Thomas Aitken, a Geelong start and the brewery that gave the beer its name.

Victoria Bitter, better known as VB, takes its name from the Victoria Brewery in East Melbourne, and the brand tells its own history through that brewery’s founder, Thomas Aitken. The VB website says Aitken came to Victoria from Scotland in 1842, aged nineteen, and founded the Corio Brewery in Geelong in 1851. By 1854, the brand says, he was in business on Victoria Parade, East Melbourne, in a large complex known as the Victoria Parade Brewery.

The Encyclopedia of Australian Science and Innovation, which keeps records of Australian brewing companies, independently dates the Victoria Brewery’s origins to a brewery Aitken established in 1854. The VB website adds colour from the brewery’s early years: it says that in 1862 the business kept sixteen horses to carry its beer around Melbourne, and that cats guarded the malthouse against rats. In 1884, the brand says, the brewery passed to Aitken’s son, Archibald.

The next step was consolidation. In the early 1900s the Victoria Brewery was one of six Melbourne brewers that combined to form Carlton & United Breweries, usually shortened to CUB. The Encyclopedia of Australian Science and Innovation and the company’s own brand histories give the year as 1907, while English Wikipedia gives 1904. The Brewers Association of Australia says on its member page that CUB traces its origins to the mid-nineteenth century, when it first brewed Victoria Bitter. Despite the word “bitter” in its name, English Wikipedia notes, VB is a standard commercial lager rather than a British-style bitter.

A slogan, a voice and a can from 1958.

VB’s identity rests as much on sound as on sight. English Wikipedia says the beer’s wider popularity came in the mid-1960s with a television campaign built on music very close to the theme from The Magnificent Seven, pictures of working Australians at work and at rest, and a voice-over by the actor John Meillon carrying the line “For a hard earned thirst.” The VB website says the song was first used in the 1960s and is still used today.

The line has come and gone. English Wikipedia records that in 2009 Foster’s replaced it with “VB – The Drinking Beer” in a campaign called The Regulars, that CUB revived the “hard earned thirst” campaign in 2015, and that in 2018 the brand launched “New Knock Off Times,” marking fifty years of its television advertising. Another spot, the Stubby Symphony, in which orchestral players performed the theme on VB bottles, was made by George Patterson Y&R in Melbourne, the encyclopedia says.

The pack carries the rest. The brand says the stubby bottle was chosen because it sits well in the hand, and that its brown glass keeps light away from the beer. A CUB media release published by Brews News in July 2011 said VB became the first Australian beer sold in a can in 1958; that month the company issued limited-edition Heritage Cans carrying the original artwork from that first can, in selected stores in Victoria, New South Wales and Tasmania, while stating that the beer inside was unchanged.

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.

A recipe reversed, and a brewer passed from Elders to Asahi.

In the late 2000s the beer itself changed. English Wikipedia says Foster’s cut VB’s strength from 4.9% to 4.8% in 2007 and to 4.6% in 2009. The range widened in the same period: English Wikipedia says Foster’s launched a mid-strength VB Midstrength Lager in 2007, the first mainstream variation of the brand, and that CUB renamed it VB Gold in 2009. The reversal on the original beer came in September 2012: FoodNavigator reported on 5 September 2012 that CUB would return VB to its full strength of 4.9%, that the “Victoria Bitter” name would be reinstated on labels and cans, and that the “For a hard-earned thirst” tagline would be restored. CUB’s chief executive, Ari Mervis, admitted the company had “got it wrong,” the publication said.

The owners behind the beer changed several times. English Wikipedia says CUB became a wholly owned subsidiary of the conglomerate Elders IXL in 1983, that Elders took the name Foster’s Group in 1990, that SABMiller acquired Foster’s in December 2011, and that CUB passed to Anheuser-Busch InBev when it bought SABMiller in October 2016. Asahi agreed to buy CUB in July 2019, and Brews News reported on 2 June 2020 that Asahi had officially taken over the brewer in a deal worth about $16 billion, with competition-regulator conditions requiring it to sell several cider and beer brands. The Brewers Association of Australia describes CUB as part of Asahi Beverages, with breweries in Victoria, Queensland, New South Wales, South Australia and Tasmania.

The brand’s own site is victoriabitter.com.au.

For a design guide, Victoria Bitter shows how a slogan, a voice and a bottle shape can do more of the work than a logo, and how a heritage can design can be reissued as a statement that nothing inside has changed. Compare Carlton Draught, its sister lager from the same Melbourne brewer, and XXXX, the Queensland rival. For this guide we use bitter green, label red and malt gold with a condensed sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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