Picnic Tables, a Big Screen and Room for 500 People: Stomping Ground’s Moorabbin Pop-Up Arrives for Summer

The builder was days away from starting work at Stomping Ground Morris Moor, the sequel to the Collingwood brewery and beer hall of the same name, when Melbourne’s first lockdown came into effect.

For most of 2020 the huge site in Moorabbin lay dormant. It’s been re-scheduled to open mid-2021, but ahead of that, owners Steve Jeffares, Guy Greenstone and Justin Joiner have opened a massive pop-up beer garden with room for 500 people. It’ll trade until March 2021, accepting bookings for groups of eight or more.

“One of the buildings near what is going to be our beer hall has been partially demolished and only the roof remains,” Joiner says. This has created a vast indoor-outdoor space, some of it landscaped, now populated with group-friendly picnic tables, festoon lighting, table-tennis tables and a giant screen for showing the cricket and tennis this summer. Dogs are welcome.

Two shipping containers have been plonked down amid it all to house a bar and kitchen. The former box is pouring “smashees”, Stomping Ground’s take on the slushie, which combines Tromba tequila and lime juice with the brewery’s zingy Passionfruit Smash sour beer to make something a bit like a frozen Margarita. Aperol Spritzes and G&Ts make for equally good sunshine drinking.

Everything else is in cans and bottles. There are 10 Stomping Ground tinnies, from staples such as its Gipps St Pale Ale and Laneway Lager to more niche beers such as the new Flanders Red Ale aged in shiraz barrels. Wine drinkers are sorted with Jericho rosé, La Zona prosecco and other approachable numbers.

The concise, food-truck style menu includes a cheeseburger, veggie burger, fried chicken, fried cauliflower, chippies, three wholesome salads and three options for kids. The team has also borrowed Bob, an enormous 2.4-metre long woodfired barbeque, from their mates at Three Blue Ducks in Sydney. It’s currently on the way down here and will be used for weekend barbeques of lamb shoulder and sausages. Markets and other special events are planned for weekends too.

“Some of the businesses in the Morris Moor precinct are already having their Christmas parties there, and I’ve got a dads’ club function there tonight from my son’s primary school,” Joiner says. “It’s got a real community feel, and after the year we’ve had, people are dying to get out and socialise and do something fun.”

Stomping Ground Morris Moor Pop-Up
1 Cochranes Road, Moorabbin
Bookings (for groups of eight or more): morrismoor@stompingground.beer

Hours
Wed & Thu 4pm–9.30pm
Fri & Sat 12pm–11pm
Sun 12pm–9.30pm

stompingground.beer/morrismoor