The brothers behind the White Oaks Saloon Bar & Dining in Prahan, Melbourne have opened their second venue, Silverlake Social on Chapel St.
Owners, Nicholas and Thomas Welch along with beer aficionado Byron Barrowclough, wanted Silverlake Social to offer an authentic Southern Californian local taphouse experience.
The rotating eight (and eventually 12) tap beer system is dedicated to craft American beer brands including Stone Brewing, Sierra Nevada, Brooklyn Lager and Deschutes Brewery.
Thomas Welch told Beer & Brewer that the new venue is more or less the little brother of White Oaks with a focus on craft beer.
“The key difference is the beverage offering and we’re calling it the little brother of White Oaks, so it’s a little bit more casual. It’s got a pool table and then the beverage offering is very different as we’re focusing on craft beer. We have nearly 30 packaged beers from America as well as eight taps.
“We do rotate between products but we stick to the same breweries, because there are a lot of limited releases that come out. It’s just different styles and then obviously through the winter we will go a bit darker,” he said.
“We’ve gone with the cream of America, so what we do for spirits at White Oaks, we do for beer at Silverlake Social.”
The bar also offers a substantial American style food menu but it has been tweaked to be a little less heavy and a little healthier.
“What we’ve tried to do is glorify the typical American local but make a clean version of it,” explained Welch.
“To be able to offer people product that can come in at premium prices especially if the alcohol percentages are higher, the space had to match it and we wanted it to be a celebration of the attributes you would find at most American locals.
“Instead of focusing on straight edges we used curved in our venue, we used quite a lot of rendered brick. We have a pool table, we play every NFL and NBA game, we had customer built into our curved bar a leather upholstered armrest and just everything people would expect when they come into that American venue.”
