A small brewery in Bouverie Street, a master brewer and a team of horses.

Carlton Draught takes its name from the inner-Melbourne suburb of Carlton, and the brand traces its story to a small brewery in Bouverie Street. The Carlton Draught website says the first brew of what is now Carlton Draught came from that brewery in 1864, when the beer was called “Carlton Ale.” The brand names the brewery’s young owner, Edward Latham, and its head brewer, Alfred Terry, whose lighter colonial beers, it says, suited the Australian climate better than the heavier beers imported from Europe.

Horses are part of the story from the start. The brand says Carlton Ale was delivered to Melbourne hotels by Clydesdale, and those horses still appear in the beer’s identity today. According to the same history, Terry brewed his last beer in 1881 after seventeen years as head brewer, and in September 1892 a brewer named Colonel John Ballenger set a record by brewing eight times in twenty-four hours, producing some 700 hogsheads. By the turn of the century, the brand says, Carlton Ale was among the most popular beers in Australia.

Like Victoria Bitter, the beer then became part of a larger company. The Carlton Draught website says that in 1907 the Carlton brewery merged with five other Melbourne breweries to form Carlton & United Breweries, or CUB; English Wikipedia dates that merger to 1904, naming the Carlton, Castlemaine, Foster, McCracken’s City, Shamrock and Victoria breweries as its members.

From a 1967 bottle to a parody epic and a keg-shaped can.

The name on the bottle is younger than the beer. The brand says cans replaced bottles as the common container in the late 1960s, and that CUB released the first bottle of Carlton Draught in 1967.

The modern identity dates from 2003. English Wikipedia says the beer’s strength was reduced from 5.0% to 4.6% that year after a rise in alcohol taxes, that the logo was changed, and that a new campaign of comic advertisements and billboards presented the beer as simply “made from beer.” The best-known spot followed in 2005. English Wikipedia says the “Big Ad”, made by George Patterson and Partners (Young & Rubicam) in Melbourne and directed by Paul Middleditch, was filmed in Queenstown, New Zealand, set a parody battle epic to music adapted from “O Fortuna” by Cezary Skubiszewski, and was streamed online two weeks before it premiered on Australian television on 7 August 2005. The same humour carried on: English Wikipedia says a second viral campaign, “Flash Beer,” began in September 2006, following a character named Kevin Kavendish, played by Aaron Bertram, who is turned down for a brewing job at Carlton Draught until he copies the dance routine from the film Flashdance, and that the spot was later parodied on the ABC comedy The Chaser’s War on Everything.

The pack has been reworked twice since. The Drum reported on 16 July 2013 that a new Keg Can, designed by Melbourne’s Cowan Design, would replace all existing Carlton Draught can designs, with a launch campaign by Clemenger BBDO Melbourne. Then, Drinks Trade reported on 19 December 2019, the brand design studio What Came Next refreshed the logo so that the Clydesdales now push forward, added a barley strain to signal local ingredients, highlighted the “Brewery Fresh” signature and put trivia questions under bottle caps. In April 2023 Clemenger BBDO, described by B&T as the brand’s creative agency of record, released “Long Live the Keg,” built on the Made From Beer platform, with bagpipes, a choir and cannon fire marking the end of a pub keg’s life.

Design and documentation.

The seven brands in this group are all Australian beers: Victoria Bitter, Carlton Draught, XXXX, Tooheys, James Squire, Boag’s and Cascade. Between them they belong to just two groups, both owned from Japan. Victoria Bitter, Carlton Draught and Cascade belong to Carlton & United Breweries, which was formed in Melbourne in 1904 from a merger of six breweries, became part of Elders IXL in 1983 and so of the Foster’s group, passed to SABMiller in 2011 and to Anheuser-Busch InBev in 2016, and has been owned by Asahi since June 2020, English Wikipedia records. Cascade joined CUB in 1993, the Tasmanian Business Reporter says.

XXXX, Tooheys, James Squire and Boag’s belong to Lion, which took shape in October 2009 when Kirin bought the brewer Lion Nathan, English Wikipedia says. The Queensland and New South Wales names came first: Castlemaine Perkins, the Brisbane home of XXXX, merged with Tooheys of Sydney in 1980, the combined company was bought by the Bond Corporation in 1985, and Lion Nathan took full control in 1992. James Squire is younger: it was launched at the Malt Shovel Brewery in Camperdown, Sydney, founded as the Hahn Brewery by Chuck Hahn in 1988, backed by Lion from 1993 and renamed in 1998 after the tavern of the First Fleet convict-brewer James Squire. Boag’s, the Launceston brewery formed as J. Boag & Son in 1883, was bought by San Miguel in 2000 and by Lion Nathan in November 2007.

A beer brand’s identity is carried less by a recipe than by a name, a label and the place it promises — a brewery tower, a home state, a founder’s story — even after the company behind it has changed hands several times. Each guide separates what independent sources record from what the company says about itself: who started it, who owns it now, where it is brewed and how its look has changed.

Elders, Foster’s, SABMiller, AB InBev and, since 2020, Asahi.

As a CUB beer, Carlton Draught has had the same owners as Victoria Bitter. English Wikipedia says the conglomerate Elders IXL bought all of CUB in 1983, renamed itself Foster’s Group in 1990, and was acquired by SABMiller in December 2011; CUB then passed to Anheuser-Busch InBev with its purchase of SABMiller in October 2016. Brews News reported on 2 June 2020 that Asahi had officially taken over CUB in a deal of about $16 billion, after Australian competition and foreign-investment approvals. The Brewers Association of Australia now lists Carlton Draught among the core beers of CUB, which it describes as part of Asahi Beverages.

The Brewers Association says CUB has breweries in Victoria, Queensland, New South Wales, South Australia and Tasmania. When searching, note that “Carlton” is shared with sister beers such as Carlton Dry and with the Melbourne suburb itself; the brand’s own site is carltondraught.com.au.

For a design guide, Carlton Draught shows how a brewery’s horses can become a logo, how a can can take its name from the keg, and how a campaign line about plainness can carry a brand for two decades. Compare Victoria Bitter, its sister lager from the same brewer, and Cascade, the Hobart brewery that also belongs to CUB. For this guide we use draught navy, barley gold and Clydesdale bay with a serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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