While we’re still coming to grips with the horrendous loss of life and property in the wake of the recent Victorian bushfires, the devastating force of nature also claimed one craft brewery in the Yarra Valley region.

The Hargreaves Hill Brewery operated by Simon Walkenhorst and Beth Williams was almost completely destroyed by the bushfire which swept through the Kinglake area on Saturday 7 February. Their micro-brewery equipment was housed in a shed on the property belonging to Beth’s parents Edd and Amanda Williams who, most fortuitously, survived the raging firestorm which also claimed their home.

“They stayed and fought the fire,” says Walkenhorst. “They lost the fight with their house but saved their lives by some miracle.” Apparently the Williams sheltered in their swimming pool under wet blankets while the bushfire swept through their property.

“It was a very anxious six hours while we didn’t have any contact with them,” Walkenhorst says. “[The Kinglake bushfire] happened so quickly there wasn’t even any information about it on the CFA website. It virtually cleaned out the whole Steel Creek area.”

Walkenhorst says that while the brewery shed is still standing, the equipment is a total loss. “A shed in a paddock should have stood up to a grass fire,” he says. “But we’d had a thousand cardboard cartons delivered on Thursday, which was probably the catalyst.”

Apart from his parents-in-law’s miraculous survival, Walkenhorst says the level of support from fellow brewers and beyond has been overwhelming.

“Virtually every brewery in the state has offered us some sort of help,” he says. At present they are brewing their beers at the Red Hill Brewery on the Mornington Peninsula and Lion Nathan has generously loaned them 40 kegs “indefinitely”, so they can get their beer flowing again. The Local Taphouse in St Kilda also held a fundraising event last week (FEB 19) for Hargreaves Hill Brewery.

Sydney’s Redoak Brewery was indirectly affected by the Victorian bushfires, with several members of the Hollyoak family living in the Kinglake and Yarra Valley areas. In particular, one cousin’s berry farm which supplies raspberries and blackberries for two of the Redoak beers was largely destroyed by the fire.

“It’s been a horrible week and the impact has been huge on a family level,” says Janet Hollyoak, who runs the Redoak Boutique Beer Café. “One cousin was fighting the fire with the CFA when he lost his house, while my brother stayed and managed to save his house in Kinglake. In the middle of a full restaurant on Saturday night I got the message that they were surrounded by fire.”

While the immediate future of the berry farm is uncertain, Janet Hollyoak says it’s the least of their worries. “Some area of the farm might re-juvenate and I’m sure they’ll put it all back together.”

The loss of the Hargreaves Hill Brewery has some echoes with the 1967 bushfires in southern Tasmania which gutted the historic Cascade Brewery. Incredibly, two full storage tanks survived the blaze – probably because the beer was around 0°C – and the contents were transported north in milk tankers to the Boag’s Brewery for kegging.

So it was that Cascade beer kept flowing while the brewery was totally rebuilt and back in working order within 12 weeks.