XXXX BREWERY TOUR

Welcome to XXXX Brewery

Welcome to one of Australia’s most iconic breweries, which has been pumping out this legendary Aussie beer since 1878. While the buildings are modern, the real tradition lives on in what’s being brewed inside. There’s actually only one thing that hasn’t really changed in almost 150 years – the beer.

XXXX is Queensland’s pride and joy. But these days, it’s not just Queenslanders who are loving it. Aussies all over the country – and beer lovers all around the world – are raising a XXXX in celebration of a beer that’s always been ahead of its time.

Before we take you on a tour of the brewery, to really understand how XXXX became such a big part of Australian life, we’ve got to take you back to where it all began: with two brothers, a vision for the future and a whole lot of brewing smarts.

The History of XXXX – A Legacy Brewed Over Time

The year was 1877. Two brothers, Nicholas and Edward Fitzgerald, left Victoria and headed north to Queensland in search of the good life, armed with some serious brewing know-how. They’d already built successful breweries in Melbourne, Sydney and Newcastle and they figured Brisbane could use a decent drop too.

Teaming up with two locals – Michael Quinlan and Nicholas Donnelly – they formed a joint venture. It wasn’t smooth sailing at first. Donnelly pulled out early and after Quinlan passed away, it was his wife, Kate, who stepped in to keep things going. She partnered with a businessman named George Grey and together with the Fitzgeralds focused on one goal: brewing great beer.

By 1878, they’d nailed it: Castlemaine XXX Sparkling Ale was an instant hit. Orders flooded in, but getting messages from the city office to the brewery was a nightmare. So they did something bold: they installed Queensland’s very first telephones. Talk about innovation! And that was just the beginning. From pioneering refrigeration and using crown seals instead of corks, to launching XXXX Bitter in 1924, this brewery has always been about doing things smarter.

That same year, a cheeky little mascot appeared: Mr. XXXX, who soon became the face of the brand and a beloved Aussie character.

The beer kept evolving, but one thing stayed constant: a deep commitment to quality, community and good old-fashioned Queensland spirit.

Innovation, Sustainability & Brewing Today

From floating beer on keg rafts during the 1974 floods to supporting the troops in Vietnam to launching Australia’s first reduced-alcohol beer, XXXX has always been on the frontlines and at the heart of the community.

In recent decades, there has been an increasing emphasis on sustainability in industry and XXXX is proudly doing its part: the brewery is a carbon-neutral facility, employing world-class water reuse systems and entering partnerships to protect the Great Barrier Reef. We understand that quality beer depends on quality water, and Queensland’s waterways are as iconic as its beer. So when you crack open a XXXX, you’re not just tasting history – you’re savouring innovation, a commitment to the future and a beer that truly belongs to the people.

Our leftover solids are fed to anaerobic bacteria that create biogas, which we use to fuel our boilers. About 8% of our energy needs are met this way. Beyond that, we also harness solar power from over 2200 rooftop panels and keep pushing the envelope on efficiency.

At XXXX, we understand that sustainability isn’t just good for the planet – it’s also good business. So next time you crack open a XXXX Gold, just remember: it’s not just refreshing; it’s the result of cutting-edge engineering, smart sustainability initiatives and over a century of evolution.

Now it’s time to see where the brewing magic happens.

The Utilities or Services Area 

There are four key components that keep things flowing in a brewery: steam, refrigeration, carbon dioxide and water.

Let’s start with steam, which is not the first thing that comes to mind when you crack open a cold XXXX, but it’s absolutely essential. We use two massive 12.5-megawatt gas-fired boilers to generate steam, which plays a crucial role in keeping things sterile. With kilometres of piping and dozens of beer vessels to maintain, maintaining good hygiene is non-negotiable.

In the bad old days – some 50 years ago – we burned bunker oil for this job, then switched to coal after the 1970s oil shock. Nowadays, we use natural gas, supplemented by biogas from our wastewater treatment plant. That’s smart brewing, smart engineering and ecologically responsible.

