Michael Cichocki, owner of Tumut River Brewing Co, is committed to brewing, the pub and his region. Photo: Tenele Conway.
When Michael Cichocki and Mary Richmond bought the Tumut River Brewing Co, including its brewpub and attached brewing premises from liquidators in late 2024, they took on a lot of personal risk.
As employees of the brewpub prior to its closure in September 2024, Michael told Region writer Lucy Ridge they feared the business would be sold to people without the passion they held for brewing and for the pub.
Their focus with the purchase was to revive the ailing business and bring it back to its roots, focussing on the Tumut brewpub as a place for the local community and an integral part of the region’s tourism.
Michael said of their reopening in December 2024, they wanted to “walk before we run”.
Tumut River Brewing Co. Photo: Tenele Conway.
As the gateway to the Snowy’s, Tumut is a wonderful destination for a weekend away. It just also happens to be a destination I, and a group of friends, head to for an annual Tumut pub crawl.
Don’t get any wild ideas. While Tumut has six pubs, including the brewpub, this is the type of pub crawl that happens after you turn 40. Kick off around 4 pm so you can be all tucked up in bed by 9 pm.
Heading to the brewpub for a few warm-up bevvies and pizzas, I checked in on Michael and Mary’s progress towards their goals. With a full venue, 16 creative beers on tap, the staff moving at lightning speed to service the crowds and a well-rounded schedule of live music, it certainly felt like they had moved beyond the goal of walking and were now running.
“Mary and I are super happy to be back up and running, and we’ve been overwhelmed by the support from locals and tourists,” Michael said.
One of the changes Michael and Mary have introduced is a Mexican-inspired spin to the menu, which has added sharing plates such as beef nachos, chicken nachos and vegetarian fajita nachos along with a taco list of six varieties including duck and cauliflower tacos.
They’ve retained the pizza menu present prior to the brewpub’s closure. And with pizza firmly on the mind, this is what we lunched on this particular day.
The large pizza menu offers bold flavours and exceptional quality. Photo: Tenele Conway.
Ranging from $25 for a margarita through to $29 for a range of meatier options, the pizzas are a large meal for one person with an appetite or a good sharing size for light lunches and snacks.
Just as the menu invites us to, we said cheers to Tumut as we scoffed down a range of pizzas including the spicy, Italian-based Diavola, exceptional with its local salami, roasted capsicum, nduja, sun-dried tomatoes, mozzarella and parsley on a tomato base.
The Snowy Mountains Trout pizza featuring local wood-smoked trout with sour cream, onion, baby capers, mozzarella and a lime wedge was a fantastic vessel for consuming the gorgeous trout from the region and The Dazzy pizza with its roast chicken is hearty and full of flavour.
Pizza at a brewpub is nothing if not washed down with a few schooners of the brews made right there on the premises. And what will strike you on this beer menu is a good balance between staples such as your hazy XPA, lager and pale ales and a range of creative beers using ingredients and flavours including pumpkin, choc-coconut, honey, blood orange and vanilla coffee.
The menu in general makes for a good read with cheeky little word plays like the mid-strength beer being named Better Southern, a direct play on Carlton United’s mid-strength beer, Great Northern.
The Jingli Song Project plays at the Tumut River Brewpub. Photo: Tenele Conway.
Starting with an easy-drinking beer, the Sierra Cerveza really hit the spot. We then dipped into a few of the more unusual varieties, including a bubblegum-based beer, when a member of our party exclaimed: “I’ve drunk a lot of weird-sounding beers at brewpubs and these are actually not s..t.”
This came as incredibly high praise from someone as discerning with their beers as this particular drinker. I became quite obsessed with the Bert’s Honey brew, a honeycomb ale with a powerful aroma of honey that hits you before every mouthful.
When asked if the personal risk of buying the pub had paid off, Michael was candid. While they’re happy with what they’ve achieved and optimistic about their chances, the challenges faced by the craft brewing industry and the hefty excise applied to beer are ever-present.
Coming full circle on our pub crawl that day, we ended up back at the brewpub, breaking our 9 pm curfew, to see The Jingli Song Project play. A part of a nationwide tour and a collaboration between Indigenous singer-songwriter Stuart Joel Nuggett and Americana-style country rockers David Garnham & the Reasons, this was some of the best entertainment I’ve seen in a pub in years. Michael and Mary are really backing themselves here and, in my eyes, have just gone from a run to a sprint.
The Tumut River Brewing Co Brewpub is open five days a week from Wednesday until Sunday for lunch and dinner. Head to its website to book.
