Heaps Normal Is Coming to a Beer Tap Near You

Packaged beer just doesn’t hit the same as a cold frothy poured from the tap. And when you’re at the pub with mates, nobody wants to be the one drinking stubbies or cans when the rest of the group shouts rounds of schooners or pints.

Heaps Normal may have smashed the stigma around non-alcoholic beer when it launched in 2020, but it never quite solved the problems above – until now.

The company’s new Original Draught, distinct from the existing canned XPA, lager, hazy and IPA, has just come on tap at a select group of pubs in Sydney and Melbourne, with more to follow in each city and across the country. It’s a crisp, contemporary Aussie lager, brewed with low bitterness noble hops and toasted malt for an amber hue.

“We’d always talked about having our beer on tap from day one,” says co-founder Ben Holdstock. “Serving it through the tap, it does really change the mouthfeel and the presentation. The foam is really good, the body’s really good. That was a surprise.”

Non-alcoholic beer behaves differently to traditional beer when you run it through a draught system. Tap systems are precisely calibrated to pour the beer as cold as possible without freezing it. When you remove ethanol – which lowers the freezing point of anything it’s mixed with – you have a beer that’s liable to turn to slush in the lines. Ethanol is also a mild disinfectant that inhibits the growth of mould, bacteria and other microbes.

While some Australian breweries have successfully put non-alc beers on tap at their own venues and a handful others, these challenges have stymied widespread uptake – again, until now.

Heaps Normal’s solution is surprisingly simple and doesn’t involve adding any preservatives or anti-freeze compounds. By carefully tuning the Original Draught’s volumes of malt and long-chain carbohydrates, the team has created a beer that’s dense enough to have a similar freezing point to its alcoholic counterparts. The beer also contains a trade-secret dietary fibre that inhibits the growth of microbes – confirmed by Heaps Normal via independent lab tests.

Still, the company is taking things slow for now, testing the pours at each venue to ensure it can roll this out at scale, across vastly different draught systems.

“We always knew getting non-alc on tap was an important milestone for Australian drinking culture,” Holdstock says. “We always talk about our mission to change drinking culture and having non-alc front and centre when you walk into a pub – you can see the decal, it’s right there – we think it’s such a powerful form of change and removes that last stigma around drinking non-alc.”

Heaps Normal Original Draught is available now at the following pubs. From 5pm–7pm on February 20, 2026, all venues listed will be pouring free Heaps Normal Original Draught.

Sydney

The Henson, Marrickville
The Lord Gladstone, Chippendale
The Victoria Hotel, Annandale
The Beach Road Hotel, Bondi
The Nelson Hotel, Bondi Junction
The Golden Barley Hotel, Enmore
Buddy’s, Newtown
Wildflower, Marrickville
The Petersham Bowling Club, Petersham
The Captain Cook Hotel, Paddington
Heaps Normal Health Club, Marrickville

Melbourne

Beermash, Collingwood
Old Bar, Fitzroy
The Edinburgh Castle, Brunswick
Huzzah, Glen Iris
Brick Lane Market, Melbourne