George Adams Tasmanian Brewery ‘Adams Ale’ Poster

George Adams became one of the wealthiest and most influential businessmen in Hobart. After holding a variety of jobs during his first twenty years in Australia, he purchased a Sydney city hotel with a Tattersall’s gaming club, based on the rules of the famous Tattersall’s Club of London. His reputation for fair dealing and honesty ensured the growing popularity and success of his Tattersall’s Sweeps, and in the early 1890s he was invited by the Tasmanian government to rescue the failing Bank of Van Diemen’s Land by disposing of its property assets. He achieved this by organising a lottery of 100,000 tickets at £1 each. Adams then took up residence in Hobart, and Tattersall’s became the official Tasmanian lottery in 1895.

In 1902 George Adams purchased the old Tas­manian Brewery premises in Elizabeth Street, and immediately began extensions and improvements on a grand scale. Much of the equipment was purchased from the Zeehan & Dundas Brewery in Dundas, which had closed seven years earlier. Adams’s ambitions for the brewery profits were also on a grand scale. He planned to capture most of the Tasmanian market and to develop a large export business to the Australian mainland, and would spare no expense in order to achieve these objectives.

Adams’s ale was reasonably popular, but the grand plans ended suddenly when George Adams died in Hobart in 1904. The building was leased by the Cascade Brewery Co. Ltd, and was used for malt storage.

In 1911 the premises were used by an upholstery and spring-mattress company. Later still, in 1927, the newly-formed Co-operative Breweries of Tasmania Ltd acquired the property, and brewing commenced once again.