Today I have the unenviable task of documenting the long & convuluted history of CUB. A history so poorly understood/known, that their own staff get it wrong in marketing material from time to time. There is so much bad information out there that it takes a while to sort the wheat from the chaff; time to put that history degree to good use…
To understand how Carlton & United Breweries came into existance it is important to understand the context of late-19th Century Melbourne. Melbourne had become one of the leading cities in the world, the second largest in the British Empire behind only London, due to the influx of riches from the Gold Rush in the 1850’s & 60’s. The 1880’s saw a period of economic prosperity that had rarely been seen on such a scale anywhere in the world. This had to come to an end at some point; which it inevitably did with the “Great Crash” beginning in 1891. The next decade & a half saw banks fail, unemployment skyrocket (some say to as high as 20%) & countless businesses go out of business.
Brewery Type
Physical
Region
Inner Suburbs
Tasting Room
1 Southampton Crescent, Abbotsford
Breweries were one of the most impacted businesses, with many unable to afford the beer duty brought in in 1892. At the turn of the century there were still as many as 18 breweries in Melbourne, far too many for the economic climate. Many of these breweries were unsustainable & the inevitable race to the bottom price only exacerbated their issues.
In November 1905 six of Melbourne’s leading brewers met with a radical proposal; amalgamate in order to survive. In alphabetical order those brewers were; Carlton Brewery, Castlemaine Brewing Co (Melbourne), Foster Brewing Co, McCracken’s City Brewery, Shamrock Brewing & Malting Co & Victoria Brewery. The largest of these brewers; the Carlton Brewery on Bouverie St, Carlton (and had undergone numerous changes of hands & names in the preceeding 49 years since it’s foundation as Union Brewery in 1858) became the headquarters & main production facility of the new joint venture when it was registered in May 1907 after months of negotiations.
Following the amalgamation brewing ceased at Castlemaine, McCracken’s & Shamrock, whilst Foster was kept as a backup brewery until it was sold 3 years later. In 1913 CUB became a publicly listed company & began rapidly expanding, as they continue to do to this day. Deutscher in the authorative text on Australian Brewing states that in the post World War I period that they installed taps at almost 1,000 venues across Victoria.
1924 saw the first of many acquisitions of other breweries, with Hodges Brewery in Geelong joining Carlton & United Breweries. In 1925 they acquired their biggest competitor, the Melbourne Co-Operative Brewing Company, & most importantly their Abbotsford Brewery – CUB’s production facility in Melbourne to this day. Following these local acquistions CUB set their sights much further afield with takeovers occuring in Queensland, New South Wales Darwin & Fiji. Their takeover of Tooth’s, one of Sydney’s larger brewers at the time, in 1983 made them the largest brewing company in Australia.
Elders IXL purchased CUB in 1983 & began pushing Foster’s Lager as an international brand. Brewery acquisitions were made in the UK, Canada & the USA in order to service these markets. International breweries followed in China (3 of them), Vietnam (2) & Samoa (just the one) followed in the 1990’s. They were subsequently all sold in 2006.
Back in Australia the operations were being rationalized. Operations at the Victoria Brewery were ceased in 1983, ended 129 of continuous brewing on the site. Lismore Brewery closed in 1986, whilst some of the more far flung breweries (Darwin, Ballarat & Cairns closed in the ensuing years). The saddest closure was brewing ceasing at the naming Carlton Brewery in 1987 after the Abbotsford Brewery (the current site in Melbourne) commissioned a new kegging line & all production in Melbourne moved to a single site for the first time.
The takeover of Powers Brewing in Yatala, Queensland (about 70km south of Brisbane) was not seen as hugely significant at the time, despite the former holding about 14% of the Queensland drinking market. That brewery has been massively expanded (over twenty-fold) & is now the workhorse of the CUB operation – producing almost a quarter of all beer produced in the entire country! Further acquisitions of craft brewers have followed; Matilda Bay (in 1990), Sanctuary Cove (1995), 4 Pines (2017), Pirate Life (2017) & Balter (2019) – as well as many more I’m sure I’ve forgotten.
Across the road from the Abbostford brewery sits the Carlton Brewhouse. I’m not sure how many people, outside of tourists, even know this place exists. It’s a brick building, quite similar to the brewery, although with a large arched roof & dog friendly beer garden. I’ve driven passed it most weeks for the passed 10 years, working nearby, & have never been inside! From the Brewhouse they offer tours of the brewery, which I think is something I’ll have to do post-COVID – having done & enjoyed several similar macro brewery tours overseas. I’ll report back here when I do.
If you’ve got this far well done; I apologise for the biased review you’re about to read. I could’ve gone with the far more internationally renowned Fosters or VB, but I just couldn’t go passed the beer all Victorians are brought up on; Carlton Draught. To most Victorians Carlton Draught is beer & I have an unabashed fondness for it to this day. It’s slightly sweet up front, malty in the middle, has slightly higher carbonation than you’d find in most lagers & finishes dry and slightly bitter (thank you Pride of Ringwood hop extract!). It’s unique from most macro lagers, because it’s got that little bit more character than most & it’s literally the perfect beer to have far too many of at the footy, in a beer garden or just about anywhere because it does just enough.
I thought I’d end with a disclaimer; it’s a hard task to condense a complicated ~150 year history into a piece approaching a readable length so some things have had to be excluded for brevity – it’s a subject I really love so please feel free to contact me if you’d like to know more/discuss other parts of the history in more detail.
Remember it’s always Beer O’Clock somewhere in the world!
