The irony of releasing a beer called The Future is Bright smack dab in the middle of a global pandemic, and a few weeks into Melbourne’s (first) painful COVID-related lockdown, wasn’t lost on the Moon Dog Brewing crew. “We were feeling really shit,” says Dave Laglands, the brewery’s New Product Development and Export Sales Manager. “It was a bit of positivity to what was really just a shit time.”
Brewed with a three-malt bill and scads of five different hops, The Future is Bright is a clean, tropical fruit-forward IPA that drinks a little like a New England-style ale, minus the haze. Coming from a brewery with a long history of beer names based on cheeky word plays and pop-cultural references—Cherry Seinfeld (cherry sour), Lando Kardashian (tripel IPA), Big Truffle in Little Porter (salted truffle porter), the list goes on—it’s reasonable to assume Moon Dog employed a little gallows humor with its smashable 6.6% IPA.
The actual story is far more earnest. “When we built our new brewery, we thought it would be a waste to have such a big roof and not use it for generating our electricity, so we put 317 solar panels on it,” says Laglands, speaking by Zoom (of course) to discuss Moon Dog and its latest go at the Singapore market. “If you’re going to build a large manufacturing facility, build it green; build it to where you’re not adding to the problem. We saved more than 20 tons of CO2 from the atmosphere in the first few months, and we really wanted to celebrate that.”
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Moon Dog’s “new brewery” in question sits on a plane of its own in Australian craft brewing, and marks a significant step in the evolution and rapid growth of the decade-old brewery.
It began in 2010 with, as co-founder Josh Uljans puts it, “a little combination of dairy tanks that [he’d] welded together in a shitty little industrial shed.” Uljans says he, his brother Jake, and third co-founder Karl van Buuren had no idea what they were doing at the time. Many in Australia likely agreed when Moon Dog Brewing made its debut with Skunkworks—a 9.1% cognac barrel-aged double IPA—followed it with a hoppy 8.1% Belgian-American brown ale, then dropped an oak-aged black wild ale with cherry plums. Moon Dog spoke to the pointiest end of Australia’s craft beer crowd at a time when a crowd of any kind barely existed.
“We were the first Australian brewery to really focus on producing beers that were a little bit left of center to what was otherwise available; the first ones to really get stuck into wild fermentation, barrel aging, and using atypical ingredients,” Uljans says. “These beer styles are now quite commonplace, but it’s part of our DNA. It’s genuinely who we are.”
Fast forward a few years. Moon Dog has taken over a few neighboring warehouses, installed a 5,000-liter brewery, and kicked annual volume up to about 2 million liters. A new core range of accessible beers complements the esoteric, driving huge jumps in sales and distribution. The “shitty little industrial shed” is now a buzzy bar. Suddenly, an expansion meant to last at least five years has run its course in less than three.
Time to think big. “Josh is a very creative individual, and he didn’t want to just build another brewery, you know, a taproom with a little kind of cellar door or anything like that,” Laglands says. “So he gathered us all together and asked us to think about what would be in the most amazing taproom we’ve ever been to.”
The result in late 2019 was Moon Dog World, an appropriately bonkers venue for a brewery that is proudly “a little bit different,” in Uljans’ words. Taking up roughly 2,000 square meters of an old 12,000sqm car parts factory, Moon Dog World has an elevated rainforest area, manmade waterfall, lagoon, secret pinball room, hidden tiki bar, and retractable roof. Oh yeah, and a 10,000-liter brewery with multiple kettles—in part to accommodate Moon Dog’s growing kettle sours program, known as the Magnificent Mullets series—and more than 25 fermentation tanks. It accommodates up to 725 people.
The brewing facilities are in full view behind eight-meter high glass walls; what’s not within view is a massive 2,000sqm cellar around the back of the building that’s been converted into a barrel-aging and wild fermentation facility.
As we slog towards the end of what has thus far been an absolutely lovely year, Moon Dog now stares into the void as one of Australia’s largest independent breweries. Volume is up to around 3.5 million liters, with the capability to potentially scale up to 20 million. There are 230 employees, including 25 sales reps based around the country, and exports to places like New Zealand, Singapore, and Hong Kong are ramping up. And why settle for one Moon Dog World when you can have 20 of them across Asia Pacific? (More on that, below.)