Next up, refrigeration, which is vital to modern brewing. Our fermenting beer is kept at a perfect 17.5 degrees Celsius and our lagering beer chills right down to minus 2 degrees Celsius. We manage this with four industrial-scale compressors, dumping the waste heat through four massive cooling towers on the roof that evaporate up to a litre of water per second.

Refrigeration is all about keeping the beer fresh, crisp and consistent. By the time we store and package it, the beer is just above freezing point – the kind of chill you want in a XXXX stubby!

Have you ever wondered where the bubbles in your beer come from? Fermenting beer naturally produces tonnes of carbon dioxide, which is captured, scrubbed clean, compressed and cooled to minus 30 degrees Celsius to liquify it. It’s then stored in the three big white tanks near Milton Road, which you might see on your way in, each holding 15 tonnes. We use this carbon dioxide later in the brewing process, liberating it with steam and injecting it back into the beer post-filtration. 

And finally, water. Brewing is thirsty work, but we’ve come a long way. Fifty years ago, it took 10.5 litres of water to make just one litre of beer. By the time the Millennium Drought hit, we’d dropped that to 4 to 5 litres, but faced with potential water restrictions this was still not enough. With our signature flair for innovation, we built a state-of-the-art wastewater treatment and recycling plant right here on site.

Our system screens, filters and biologically treats wastewater using both aerobic and anaerobic processes. Then we push it through reverse osmosis, recycling water to create a world-class ratio of 2.4 litres of water per litre of beer produced.

Now that you’ve seen what powers the brewing process, let’s keep moving – there’s more to explore!

Brewing – Inside the Huppmann Brewhouse

As we leave the Utilities area behind and head up the long concrete ramp, you’ll notice the air start to change. There’s a distinct aroma in the air – warm, grainy, almost biscuity. That’s the smell of beer in the making. Welcome to the Huppmann Brewhouse – the heart of XXXX’s brewing operations, commissioned in the year 2000.

As you reach the top of the brewing stairs, take a deep breath. That rich, comforting scent? That’s the mashing process underway, where malted barley releases its starches, which are then converted into sugars, along with a complex mix of proteins and carbohydrates. It’s an aroma that instantly tells you something good is brewing!

Let’s take a closer look at the five essential ingredients in XXXX beer – malt, hops, yeast, water and sometimes sugar – and how they all come together.

Our malted barley mostly comes from central New South Wales and is processed at Barret Burston’s malting works over at Pinkenba. Malt is truly the foundation of brewing, providing not only the sugars needed for fermentation, but also body, colour and flavour. The malting process starts by steeping the barley in water, kicking off germination. After about 4 to 5 days – right when the crucial enzymes are activated – we stop germination by drying the grain in kilns, a process that can take up to 24 hours.

By the time the malt reaches XXXX, its moisture content is just 4 to 5 percent and it’s ready for brewing. We use a variety of malts to create different styles and flavours: pale malt, Munich, Crystal, Vienna, even malted wheat. For darker beers, like Tooheys Old or stouts, roasted malt is key.

Next up, hops: the spice rack of brewing. Our hops come from Victoria, Tasmania and even overseas. Inside each hop cone are alpha acids, which give beer its bitterness and essential oils, which lend distinctive flavours and aromas – citrus, pine, floral or spice. For XXXX beers, we use Cluster hops from the Victorian High Country, harvested each April after a cold winter, which is critical for the hops to flower well.

Now let’s talk about yeast, the magic microbe that turns sweet wort into beer. At XXXX, we brew only lagers using a bottom-fermenting yeast called Saccharomyces pastorianus. It works slowly and coolly, creating smooth, crisp beers. We use each batch of yeast for just 10 generations (about 10 weeks) before we discard and propagate a fresh one. But nothing goes to waste: the leftover yeast is repurposed into food products, including that Aussie icon, Vegemite!

