Despite swearing never to offer cans or growlers, Wheaty Brewing Corps is now offering take-home crowlers of all your favourite beers from the Thebarton brewpub.

SPECIAL REPORT: COVID-19 ADELAIDE

There have been a couple of milestones reached at The Wheatsheaf Hotel since the advent of the 2020 coronavirus pandemic.

Proprietor Jade Flavell tells CityMag the broadscale shutdown of our local hospitality industry caused the first unscheduled closure of the pub since 1923, and it’s also seen the hotel’s brewing arm swiftly move to offer a takeaway version of its beer.

This was an evolution already underway at Wheaty Brewing Corps. Despite Jade often saying WBC would never offer a packaged, take-home product, she had finally tracked down a high-quality canning line that was also small enough to fit within the pub – a surprisingly difficult feat.

This canning line, however, is still en route from the US and may be several months away.

With all pubs needing to either switch quickly to a takeaway model or close for the foreseeable future, The Wheaty picked itself up a crowler system (smaller can-style growlers) and is now offering 500ml cans of Wheaty Brewing Corps beers to take home.

“You have to move really bloody quickly, as does every other business, just to try and keep your head above water, try and give your people some work, and just have some kind of presence out there and let people know you’ve still got a pulse – as faint as it might be,” Jade says.

Each day, a range of six WBC beers will be on offer to purchase in crowler format – the first round available is Yeast Coast IPA, DeCider, Rizo rice lager, Black Lime Gose, Thebby Bitter and Corps Blimey!

The range of beers will change frequently but will always span a range of styles: “A pale ale, an IPA, a dark, a sour, a cider and a lager,” Jade says.

“We’ve got many, many beers that fall into each of those categories.”

You can swing by the newly minted shopfront and pick-up a selection yourself, as well as a range of other canned and bottled products from other breweries and distilleries, but the team is strongly urging punters to pre-order by emailing orders@wheatsheafhotel.com.au.

On Wednesday, 1 April, the first day Wheaty Brewing Crops crowlers were on offer, some 30 pre-orders had come through.

The Wheaty will also this week launch Wheaty Live, happening every Friday from 6pm.

The Wheatsheaf Hotel has a history of livestreaming gigs, and Wheaty Live carries on that tradition, now in collaboration with Knock Off Sessions, founded by Annie Siegmann of Seabass.

“[We’re] looking at getting solos, possibly duos, out the back, [and doing] a mixed recording that will be livestreamed, and very much Wheaty,” Jade says.

“So you can grab your little Wheaty care pack with some Wheaty-badged glassware and some cans of beer and you can sit in front of your computer and watch a Wheaty band.

“Again, little patches of life, little signs of life, and us doing what we always do, we’re just having to reconfigure it a little bit.”

Through Wheaty Live, Jade hopes to facilitate some kind of support for local artists – through a voluntary ‘admission’ fee or pointing viewers toward a musician’s Bandcamp page.

As much as these efforts have all been an effort to keep The Wheaty alive and staff employed (85-90% of the pub’s staff are still getting extremely limited shifts), Jade says it has also been important for the local community to see that the pub was going to fight until the very end.

“For those venues that are lucky enough to be able to offer something, I think it’s an opportunity for the customers to help, because some of them are visibly distressed, and they’re like, ‘Are you guys going to be there on the other side?’” Jade says.

“For places that have been around for a long time and/or have a real community following, it’s pretty important, I think, that some of us make it through.

“And everyone’s going to need a bloody beer at the end of it,” she laughs.

The Wheaty’s takeaway shop is open this week until Sunday from 3pm ‘til 7pm. Ongoing from next week, The Wheaty will operate from Wednesday to Sunday from 2pm ‘til 6pm.