Moon Dog, of course, is not exempt from COVID-19’s ongoing piss on the world’s parade. Along with just about everything else in Melbourne, Moon Dog World (and its sister bar, Moon Dog OG) closed for everything but delivery and drive-thru pickups during the city’s lockdown from April to June. Overnight it went from 5,500 – 7,000 people a week to zero, and when Moon Dog’s venues did reopen in early June, the combined max capacity of about 925 between the two places was whittled down to less than 100.
“We’re an eternally optimistic bunch. It’s certainly been very challenging, but it’s also been incredible to see the way the team has forged together and found the positives that are there to be found,” says Uljans. “But it was without a doubt a massive kick in the dick when it was announced that we would be going back into stage-three lockdown.”
Positive outlook or not, you can forgive Uljans’ exasperated tone during our Zoom chat on July 9, the day after Melbourne’s second lockdown went into effect. Those onerous restrictions were set to expire on August 19; instead, Melbourne went deeper into lockdown hell on August 2 when stage-four restrictions were introduced until (at least) September 13.
I’m sure you don’t need me to detail the nitty-gritty details of stage-four lockdown to know that “massive kick in the dick” is an understatement.
“It’s just a matter of time and patience, and we’re far from the only ones going through this,” says Uljans. “We’ve tried to do everything we could over this period to make the most of the situation. April was our largest wholesale month ever, and then June was our largest month again, it just kept on growing despite not selling any kegs. We’ve got an amazing pipeline of absolutely mind-blowing, delicious beers, and we’re finding a way through, ya know?”
Who knows when, and who knows how, but this will indeed come to pass. And when it does, the future remains bright for Melbourne’s one-time shitty little industrial shed.
In the Words of Moon Dog Brewing
Spanning two separate Zoom calls, our extensive chat with Moon Dog Brewing’s Josh Uljans and Dave Laglands touched on everything from the brewery’s upcoming barrel program to brewery independence. Here we hit a few highlights.
On Beer Can, a 4.2% tropical lager and our favorite of Moon Dog’s four core beers:
Dave Laglands: “We looked at what we thought was the lightest, most refreshing beer style and chose a Mexican-style lager base. It has a super pale Pilsner malt, and we used a little corn sugar in there—not high fructose, straight corn sugar—to lighten the body. We wanted to then give it a bit of a ‘craft beer edge,’ so we add a whole bunch of American hops late in the boil and in the dry hop, as well as a bunch of cold-pressed fruit juices. The juice is subtle, but it gives it this nice, round fruitiness that makes it super drinkable and taste like no other lager we could find on the market.”
On how Moon Dog’s spirit of adventureness is expressed in the core range:
Josh Uljans: “It’s a really interesting question. Moon Dog means a lot of things—the values that we have as a brand are broader than just experimentation. At our core, we’re about delivering a really fun experience that doesn’t just have to be embodied in the style of beer. I think it’s possibly an oversimplification of who we are if every single one of our products just has to be a lager with something weird added to it just for the hell of it, you know what I mean?”
“It’s about fun and ‘Australiana.’ We have some angles that are little bit quirky, and to me that’s what allows a lager to sit in our range alongside a double barrel-aged imperial stout with truffles because they’re both Moon Dog. They’re both done with the same kind of passion of making the best products we possibly can, having a great time while we’re doing it, and trying to have other people have a great time, as well.”
Laglands: “I think being inclusive is a huge part of that, as well; having someone come to one of our bars or pick up one of our beers and enjoy it at whatever stage of the craft beer journey they’re on. Lager is a big seller for us and a big driver of our brand to people who aren’t necessarily looking for a double barrel-aged imperial stout. It helps drive experiences like coming to Moon Dog World, or take part in things like Mate Day or any of the other silly, fun, inclusive things we do to get people on board with what we do.”
