A PLEASURE WORKING WITH YOU

For years, some of our favourite projects have been achieved in partnership with hospitality venues, fellow breweries and plenty of wildcards around Sydney and beyond. 

That’s why we decided to trawl the archives and blow the dust off some of our most fun, iconic and out-of-the-box collab beers through the years – a journey we hope you’ll enjoy taking with us.  

THE BEST THING SINCE SLICED BREAD

Who remembers the All Purpose Ale? We brewed this surprising beer in collaboration with local bakery maestros AP Bakery, using their left-over light and dark sourdoughs. 

You might say that was the most wildcard ingredient we’ve ever used. The move makes sense though the more you think about it. Bread is, after all, made almost entirely of grain: one of beer’s main components. 

In fact, while turning bread into beer might seem like a strange play, it’s actually a style that’s been gaining popularity around the world. Paired with traditional floor-malted Bohemian barley and European noble hops, this refreshing ale made food waste delicious. 

OUR FIRST SELTZER

The OK! Margarita Seltzer was an idea we formulated with Cantina OK!, the pokey yet mighty mezcal bar in the inner city. And it was meant to be here for a good time not a long time…

After they developed a cracking recipe, we produced and canned the seltzer to warm reception and high demand from the get-go. In the end, the RTD was such a winner, our friends at Mucho Group decided to continue the venture on their own.

The seltzer survives today, produced by Cantina OK! themselves, coming in bottles (slick) and a range of flavours: strawberry, passionfruit and, of course, the classic sparkling margarita that started it all.

PROST!

One of our more unexpected partners is Concordia, the German club tucked between Tempe station and the Cooks River in Marrickville, right in our backyard. We developed our Fest Bier to help them celebrate Oktoberfest, which has now become an annual tradition for us.

This club is a special place, popular amongst locals for its authentic charm. They have probably the best selection of classic German beers in Sydney, and we’re honoured to feature among them. Our Fest Bier goes down a treat with their signature dishes like the whopping pork knuckle, best enjoyed beside the croquet lawn on a sunny afternoon.

As well as being typically German, there’s something typically Inner West about what is reportedly the oldest members’ club in NSW. Diverse community institutions like this one are still going strong across the area, despite growing pressures. That’s why our work with Concordia is one of the collabs we’re most proud of to this day.  

THE BEES KNEES

For International Women’s Day every year, we partner with a local organisation to produce a beer and raise funds for charity. Of all the IWD beers we’ve created, the one that sticks out as the most unusual was our collab in 2023 with the Inner West Amateur Beekeepers Association. 

They helped us out with kilos of delicious raw honey from local bees, which we turned into a limited-edition golden ale: the Queen Bee. As part of the partnership, we treated them to a tour of the brewery and they gave us a tour of their office – a live apiary. Our team was stoked to suit-up and inspect some hives together.

The best part of it all? We raised $8500 for charities Gender Centre and Bees Abroad, who use sustainable beekeeping to help empower disadvantaged communities around the world. And the beer was a hit that people still ask after today.

THAT'S AMORE

If Queen Bee was our most outlandish collaboration, then our biggest and most wide-sweeping has to have been Birra Quattro. We collaborated with the entire Sydney pizza community for this Italian-style pilsner. 

Released on World Pizza, we invited pizzerias and pizzaiolos from across the city down for a pizza party to celebrate. It was such a success that Quattro is now released at the same time every year (February 9, in case you wanna mark your calendar). 

More significantly, this pizza-inspired beer was the first step in our move to open a pizzeria of our own – Fortune Pizza – within the brewery itself. So, of all our collabs, Birra Quattro is arguably the most influential one we’ve ever done. 

These are just a handful of the many unique team-ups across more than a decade of TGBC. Which one was your favourite? Let us know by DM or comment, and who knows, maybe we’ll bring it back for another moment in the sun…