Established in 2005, Moo Brew is one of Tasmania’s original independent craft breweries. Moo Brew sets out to create the best versions of classic beer styles – and if that means tweaking a few fundamentals, giving things a bit of a twist, then all the better.
Moo Brew was started on a whim: David Walsh—professional Tasmanian gambler, eventual builder of Mona—got a little drunk somewhere in eastern Europe, found a bottle he liked, and decided to build a brewery to fill it (as you do). He did already have a foot in the pond of booze, having bought one of Tasmania’s oldest wineries—Moorilla Estate—in the nineties, so a brewery probably made sense as well.
The brewery was initially built on site at Moorilla (which David called Moo Land—hence Moo Brew). It was very fancy, very small, and quite weird, but it was built with quality and local-ness in mind—Walshie wanted Moo to be a bit of a middle finger to the idea of ‘Tasmanian’ breweries being owned by monster national (or international) companies.
Quite a few things have changed since then, but our core DNA (a little arty, little weird, but mostly just keen on making good beers) remains.
Since moving to Bridgewater we’ve also had one changing of the guard at Head Brewer: Jack Viney (who’s been with us since 2014) moved up to take the reins in 2020. With a keen eye for experimentation and limited releases (while keeping the classics up to scratch), things are looking very bright for the future on the brewing front. On the business side, we were lucky enough to lure all-round operational legend (and beer fiend) Lauren Sheppard over from the world of wine to become our General Manager. She keeps us pointing in the right strategic direction and makes sure we don’t run out of beer. Bloody bright all round, really.
