boag's centre for beer lovers
Brewing was established on the Boags Brewery site as early as 1827, occupying a considerably smaller area fronting the Esplanade. Brewing on the same Launceston CBD site since 1827 makes Boags the oldest brewery in continual operation in Australia. The site is a nationally significant heritage listed precinct with stringent regulatory controls, and subsequently brand strength requires consistent and accurate interpretation consultant services.
Heritage interpretation for J. Boag and Son involves two key projects at the historic brewery:
1. Boags Centre for Beer Lovers; and,
2. The Boags Brewery Interpretation Tour.
One of the core aims of heritage interpretation at Boags has been to maximize profit to shareholders and simultaneously build brand strength through two main initiatives:
- 1.The creation of the Beer Lovers Centre and its ongoing expansion; and,
- 2. The Brewery Tour within the historic site, which also requires continual adjustment as brewing technologies and operations change.
The Birrelli team joined forces with historian Jai Paterson and a wonderful association over the last six years has now evolved. With Jai’s first round of quickly gathered information and the resources we found in archives, old stores, attics, and gleaned from some of the remaining Boags family, we literally laid out on a old brewery floor all the jigsaw parts we could find. Patterns stories and themes jig-sawed their way together in an incredibly exciting way. Many of the stories read well as collages as we piled related bits together and this jig-saw collage aesthetic became a graphic/stylistic method of making what seemed on their own insignificant snippets but pieced together potent storylines.