-owner, to Broadsheet on why they took the site: We are suckers for taking on old buildings for our taphouses, and we instantly fell in love with this cottage. The initial goal here was to reconnect this cottage space with the courtyard beer garden, to show her off in all her glory and celebrate the history of the Brunswick area.1
• Concrete Playground, on what changed: a totally remodelled front bar that holds 32 regularly rotating taps and plenty of canned beers, in a 130-seat venue where not much has changed otherwise.3
• The Crafty Pint, on the parent's output: Rocky Ridge release more beers every year than most, clocking 106 new beers in 2023 alone. That is the roster the Brunswick taps draw on.2
• What is not this venue's credit. Rocky Ridge Jindong Juicy took 16th in the GABS Hottest 100 of 2024, and that is the Western Australian parent's beer. Thunder Road won back-to-back Australian International Beer Awards champion-brewery trophies in 2014 and 2015 from this same address, and that was a different company. Neither is claimed here.5
• No Melbourne chef names it, across 74 picks by 44 working chefs and writers, and no bylined critic has reviewed it. The rung rests on documented kit and release cadence.6

Good to know

• Where: 130 Barkly Street, at the Brunswick East end, behind an 1850s heritage-listed bluestone cottage.
• Timing: Wednesday to Friday 4pm to 9pm, Saturday midday to 10pm, Sunday midday to 9pm. Closed Monday and Tuesday.
• Booking: worth making, and the venue only books out half the room so there is always walk-in space.
• Sites: this page is the Brunswick premises. Rocky Ridge also runs the Jindong TapHouse and a Perth taproom in Western Australia, and no evidence from either attaches here.
• Also poured: local wine, spirits, ginger beer, slushies, and bottled cocktails from Idle Hands in Perth.
• Diet: no allergen or dietary statement is published, so nothing is flagged.
• Hygiene: Victoria publishes no venue ratings, only Safe Food Victoria's register of convictions under s.53D of the Food Act 1984, and this venue is not on it.7

Verdict

should-visit — Rocky Ridge brew off grid on a Jindong dairy farm in the Margaret River region that the Coates family has worked for a century, and their eastern-states popularity had created a problem they did not like: freighting beer across the Nullarbor is hard to square with an environmental ethos. Buying Thunder Road in 2024 solved it, and gave them a 30-hectolitre brewhouse on Barkly Street plus the crew who had been running it. The taproom reopened on 13 September 2024 with 32 rotating taps, tables ringed by stainless brewing equipment on all four sides, and a mezzanine over the brew deck. They put out up to eight new beers a month and they are not timid about it: a neon green sour with edible glitter, a banoffee pie stout brewed with a Perth bakery, a smoked dark ale. Half the room is held back for walk-ins. It sits at should-visit rather than higher because no bylined critic has yet written about it and because its two loudest credentials, a national top-20 beer and two champion-brewery trophies, belong respectively to the parent in WA and to the brewery that used to occupy this building.