Richmond Beer ‘No Preservatives, No Chemicals’ Poster

Many said that Grant Hay was foolhardy, that he didn’t recognise the risks when taking on Carlton & United Breweries, and they predicted his financial ruin. Hay brushed aside the warnings and went ahead regardless. He contacted Dr Leopold Nathan in Europe, and purchased the right to use, in Victoria, Nathan’s world-famous brewing system. Then followed the building and equipping of the Richmond Brewery, a strenuous and nerve-wracking effort that took almost two years, extending from 1927 to 1928.

With dogged determination and a lot of capital, Grant Hay finally began brewing Richmond Lager and Bitter Beer in 1928. Hay knew CUB had all of the pubs tied into Carlton Ale and he wouldn’t get a foothold there. So he came up with the idea of home delivery and with full page advertisements in all of the papers he started to sell home delivery. In its infancy, beer output was a meagre 88 dozen bottles per week. But the quality of the beer, and the fact that it had been produced free of any combine, commended the beverage to public taste. Within three years output of beer had grown to 1000 hogsheads per week, and Richmond beer couldn’t be produced fast enough.

The Richmond Brewery was a remarkable success. By 1930 shipments of Richmond Lager were eagerly consumed in Sydney and Brisbane. Exports to India followed, with the bottle labels of Richmond Pilsener, Lager Bitter and Stout showing an elephant’s head. Most of the product labels for the domestic market were illustrated with a tiger’s head.