Qualla: Cascade Brewery

Cascade Brewery: Introduction

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit adselwood, CC BY 2.0. The idea arrived in a prison cell. Peter Degraves, an undischarged bankrupt locked in the old Hobart Gaol, knew that the land his partnership owned at the foot of the mountain had something money could not buy: cold, clear water tumbling down from kunanyi in a cascade that never stopped. When he walked free in 1832, he turned that water into beer. Nearly two centuries later, the Cascade Brewery still stands beside the Hobart Rivulet, its tall Georgian sandstone facade glowing against the green slopes of South Hobart, the oldest continuously operating brewery in Australia.

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Image: adselwood | CC BY 2.0

Cascade Brewery: An Officer, a Bankrupt, and a Sawmill

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unknown author, Public domain. The Cascade story begins not with beer but with timber. Hugh Macintosh, a retired East India Company officer, sailed from England in 1824 aboard his ship the Hope, bringing along his business partner Degraves. Together they founded Macintosh and Degraves Sawmills, milling the for...

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Image: Unknown author | Public domain

Cascade Brewery: Water From the Mountain

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit CHIELO, CC BY-SA 4.0. What made the site extraordinary was its setting. Pure meltwater and spring water drained off Mount Wellington straight past the works, and good water is the first ingredient of good beer. The brewery sold its first product in December 1832, and beer soon joined timber as a Casca...

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Image: CHIELO | CC BY-SA 4.0

Cascade Brewery: The Thylacine on the Label

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Greg Schechter from San Francisco, USA, CC BY 2.0. Look closely at a Cascade bottle and you will meet a ghost. Since 1987 the label has carried a nineteenth-century illustration of the thylacine, the Tasmanian tiger, drawn by Henry Constantine Richter for John Gould's monumental work The Mammals of Australia. The last known wild ...

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Image: Greg Schechter from San Francisco, USA | CC BY 2.0

Cascade Brewery: Fire and Survival

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Gavwak2012, CC BY-SA 3.0. On 7 February 1967, catastrophe swept down from the hills. The bushfires that devastated south-east Tasmania that day killed 62 people and razed thousands of buildings, and the brewery was nearly destroyed. The fire gutted the structure, yet the response was almost defiant: rebui...

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Image: Gavwak2012 | CC BY-SA 3.0

Cascade Brewery: More Than Beer

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jimmyjrg, CC BY-SA 4.0. Cascade has never been only a brewery. Over the years the site grew into a small empire of Tasmanian drinks, bottling apple juice, blackcurrant syrup, cordials, and a long line of sparkling mixers alongside its lagers and stouts; that non-alcoholic side of the business was sold t...

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Image: Jimmyjrg | CC BY-SA 4.0