3 Ravens

Australia | Thornbury

It started off innocently enough as the name of a beer brewed specially for a wedding. But soon 3 Ravens was taking on a life of its own. By 2003, a microbrewery had opened in a warehouse in northern Melbourne, knocking out traditional European beers and putting them into a handful of nearby pubs.

Today, the Thornbury brewery is not only one of the veterans of the local beer scene but has become one of the most wildly innovative too – having enjoyed an, at times, equally wild ride to get to this point.

Perhaps the brewery’s reinvention in the second half of the Twenty-teens as a tireless hotbed of creativity should be no surprise. Back in their early days, Ravens was one of the first to install an English hand pump in a Melbourne pub then supply the owners with cask-conditioned ales for it. And, while it might not sound so crazy now, having a smoked beer as part of your core range back when most (at least those who’d heard of craft beer) still thought it was a fad that would die out. Over time, they began experimenting with barrel-ageing, initially with big stouts and Belgians such as the whisky barrel-aged Black Mass and Pedro Ximinez-aged Druid.