Remembering Redfern’s Atomic Beer Project
In 2019, Perth brewers Gage Roads opened Atomic Beer Project (sometimes simply called Atomic Beer) in Redfern. For a few reasons this was interesting to me:
I thought it was cool Gage Roads was starting a new brand rather than expanding.
I wasn’t sure if Redfern could handle a full on brewery.
I was a beer reviewer living nearby.
Now in 2024, the brewery has had to close it’s doors and the beer brewing is likely soon to wrap up meaning Atomic Beer might join my sad collection of tote bags for breweries no longer in business.
I’m here to state officially that the closure of Atomic Beer Project is a shame.
The space was beautiful, a corner warehouse on Regent street, one of the two streets that make up the heart of Redfern. When I first visited the menu was high-end Asian fusion. Little servings with plenty of flavour and one of my favourite things about visiting this brewery. Tiny croissants with braised beef and chilli (the Indochina) alongside their sharp and fresh house brewed beer was the sort of brewery experience that could double as a date night. Mando, their mandarin sour, was a succulent refresher that was just a little sweet. Served cold, it is a beer that seemed to agree with all they met.
Craft beer is rarely cheap and there’s no denying there is room in major cities for a highend brewery. However lovely it is, Redfern is one of the last remaining areas of metropolitan Sydney where there is still government housing where people can ‘afford’ to live in poverty. I first worked there in 2012 and returning nearly ten years later I couldn’t believe how much it had changed. People struggling in gov housing are still there but so are burger bars owned by former Masterchef contestants and a dozen different international cuisines with the word fusion on the menu. There are still cheap pubs and bakeries where banh mis are $6 but they are outnumbered by the places that do the same thing aimed at the growing group of middle income professionals working in the area.
Undeniably part of that newer agenda, Atomic Beers menu charged $18 for two little sausage rolls so we know who they were trying to target. When I visited in 2023, I was disappointed to see the menu had pivoted to traditional brewery food, burgers, chips and pizzas. Evidently, generic brewery food is just a little bit more accessible when trying to create repeat business. Sadly, it looks as if they weren’t able to do this. Rising rent and staff costs were listed as factors in the brewery’s closure.
In hindsight, by not tying it directly to their own name, Gage Roads gets to keep their reputation as the WA brewing kings rather than the people who tried to head east and couldn’t quite make it.
In terms of how much being in Redfern itself would have impacted the business, the fact that Mountain Culture have opened their first solo Sydney business in the former Atomic Beer Project will provide some answers to this question in a few years. Mountain Culture arguably the fastest moving independent brewery in Australia now with 3.5 venues in just five years of business. If they can’t make it in Redfern, possibly no brewery can. It’s only been a few weeks but already I feel as if people describe the premises as being in ‘the old Atomic brewery’.
Personally, I’d like to see Atomic Beer Project remembered as just that; a project. Ultimately, it didn’t make it in the long run but there’s no shame in that. I’m sure I’m not alone in having fond memories of a Mando sour and an Indochina.
And I’ll always have the tote bag to prove it.
