Tom Delmont picks up the Champion Brewery – Medium award for Fixation at the Craft Beer Awards in July 2017

Fixation Brewing Company will open its own brewery and taproom in Melbourne early next year.

The IPA-focused brand conceived by Stone & Wood in late 2015 has grown such that its flagship Fixation IPA is the third largest volume product in the entire Fermentum family of brands, behind Stone & Wood Pacific Ale and Green Coast Lager.

In total, Fixation Brewing Company is now approaching annual volume of 300,000 litres.

It will mark the next phase of its evolution by putting down roots in Collingwood, managing partner Tom Delmont told Brews News.

“It took around 12 months to find a site and I was looking everywhere from Richmond all the way round to Footscray,” he said.

“It’s an old building, an older warehouse that was a factory outlet before. It’ll be a pretty basic setup, but our brand will probably make enough colour and interest in the venue.”

Working title
Fixation Brewery & Tasting Room is the current working title for the venue, which will have a 600L brewhouse, five fermenters, three serving tanks and one brite tank.

“We’ll be getting a brew out probably once a week. You’re talking 10-12 kegs a week made on site, so we’ll still be doing a lot of production up at Murwillumbah and Byron,” Delmont said.

He said the brewery has been designed to Fixation’s specifications, ensuring it is well suited to handle hop forward, higher gravity beers without losing a lot of yield.

“At the moment we’re using gear that’s not really designed to handle massive whirlpool hop additions,” he said.

Delmont said the 90-100 capacity brewpub will have ten to 12 taps pouring Fixation’s core and specialty beers, along with some guest taps.

“I reckon it’s nice to have few guest taps. I was really impressed when I went to Stone and they had 30-odd taps, and quite a decent number of them were from other local independent breweries,” he said.

The venue will also have a food offer that is yet to be decided, as well as selling take away beer, including growlers or canimals of the specialty beers brewed on-site.

New head brewer
Sam Bethune, who joined Stone & Wood as a brewer in 2015, will become Fixation’s head brewer.

“He’s a Victorian and his wife and him are keen to relocate back to be closer to family,” Delmont said.

The brewing equipment is due to arrive in Australia in February and Fixation has set a goal of opening to the public in April.

Brewery openings are presented bySpark Breweries and Distilleries, the finest in-venue and production brewing systems available, with local design and support.

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