L-R: RedDot’s Crystalla Huang and Ernest Ng

A Melbourne beer tasting room is on the cards for RedDot BrewHouse, the Singaporean craft brewer that will open a production facility in Truganina on the city fringe later this year, as previously reported on Australian Brews News.

Founded eight years ago, RedDot is a family-owned and managed business with two 300-seat brewpub restaurants in Singapore.

Founder Ernest Ng and daughter Crystalla Huang attended the Australian Craft Beer Conference in Melbourne last week.

“We looked at many places, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, China. We finally settled on Australia because of the support that we received from the Victorian Government,” Ng told Australian Brews News.

Ng is a construction industry veteran who fell in love with beer and learnt to brew. Huang has followed in his footsteps, having become a qualified brewmaster after studying brewing in Berlin.

They wanted to expand their business both within Singapore and into export markets but had no way of doing so in their home country, Ng said.

The RedDot BrewHouse core range in bottles

“When I was brewing in Singapore, we’d get people from Thailand enquiring, people from China enquiring, people from Indonesia enquiring. I could not exploit that opportunity because I’ve reached my maximum capacity,” he said.

“In Singapore, probably the whole of the country would be smaller than Melbourne, so the land is really expensive.”

“Land in Singapore is 23 times more expensive than land in Melbourne,” added Huang.

Ng said RedDot is a craft brewer with a particular focus on unfiltered and unpasteurised beers.

“We have to be a lot more careful with them, we have to ‘cold chain’ our product, especially in summer, so the beer will taste fresh all the time,” he said.

Tasting room coming to Melbourne
The Truganina facility will be producing beers for export back to Singapore and throughout Asia as well as to the bars and restaurants of Melbourne.

“Whatever you see on the website, it will be available here. Since we are in Australia we will craft other beers. I have to think about it, wait for the creative juices and wait for her [Crystalla] to come out with some other ideas now she has graduated from brewing university,” said Ng.

The RedDot Truganina brewery now in progress

The Truganina brewery will launch without its intended beer garden and tasting room, due to some council concerns relating to car parking availability.

In any event, RedDot plans to open a tasting room in the city to ensure Melburnians do not have to travel far to experience its beers.

In the meantime, Ng and Huang have been enthusiastically exploring the bars and beers of Melbourne.

“Definitely, the two of us have been drinking!” said Ng. “I think you have pretty good beer here too.”

“We see the the market is stirring – we are here at the right time,” he said.

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