If you’re flying into Canberra for the weekend and want to drink well, this is the post to bookmark. I’ve spent eight years running tours here and the questions don’t really change: where do I start, where do I walk to next, and what do I order when I get there.
Here’s the short version.
The four breweries you need to know
Bentspoke Brewing Co. (Braddon) is the city’s flagship and the easiest to walk to from Civic accommodation. Their Crankshaft IPA is the beer that put Canberra on the national map. Order it on tap, fresh, and you’ll understand why.
Capital Brewing Co. (Fyshwick) is the production powerhouse — a 12,000m² brewhouse in an industrial precinct, with a great taproom attached and a sister venue on the lake. Their Trail Pale is the easy-drinking summer beer that gets the most cans-into-fridges around the city.
BadEnd Brewing (Mitchell) is the cult favourite. Sour beers, barrel-aged stouts, and a willingness to brew genuinely unusual things. If you’ve already drunk pale ales in three other cities, BadEnd is where you go for novelty done well.
Pact Beer Co. (Mitchell) is the smallest of the four flagships and the most consistently surprising. They share the Mitchell precinct with BadEnd; the two are walking distance from each other, which makes for an easy double-header.
Walking versus driving
You can comfortably walk between Bentspoke and the rest of Braddon’s hospitality. You cannot comfortably walk between the Braddon, Fyshwick, and Mitchell precincts — they’re each about 4-6km apart, and connections by public transport are slow and infrequent.
If you’ve only got an afternoon, pick one precinct. If you’ve got a day, you’ll need an Uber or a tour.
What to drink
Three orders to start with:
- Bentspoke Crankshaft IPA (on tap, at the brewery, at the source). Hop-forward, balanced, and the best version of itself within 100 metres of where it was brewed.
- Capital Trail Pale, especially if it’s warm. Sessionable, low-ABV, the local fridge staple.
- BadEnd’s current sour release, whichever it is. They rotate constantly and it’s almost always interesting.
If you’ve got a fourth slot, ask the bar staff what’s just been kegged. Canberra brewers do small one-off batches more often than equivalent breweries in larger cities, and the staff will tell you exactly what’s worth your time.
When to go
The shoulder seasons (March-May, September-November) are the best. Canberra winters are genuinely cold (it dips below zero), and the breweries are mostly indoor venues — you’ll have a fine time, but bring a coat. Summer is great except for January, which is hot, smoky, and the city tends to be quiet anyway.
What I wouldn’t bother with
- Any beer described to you as “Canberra’s answer to” something else. The good local beers stand on their own.
- Tasting paddles in places where the brewer isn’t on-site. You can do paddles in any city. The point of being here is that the brewers are accessible.
- The brewery in [redacted city in NSW] that markets itself as “near Canberra.” It’s two hours away. Don’t.
What I would bother with
A guided tour, even a half-day one. There are four breweries worth your time and they’re spread across three precincts. You can do it yourself, but you’ll spend most of the day in transit. We run a half-day Capital 3 in 3 and a full-day CanBEERa Explorer — both are walkable in the planner, but easier to outsource.