Beer is about 90% water, so the quality of that water is hugely important. We draw our water from the Wivenhoe and Somerset dams, but before it ever touches the malt, we treat it carefully. Activated carbon filters remove chlorine and other impurities. Then we add minerals – calcium chloride and gypsum – to “Burtonise” the water, mimicking the legendary brewing water of Burton-upon-Trent in England. Why? Because great water makes great beer.

And finally, sugar, which is not used in all beers – but where it is, it serves a smart purpose. Sugar is added during the cooling stage of brewing and is completely fermented out, meaning there’s no residual sweetness. Instead, it lightens the body of the beer, making it more refreshing and easy to drink – perfect for warm climates.

Every glass of XXXX is the result of centuries of brewing tradition, modern technology and a deep understanding of our ingredients – from the farmers’ fields to the brew kettles here in the Huppmann Brewhouse. It all starts right here, with the sights, sounds and smells of real beer being born.

Let’s head to the next stage of the tour, where you’ll see how this carefully crafted brew is fermented, matured and made ready to pour into the stubby you know and love.

The Brewing Process – from Grain to Wort

Welcome to the viewing room above the Huppmann Brewhouse, the nerve centre of beer brewing at XXXX, with a bird’s-eye view of the entire brewing process. It’s a beautiful dance of grain, water, heat and time, made possible by skilled brewers and a touch of high-tech automation. We’re talking about milling, mashing, lautering, boiling and whirlpooling, all unfolding beneath your gaze in this state-of-the-art brewhouse.

We usually fire things up on Sunday night and, once we start, it’s a round-the-clock operation. We’ll brew up to 38 batches a week, depending on demand. Each brew is a whopping 1000 hectolitres – that’s enough for 22,000 cases of beer or around 3800 kegs. With multiple brews running at once, our brewers are kept on their toes even though they’re well supported by automation and monitoring systems.

Just next door is our Brewing Laboratory, where over 200 tests are run on each brew, from the first mash to the final bright beer. But there’s one test that matters most of all – the taste test. And of course it’s the very last thing we do before sending the beer to packaging.

Let’s take a closer look at what’s happening below.

It all starts with milling. Here, we’re not making flour; we’re just cracking open the malted barley to release the starch inside – it’s about access, not pulverising. Our Swiss-made Bühler Mill is set with a precise roller gap of 0.4 millimetres to gently flatten the grain and preserve those rich, malty flavours.

The cracked malt is then transferred to the mash tun, where it’s mixed with mineral-enhanced water at exactly 66 degrees Celsius. This is where the magic of brewing begins. Inside the mash tun, which contains about 17 tonnes of malt per brew, natural enzymes from the malting process convert starches into fermentable sugars in about an hour. The result is a sweet, warm, cereal-like mix known as the mash – and yes, it smells as good as it sounds.

The mash is then transferred to the lauter tun, a wider vessel with a sieved floor and a giant rotating rake. Here, we separate the liquid (called wort) from the spent grain. The wort filters down through the grain bed, now rich with proteins, carbohydrates and the full flavour of the malt. That sweet liquid is sent on to the kettle. As for the spent grain, it’s collected and sent off to local dairy farmers as cattle feed. In a matter of days, it could become the milk in your morning coffee. Now that’s a full circle!

The wort enters the brew kettle, where it’s brought to a vigorous 50-minute boil. This is where we add hops, which give beer its bitterness, complexity and antimicrobial benefits. As the wort boils, the hops release their alpha acids and essential oils. This is also where we sterilise the wort, ensuring it’s free of unwanted microbes before fermentation. Nothing’s wasted here: the steam from this boil is captured and reused to preheat water for the next brew – part of our commitment to energy efficiency.

Next stop: the whirlpool. The wort is pumped in so as to create a vortex, which spins out solids like hop particles, proteins and tannins, leaving the wort clear and clean. It’s also where we can get creative. For beers like James Squire 150 Lashes Pale Ale, hops like Amarillo or Galaxy are added late in the process to preserve their delicate, fruity aromatics, giving the beer its signature bouquet.

