Pirate Life is heading to the homes of its founders in 2020, with a new venue set to open in Perth in mid 2020.
Located in the city’s CBD at the old Sony building, the red-brick venue is being built in conjunction with Sneakers & Jeans.
Designed by Dubai’s Stickman Tribe (founded by Perth-born Marcos Cain), the venue will be spread over three floors and will be able to accommodate over 1,000 patrons. It will feature an in-house brewery, a private dining room, a hybrid rooftop beer garden, a restaurant, three bars and an open plan kitchen.
For the Pirate Life founders – Jared (Red) Proudfoot, Jeff Cameron and his father Michael (MC) Cameron, it has been good to head back to their home state more regularly.
“It’s no surprise that our first brewpub outside Adelaide is in Perth,” Proudfoot told Beer & Brewer. “We have a strong connection back home and it’s great for us to be able to get back to WA a bit more. The first couple of years when we kicked off Pirate, Life we were back a dozen times in 12 months and then that slowly became three or four times a year. It’s not enough. It’s been nice to get back there and reconnect with friends and family and beer drinkers.
“Hopefully we can get in there and lift the area and bring some more people to the area. There are a lot of hotel popping up around there, you’ve got the Perth Arena around there. I spent a lot of my youth around that area as well.”
Work will start on the venue in 2020, with optimist hopes putting the opening date in Easter 2020. Pirate Life is looking for a brewer for the venue, although Proudfoot admits that much of the job will be on the hospitality side of things. However, there will be the opportunity to create a range of Perth-only beers.
“It’s a pretty unique position for a brewer in a brewpub. Brewing beer is a small amount of what you’re doing, it’s all the rest of it – engaging with the punters at the bar, working with the hospitality crew and hosting events.
“My feeling is we’ll establish a Perth core range of beers that are made and sold on-site and not much available to go anywhere else, maybe a few bars in Perth. But that range should remain in Perth for Perth. That will be Perth core, and I’d want four other taps dedicated to the brewer doing one off beers. Get a bit creative with it.
“We will be brewing beer exclusive to the venue and continually be challenging our brewers to pump out regular one-off brews pushing the boundaries of what beer can be.
“If the beers in Perth become popular they might brew it in larger quantities in Port Adelaide and send it to just to Perth.”
“There is a lot of synergies between Pirate Life and Sneakers & Jeans, so we are excited to be bringing a new bold concept to the market,” adds Andy Freeman, founder of Sneakers & Jeans. “Carlton & united Breweries introduced me to Red, Jack and hish father MC back in 2018 and we hit it off. The conversation about bringing the Pirate Life experience to Perth has been running hot for 12 months and we now ready to reveal it. I’m pumped.”