From a five-hectolitre kit in Manly to a brewery in Brookvale.

4 Pines — the brewery writes its name with a numeral — began as a family business on Sydney’s Northern Beaches. The company says the idea came out of a post-surf chat between a father and son in 2006, and that in 2008 the Mitchell family had just one brewpub, in Manly. The Australian profiled Jaron Mitchell as the founder of 4 Pines in September 2014, and English Wikipedia, citing that profile and a 2012 report in the trade magazine The Shout, says the business was established in 2008 as a 5-hectolitre brewpub.

The Manly site was small, and the brewery soon outgrew it. Broadsheet reported in June 2013 that 4 Pines had found its original microbrewery cramped, had contracted out some of its brewing, and had opened a facility in Brookvale, moving from 500-litre to 5,000-litre tanks. “We did some contract brewing, but we wanted to do it all ourselves,” Mitchell, then the general manager, told the magazine. English Wikipedia dates the Brookvale brewery to 2011 and says it was built with a 50-hectolitre brewhouse, a bottling line and a bar.

By then the brewery’s range was set around ales. Broadsheet listed a core range in 2013 of Pale Ale, Kolsch, Hefeweizen, Stout and an Extra Special Bitter, alongside a series of small-batch beers called Keller Door, often brewed to mark a particular event; Mitchell told the magazine the brewery made roughly 40 of them a year. The company’s present core range, on its own site, runs from a Pacific Ale and a Pale Ale to a Japanese-style lager and a Nitro Stout.

Four trees, a space stout and a promise to give back.

The name is a piece of local history. The company says that during the Second World War four pine trees were removed from the southern end of the promenade on Manly’s foreshore and machine-gun emplacements were installed in their place, and that it named the brewery in honour of the four that were cut down. The beer writer Joshua M. Bernstein gives the same origin in his book Complete IPA (2019), English Wikipedia notes. On its own site the brewery spells the name with the numeral rather than the word.

The brewery’s most unusual project reached well beyond Manly. In 2010 4 Pines worked with the space engineering company Saber Astronautics Australia on a beer meant to be drunk in space, the Sydney Morning Herald reported that October. Discovery News reported in March 2011, in an article republished by NBC News, that the beer, called Vostok after the spacecraft that carried Yuri Gagarin in 1961, was a strong stout with reduced carbonation, designed to deal with the problem of gas in zero gravity, and that taste tests had been run on zero-gravity parabolic flights. The same report quoted Jaron Mitchell as the brewery’s founder.

Much of how the brand presents itself now is about conduct rather than imagery. Its site carries the line “We make good beers that give back,” and the company says it has been a certified B Corp since 2017, is a member of 1% for the Planet, giving 1% of net sales revenue from its beer, and has partnered with Landcare Australia to plant 44,444 trees, shrubs and grasses a year from 2022 to 2025. It groups this work under the phrase “Brew Better” and publishes it in what it calls a Good Stuff Report. English Wikipedia, citing Beer & Brewer in July 2022, says 4 Pines has been recognised as “Best for the World” four times.

Design and documentation.

The seven brands in this group are all Australian craft breweries: Little Creatures, Stone & Wood, 4 Pines, Balter, Pirate Life, Young Henrys and Mountain Goat. All seven began as independent breweries, and six of them have since been bought into one of two large brewing groups: Lion, a subsidiary of Japan’s Kirin, and Carlton & United Breweries, which Asahi bought from AB InBev in a purchase completed on 1 June 2020, BeverageDaily reported.

The sales came over more than a decade. Lion bought Little World Beverages, the Fremantle company behind Little Creatures, in 2012, according to English Wikipedia. Asahi bought Melbourne’s Mountain Goat in September 2015, The Shout reported. AB InBev bought Manly’s 4 Pines in 2017 through its venture arm ZX Ventures, and Adelaide’s Pirate Life the same year, English Wikipedia says; Carlton & United bought Balter of Currumbin in late 2019, Good Beer Hunting reported, and all three passed to Asahi with CUB in 2020. Lion announced on 9 September 2021 that it was buying Fermentum Group, the owner of Byron Bay’s Stone & Wood, Brauwelt reported. Newtown’s Young Henrys took a different route: when it announced a brewing partnership with Tribe in Goulburn in September 2019, Hospitality magazine reported that there would be no change of ownership and that the brewery remained independently owned by its founders, Oscar McMahon and Richard Adamson.

A craft brewery’s identity is usually carried by a name, a label, a can and a tap decal rather than by the building where the beer is made, and after a sale the beer may be brewed somewhere else entirely. Each guide separates what independent sources record from what the company says about itself — its founders, its owners over time, where its beer is brewed and how its packaging has changed — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

From family brewpub to AB InBev, and on to Asahi.

The family business changed hands in 2017. The Australian Financial Review reported on 22 September 2017 that AB InBev had bought 4 Pines, and English Wikipedia says the purchase was made through the group’s venture arm, ZX Ventures. BeverageDaily reported on 25 September 2017 that the price was not disclosed, that the team and management would stay, and that 4 Pines would keep brewing at Brookvale and Manly. Jaron Mitchell, named there as co-founder, said the deal would let the brewery “expand its operations and retain and grow its people, culture and identity.” AB InBev already owned Carlton & United Breweries, the Melbourne brewer of Victoria Bitter and Carlton Draught, which it had acquired in 2016, English Wikipedia notes.

Two years later the owner changed again. AB InBev agreed in 2019 to sell Carlton & United Breweries to Asahi, and The Crafty Pint reported in July 2019 that CUB had confirmed 4 Pines would be included in the sale. Brews News reported on 2 June 2020 that Asahi had completed its takeover of CUB, after the competition regulator required it to sell several cider and beer brands. Asahi has owned 4 Pines, through CUB, since 2020. In the same portfolio sit Pirate Life of Adelaide and Balter of the Gold Coast.

The company says all of its beers start their days in one of its own breweries before they are scaled up and made available more widely; its venues include the original Manly brewpub and a bar in Brookvale. Online, the brewery’s own site is 4pinesbeer.com.au.

For a design guide, 4 Pines shows how a numeral, a story about four felled trees and a public account of its own conduct can carry a beer brand from a single Manly brewpub to a national range under two global owners. Compare Pirate Life, the Adelaide brewery in the same CUB portfolio, and Balter, the Gold Coast brewery founded by surfers. For this guide we use pine green, sand and harbour blue with a condensed sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep 4 Pines’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.