From the whirlpool, the wort is cooled and any required cane sugar is added. Then it’s off to fermentation, where yeast gets to work. We inject yeast and a touch of oxygen as the wort flows into massive tanks. The yeast begins in aerobic mode, then shifts to anaerobic once the oxygen is consumed, which is where the real transformation happens.

Yeast reproduces by budding, not by cell division, and in doing so, produces alcohol and carbon dioxide. This process generates heat, so we carefully chill the tanks to 17.5 degrees Celsius, keeping our lagers crisp and clean. Fermentation takes from 4 to 7 days, depending on the brew and yeast health. Once complete, we remove the spent yeast, which can negatively affect flavour if left too long. 

Now it’s time for maturation or what brewers call lagering. First, we run it through a centrifuge to remove any remaining yeast, then chill it to minus 2 degrees Celsius. It stays in the maturation tank for at least two days. This is where the flavour truly blossoms. Some brewers say beer has more flavour complexity than wine, and this is where those layers emerge.

And there you have it: from grain to wort to beer.

We’ve just completed the brewing journey inside the Huppmann Brewhouse. From here, we’ll head up another set of stairs to the Brew Processing Area and Filtration, where we polish and package our beer, ready for your next stubby, pint or schooner.

Let’s keep moving though: there’s more brewing brilliance to see!

Brew Processing Area and Filtration

If you’ve made it this far, you’ve followed the beer on an incredible journey: around 7 hours to brew, then 5 to 7 days fermenting, followed by at least 2 days maturing in the lagering tanks. Now the beer’s ready to enter the Brew Processing Area, or BPA, the final stage before packaging.

Here, things get very precise. As we pump the matured beer back into the BPA, we centrifuge it again to remove any last traces of yeast for a cleaner, clearer beer that’s ready for the next stage: filtration. The beer is filtered at high gravity, meaning it still has a slightly higher alcohol and sugar content at this point. 

Next, we adjust the alcohol content by adding deaerated water – that is, water with all the oxygen removed – to ensure it doesn’t affect the beer’s flavour or shelf life. Then we infuse carbon dioxide, giving the beer its perfect fizz. This is also the stage where any additives, such as stabilisers or clarifiers, are introduced if needed.

Before anything leaves the BPA, our team conducts a final round of quality control testing. We’re checking everything: clarity, carbonation, colour, aroma and of course, taste. Once it passes, the beer is sent down to the bright beer tank cellar, where it waits in pristine condition until it’s time for bottling, canning or kegging. From here on, it’s all about packaging and distribution so it will end up in your hand, wherever you choose to raise a XXXX!

The Kegline – Where the Big Pours Begin

Now we head down three flights of stairs into a part of the brewery where things are moving fast and heavy. Welcome to the Kegline, where XXXX beer gets prepped for pubs, bars and stadiums across the country. This line’s been going strong since 1991 and it’s built for volume, filling 50-litre kegs at 850 kegs per hour – a pace that’s as impressive as the beer inside them.

Before 1991, we used 18-gallon stainless steel Firestone kegs, along with smaller 5- and 10-gallon versions. They were built to last, so some probably still exist in backyards somewhere. These days, we fill around 6000 kegs a day, three to four days a week. That’s a lot of beer! We don’t just use modern metal kegs; we still fill traditional wooden kegs next door in the Enzinger plant. Most of those are destined for the iconic Breakfast Creek Hotel here in Brisbane. But if you visit the XXXX Alehouse on a Saturday, you might just see one up on the bar – beer poured off the wood, just like in the old days.

Once the empty kegs roll off the semitrailers, they’re fed into an external washer. First, they’re blasted clean with hot caustic, followed by an internal wash. Then they move to the main cleaning carousel, where they’re treated with phosphoric acid, blasted with sterile steam and finally purged with carbon dioxide, sterilising them ready for filling.

The beer pumped into the filler is flash pasteurised: heated to 72 degrees Celsius for 12 seconds, then rapidly chilled via a plate heat exchanger. This quick heat treatment helps guarantee shelf stability without affecting taste. It’s a key reason keg beer is such high quality and also environmentally efficient.

