News Ten years of Sailors Grave Brewing

Ten years ago, Gab and Chris Moore returned home to East Gippsland and started making beer in an old butter factory in Orbost.

Not just any beer, mind you. Beer with seaweed. Beer with native botanicals. Beer made with local fruit and produce. Even beer with oysters in it.

From those slightly unconventional beginnings, Sailors Grave Brewing has grown into one of East Gippsland’s great food and drink success stories - and a brewery with a following stretching well beyond the Deep Sou’East.

The secret ingredient? East Gippsland itself.

The name Sailors Grave comes from a small cove at Cape Conran, where Gab spent childhood summers and her grandfather once had a beach shack. That connection to the coast, its people and produce has shaped the brewery ever since.

Rather than simply brewing in East Gippsland, Gab and Chris set out to brew of East Gippsland. Their beers tell stories of this far-flung corner of Victoria, drawing on native and foraged ingredients, seasonal produce, local growers, maritime history and the wild landscapes on their doorstep.

Then, in 2024, Sailors Grave came home to Marlo.

Dunetown, the brewery’s new digs between Marlo and Cape Conran, sits across the road from Gab’s family farm, surrounded by old-growth banksia forest and just minutes from the coast.

And it’s much more than somewhere to grab a beer.

There are 16 Sailors Grave brews rotating through the taps, a seasonal menu championing local produce, brewery tours, gardens and sprawling grounds where you can settle in for an afternoon. Stay nearby at The Little Drift’s two architect-designed tiny homes and you have all the makings of a very tasty East Gippsland weekend.

Creativity remains part of the mix too, from Gab’s linocut prints and subscriber cards to a long-running collaboration with illustrator Joe Lyward. The new book, Ten Years of Beers in the Deep Sou’East, brings together a decade of beers, people, places, artwork and wonderfully offbeat ideas.

Ten years on, Sailors Grave has grown from a little brewery in an old butter factory into a destination worth travelling for.

And perhaps that’s the secret to its success: rather than trying to overcome its remote location, Sailors Grave has made it the whole point.

Here’s cheers to the next ten.