Mountain Goat Beer

The origins of Mountain Goat Beer date to the early 1990s, when co-founder Bonighton was homebrewing in his backyard in Elsternwick, Victoria, Australia. His friend and co-founder Hines was travelling in North America after quitting his music industry job and he was struck by the range of micro-brewed beer available at the bars in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.

The pair then decided to start a brewing company and attempted to secure a bank loan with collateral that included Bonighton's EH Holden, three surfboards and a couple of mountain bikes. After they were unable to borrow a sufficient amount of funding from a bank, friends and family assisted Bonighton and Hines to launch Mountain Goat. Bonighton explained in a September 2012 interview:

We're a small brewery run by two former homebrewers who, for 15 years, have been making the kinds of beers that we like to drink. Most breweries brew to a formula, something born in a focus group or in a marketing team meeting. We come up with our ideas at the bar.Bonighton and Hines decided on the name 'Mountain Goat' as a reference to the task ahead of them and bringing new styles of beer to the Australian market compared to their competitors at the time, as a mountain goat is 'a big hairy animal that's never going to fall over'.

By September 1996, Mountain Goat beer was ready to taste-test three beers—The Leroy Brown Ale, Sheik-It-Out Stout and Golden Boy—at a gallery space in Melbourne. This venture indicated to Hines and Bonighton that their original idea might be viable.

Lacking the money to invest in their own brewery, the first Mountain Goat beers were brewed using excess capacity first at the Scottish Chiefs brew-pub in Geelong and then at the larger Grand Ridge microbrewery in Mirboo North, Victoria and in October 1997, Hightale Ale was commercially released.

Mountain Goat brewery

By 1999, the brewery was able to raise funds to move to their original premises in Crown St, Richmond, effectively relocating the equipment from the defunct brewing operations at the Geebung Polo Club in Hawthorn, Victoria.

At the end of 2004, Mountain Goat beer moved to the much larger current premises, in North St, Richmond. The North St site is around 1200m2 which is a little over three times the size of the older brewery. In October, 2011, the brewery upgraded its brewing operation with the purchase of a brand new 25 hectolitre system from Canadian manufacturer, DME.

International markets

In 2011, the brewery began exporting to the United States (US) with an initial offering of the Hightail Ale and a re-work of their IPA (renamed as "Australian Pale Ale" for the US market). Bonighton explained in September 2012 that due to the inspiration that he and Hines gained from US breweries prior to starting Mountain Goat, an expansion into the country's market seemed appropriate.