On growth and the prospect of brewing up to 20 million liters annually:
Uljans: Every moment in the growth and evolution of the business has been daunting and challenging, but really exciting and fun. We’re obviously a completely different business now, but we’ve maintained the same ethos, passion, and integrity, and we just do things a lot better now.”
“We have an amazing team that’s on this journey with us and having an excellent time doing it, so going from where we are now, up to 20 million liters, it’s absolutely daunting but also exciting and will be a very, very enjoyable journey. Maybe we’ll get there, maybe we won’t, but it’s never really been about that. There’s a little poem: ‘he knows not where he’s going, for the ocean will decide, it’s not the destination, it’s the glory of the ride.’”
On Moon Dog Brewing’s investment in barrels and wild fermentation:
Laglands: “We plan to fill up that cellar with 500 to 600 barrels, and we’re going to get some oak foeders and start doing wild fermentation. Our location backs onto a river that has a lot of trees and other greenery, so we think we can get some really great results with wild, spontaneous fermentation in that area. The plan is to also put a 10,000-liter coolship in there and start doing some real wild fermentation stuff.”
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Uljans: “Broadly speaking the demand in Australia for things that are not straight-down-the-line beer is absolutely growing, but in terms of the really pointy end of craft, I don’t think we know the answer because no one here has really done it on this scale. There are some fantastic breweries here that are producing some amazing products, and everything they’re making is getting swallowed up, just like we’re finding. We’ll make ourselves make world-class products, and if the market isn’t ready for it, then we’ll just educate people and help them learn about how awesome these beers are.”
On what it means to be Moon Dog:
Laglands: “Giving people an experience is the really big thing for us. We want people to have fun when they’re drinking beer, rather than take it too seriously. We don’t want it to be like wine, where it’s… maybe for the lack of a better word ‘wanky.’ We don’t think beer should be wanky, we think it should be fun and everyone should enjoy it.”
On the importance of independence as a craft brewery:
Uljans: “It’s a fundamental part of the fabric of Moon Dog. It allows us to do things that you can’t do if you’re part of a large corporate operation, and allows us to make decisions that I think in the long run are the right decisions. It allows us to build the team that is truly passionate about what we’re doing. It’s allowed us to take on projects and challenges that we wouldn’t have otherwise been able to take on. Ultimately, it’s allowed us to be who we are.”
“We’ve been lucky to have complete control of our destiny based on working incredibly hard to build the business, not necessarily in the easiest way, but the right way for us. It’s a great challenge and we’re loving it, and we can do this because we’re masters of our own destiny.”
On Moon Dog Brewing’s growing international presence:
Laglands: “It’s very much a brand-building exercise internationally. We are less about chasing volume than we are about getting our beer in the right places, and we only like to work with people we like. We have a festival called Mate Fest, and pretty much the only reason we have it is to invite all of our friends from all over the world for a party and to hang out. It’s very much at the core of our brand—friendship and fun and silliness and that sort of thing.”
On plans for more Moon Dog Worlds:
Laglands: “When COVID-19 happened we were just about to sign the lease on two sites [in Melbourne]. We’ve put it all on hold, but had one that was going to be a bowling alley/music venue/brewpub type thing, and then had another one way out by the beach that we were going to turn into a 2,000-person venue with an outdoor beer garden, live music, pro wrestling matches, and other events.”
“The plan from there is to have 20 venues around Australia, New Zealand, and Asia in the next three years. One of the first places in Asia I want to put one in is Singapore. I don’t know how legal it would be, but I love the idea of walking into an office building, getting into the elevator, and then going up to say the tenth floor and then you’re in a tropical wonderland. That’s the kind of mind-blowing experience we want to give people.”
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Moon Dog Brewing is based in Melbourne, Australia, home to Moon Dog World and Moon Dog OG. Smith Street Trading Co imports and distributes its beers in Singapore.
Full Disclosure: To preview its debut shipment from Moon Dog Brewing, Smith Street Trading Co provided a mixed pack of nine beers prior to our calls with the brewery. While this did not influence our coverage, Beer Travelist believes in transparency – unlike other media in Singapore.
