Two brothers from Victoria and an old distillery in Brisbane.

XXXX — pronounced “four-ex” — is the beer of Castlemaine Perkins, a brewery on Milton Road in Milton, a suburb of Brisbane. Its story begins with two brothers, Nicholas and Edward Fitzgerald, who already ran a brewery in the Victorian town of Castlemaine. English Wikipedia, citing Helen Gregory’s Brisbane Then and Now (2007), says that in 1877 they joined a Brisbane firm to buy the site of a failing distillery and named the new brewery after their Victorian one. The company says the first beer was sold on 13 September 1878.

That first beer was XXX Sparkling Ale. The Xs follow an old brewers’ convention of marking a beer’s strength with crosses, and the company says that in 1893 its brewers improved the recipe enough to award it a fourth X, establishing the XXXX name some years later. The beer most people now know arrived in 1924: XXXX Bitter, a lager despite its name. The company credits Alhois “Bill” Leitner, a German master brewer who had worked in Germany and Austria, with solving a problem of cloudy beer and writing the recipe, which it says has not changed since.

The second half of the name came from Toowoomba. Patrick Perkins, a brewer and politician, started a brewery there in 1866 and bought the City Brewery in Brisbane in 1872, English Wikipedia says. In 1928 the Castlemaine company bought the Perkins business and became Castlemaine Perkins Limited.

A cartoon in a boater, a neon sign and a train on the label.

The brand’s face is Mr Fourex. The Australian Dictionary of Biography describes him as a “diminutive, jaunty, suited figure with one thumb up, a wide smile and a wink,” wearing a boater bearing four big Xs, and says he appeared on Castlemaine’s bottles and cans. The dictionary says the cartoonist Ian Gall had reputedly conceived the character in 1924. The company says he first appeared in a magazine advertisement that year.

Who he was modelled on is disputed. The company says some believe the model was Paddy Fitzgerald, a former general manager, and others a local newspaper seller. The dictionary’s entry on Fitzgerald, who joined the company in about 1933 and was its managing director from 1977 to 1979, says that he came to be seen as synonymous with the figure but that any resemblance was coincidental.

The brewery itself became part of the identity. According to the State Library of Queensland, as cited by English Wikipedia, the XXXX sign on the brewery tower went up in the 1950s, and a seven-metre neon Mr Fourex was added to the side of the building in 1988. English Wikipedia says XXXX labels show the Milton brewery beside the railway line with a train in front, and that over the years the train has changed from steam to diesel to the current electric units. In 2009 the Queensland Government named the brewery one of its Q150 Icons, marking Queensland’s 150th anniversary, as a “structure and engineering feat.”

The four Xs have also been read as a picture. The New Partridge Dictionary of Slang (2006) records the military nickname “barbed wire” for the beer, and the company says Australian soldiers in Vietnam used the name because of the look of the label. English Wikipedia gives a 1980s and 1990s advertising line, “Australians wouldn’t give a XXXX for anything else.”

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.

From Castlemaine Tooheys to Kirin.

In March 1980 it merged with the Sydney brewer Tooheys to form Castlemaine Tooheys, and in 1985 Alan Bond’s Bond Corporation bought the merged company, English Wikipedia says, citing The Canberra Times. The New Zealand brewer Lion Nathan took management control of Bond’s brewing assets in 1990 and full ownership by 1992, according to English Wikipedia. Japan’s Kirin, already a large shareholder, agreed in April 2009 to buy the rest of Lion Nathan, ABC News reported, naming XXXX first among its beers; the group was later renamed Lion, and Lion has owned the brand under Kirin since 2009.

XXXX was brewed under licence in Britain by InBev until the licence ended in 2009, English Wikipedia says, citing The Publican’s Morning Advertiser; the company now says Australia is the only country where XXXX can be bought. Its current range, the company says, includes XXXX Bitter, XXXX Gold, a mid-strength lager it dates to 1991 (English Wikipedia gives 1990), Summer Bright Lager, launched in 2009, and XXXX Ultra Zero Carb. The company also says the Milton brewery is carbon neutral, using solar panels and carbon credits.

Sport carries much of the brand. The company says XXXX has backed the Queensland Maroons rugby league side since 1991. From 2012 XXXX Gold held a three-year lease on Pumpkin Island on the southern Great Barrier Reef, which it ran as “XXXX Island” for promotions, the Courier-Mail reported.

For a design guide, XXXX shows how a single repeated mark — four crosses, a winking man and a brewery by a railway line — can stand for one state. Compare its former merger partner Tooheys and its parent Kirin. For this guide we use red, gold and cream with a slab serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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