Each keg takes about 25 seconds to fill. That might seem fast, but at Suncorp Stadium, on a big game night, they’re tapping one of these kegs every 5 seconds. After filling, kegs are electronically checked, capped and flipped. Then a robotic palletiser stacks them – nine per pallet – before a forklift picks up 36 at a time for delivery to our warehouse at Eagle Farm.

Back when we were filling Firestone kegs, this line ran two full shifts, with 50 operators per shift. That’s 100 people just to run the line. Today, supported by modern automation, just seven highly skilled team members manage the entire operation. Across the whole brewery, we now have 160 staff compared to 850 in the 1980s. It’s a huge leap in efficiency – an indication of just how far brewing technology has come.

Before we move on, here’s a little slice of XXXX history. Right here on the Kegline floor, there’s a lunchroom for the team. Back in the day, this used to be the workers’ bar, and up until the late 1980s, anyone on-site could stop in for two pots of XXXX at lunch and two more at knock-off. Even the truck drivers could get a chit from the foreman for a cold one before hitting the road. Different times! These days, XXXX is a strictly dry site, with one important exception: the XXXX Alehouse, where workers are welcome to enjoy a well-earned beer … after knock-off!

So, whether it’s heading to the Breakfast Creek Hotel, your local pub or a footy stadium packed with fans, this is where XXXX gets kegged and ready for pouring.

Packaging Museum – Bottles, Cans & a Century of Beer History

From the bustle of the Kegline, we now step back in time.

Tucked into the corner of the keg plant building, a short staircase leads into one of the most charming stops on the XXXX Brewery Tour: the Packaging Museum. This room is a treasure trove of brewing heritage, packed with old bottles, cans, kegs, labels and machinery. It’s a time capsule that showcases how far XXXX has come, and how much we still honour tradition.

Take a look at the glass bottles in the centre display, some of which date to the 19th century. Check out the elegant champagne bottles from the 1880s. That’s right: before beer bottles existed, breweries like XXXX used whatever was available. In this case, champagne bottles, refilled hundreds of times and packed with care. It was labour-intensive work: half the brewery’s workforce at the time were tasked with cleaning bottles, inserting corks and fastening them with wire cages, just like sparkling wine today.

Now fast forward to the 1960s and check out the items on the far side of the room. Here you’ll find the very first stubby, released in 1962, and the first three-piece steel can, launched in 1961. Fun fact: they didn’t know what to call the stubby at the time, so they dubbed it the “glass can”. That name actually appeared on cartons for the next four years.

Back then, glass was king. At one point, the classic stubby made up 55% of all XXXX production. But the world’s changed a lot since then. Today, only 22% of our beer leaves the brewery in glass. The majority, some 58%, is now shipped in aluminium cans, thanks to their portability, recyclability and lightweight design, while about 20% still heads out in kegs.

Before you leave the museum, make sure to take a close look at one of our rarest relics: an original XXXXX (5X) bottle, measuring 26 fluid ounces. It was produced in the mid-1920s by the Perkins Brewery in Toowoomba, in an attempt to go head-to-head with the rapidly rising XXXX Bitter Ale. Spoiler alert: 5X didn’t quite catch on, but it’s now a collector’s item and a testament to Queensland’s rich brewing rivalry and innovation.

From hand-corked champagne bottles to robotic packaging lines, XXXX has travelled through time with one goal in mind: delivering great beer, brewed with care and packaged for every new generation of drinkers.

This museum honours that legacy—and reminds us that even the smallest details, like a bottle’s shape or a label’s wording, can carry stories that span decades.

Bottling Lines – Precision, Speed and a Touch of Theatre

We now make our way across a short viaduct and upstairs to the second floor of the Bottling Hall, where hearing protection and safety glasses are mandatory.

While we won’t be visiting the can line today, because it would mean crossing live operational areas, it’s worth noting that it’s a powerhouse in its own right, filling up to 1750 cans per minute, across three shifts, five days a week. Instead, we’ll observe the bottle lines and they’re no less impressive.

We run three bottle fillers, operating two shifts a day, up to four days a week. Glass bottles – from 330ml to 750ml – arrive from Queensland Glass on roll-on, roll-off pallet conveyors, fed in from the ground floor below. Robots slice open the pallet straps, de-layer the stacks and gently guide the bottles onto broad conveyors. From there, they’re elevated to the first floor, rinsed and lined up at a rate of 800 bottles per minute, ready to meet the filler.

The bottles enter a rotary filler, each one raised by pneumatic cylinders and pressed onto stainless steel filling tubes. The process starts with a carbon dioxide purge – forcing out oxygen to preserve freshness – followed by filling with beer chilled to just above freezing. Oxygen is the enemy of shelf life, so as bottles exit the filler, we fire a thin jet of water into the neck to induce fobbing – a foam-over that displaces any air from the headspace.

Next, the bottles enter the tunnel pasteuriser for their 42-minute journey. Here, they’re slowly brought up to 60 degrees Celsius, held for around 12 to 14 minutes and gradually cooled. Each Pasteurisation Unit (PU) corresponds to one minute at 60 degrees Celsius and we aim for 12 to 14 PUs to confidently eliminate any spoilage organisms, earning every bottle its nine-month best-before date.

After pasteurisation, bottles move to the labellers, which apply up to three labels per bottle at 900 bottles per minute. Every label is photographed and checked. Out-of-spec labels are automatically rejected, but total packaging waste is just 0.7%, a figure that ranks us among the best in the world.

Next stop: packing. Bottles are cluster-packed or shrink-wrapped. But the future is plastic-free: we’re working toward using only recyclable cardboard six-packs. From here, 24-bottle cartons are glued, date-coded and sent down to the ground floor, where robotic palletisers stack 70 stubbies per pallet. Roll-on, roll-off conveyors feed pallets directly into trucks, each holding 24 pallets, bound for off-site warehousing. From there, XXXX is shipped across Queensland, Australia and around the world.

We now leave the Packaging Hall via another viaduct, completing the final leg of our tour, returning to the place many consider the best part of the whole brewery: the Alehouse bar.

Now you’ve seen what goes into every drop – its history, engineering, craftsmanship topped with a dash of Queensland character – you’ve earned that cold, cleansing XXXX beer!

100 Years of Mr. XXXX

Spring 2024 marks 100 years since Mr. XXXX first stepped onto the scene. His arrival came hot on the heels of the launch of XXXX Bitter Ale – Castlemaine’s bold new brew, tailor-made for Brisbane’s humid, subtropical climate. The beer was a triumph – crisp, refreshing and made with care– but it was our cheeky, laconic, boater-hatted mascot Mr. XXXX who added the sparkle.

While we can’t quite pin down the exact day Mr. XXXX burst onto the page, September 1924 is widely celebrated by XXXX aficionados as the month he arrived, minus the hat at first, which appeared a few weeks later. Rumour has it, his creator was Ian Gall, one of Australia’s most respected illustrators of the time. He was possibly inspired by a Fortitude Valley newspaper seller with a big smile and bigger personality – there’s a print outside the XXXX Alehouse lift that backs up the story.

Mr. XXXX was never just a face on the bottle. He stood for something more: mateship, optimism, a wink and a quip, no matter what the world threw our way. Through the Great Depression and World War II, he was there, raising spirits as XXXX followed our troops from North Africa to the Middle East. Through the booming 1960s and the roaring ’70s, as production doubled again and again, he stood, well, maybe not tall, but certainly proud.

With every change of hands and every chapter in our story, Mr. XXXX has been there, unshaken, unsinkable and always ready for a laugh. Few places in the world can boast a brewery as parochially loved and passionately defended as XXXX is here in Queensland. And no small part of that pride is thanks to the bright-eyed, ever-winking Mr. XXXX. He’s not just a mascot; he’s a mate. He’s cheered from billboards, waved from cans and stubbies and today, he watches over the brewery from his neon perch on the heritage-listed Milton facade – a glowing symbol of 100 years of good humour and great beer.