Monkey Tree Brewing Co is celebrating its 10th anniversary this year, capping off a decade of serving fresh local beer to Logan residents.
Monkey Tree founder Dean Forte said the name of the brewery and bar was inspired by the similarities between monkeys and humans.
“The name Monkey Tree was borne out of the idea that after a few beers people and monkeys seem to have much in common,” he said.
“Uncomplicated, fun, on occasion a little clumsy and sometimes even a little messy, but we all have an inner monkey inside of us, don’t we?” he said.
Monkey Tree Brewing Co mainly sells beer kegs to customers, along with hosting events and functions at its Slacks Creek location, with an ever-rotating selection of old community favourites, such as the Wingman Lager or the SexPA, or new and innovative creations such as the Green Monkey cream soda rum mix, a coffee stout with local coffee shops in the area or a green beer for St Patrick’s Day.
Keeping with the monkey theme, co-owner Megan Collins said they once tried a banana-flavoured beer, which she described as one of their wilder creations.
“One year, we had actual bananas and put them into the brewing process. Banana is not a taste that you generally want in beer and is actually considered a fault if a beer has a banana taste,” she said.
“It usually means that there’s something wrong with the beer and you probably want to throw it out.
“But in this case, we purposely put banana into the brewing process, and we used the sugars from the banana to ferment.’
Mr Forte said the past 10 years had been an incredible journey, from its original location at Underwood to its current location at Slacks Creek.
“[Monkey Tree] was an idea that came from a community having its own brewery and a place to meet for a drink,” Mr Forte said.
“There is an old German rule about beer; it goes something like “beer should be drunk inside the shadow of a brewery,” implying that beer should be drunk fresh, and in Europe, every town and village had its own brewery,” he said.
“The breweries and pubs became the place where the town met and celebrated milestones and this made them an integral part of their old societies and a place to be proud of.
“We wanted to be that place and over the years we have helped hundreds of groups celebrate milestones for lots of different things and we are proud to have embedded ourselves into those wonderful memories they made.”
Ms Collins said there had been some funny moments over the years.
“We had someone fully dressed head to toe in a Sonic the Hedgehog outfit and they had someone else dress up as Flash and decided to go on a bit of an unsanctioned run to see who was faster,” Ms Collins said.
She said Monkey Tree hosted boxing matches, a charity bike ride for firefighters and a shave for a cure event for the Leukaemia Foundation, among many other events.
Mr Forte said they were looking forward to hosting more events in the future, especially after recovering from the COVID shutdowns a few years ago.
“Since the covid shutdowns, things haven’t been the same for anybody in our industry, microbreweries and distilleries have reached the “use them or lose them” stage.
“We are proud to see our local community has been unwavering in their support.
“We are most excited about our most recent renovations and look forward to helping many groups celebrate their milestone with us.”
Ms Collins agreed there was much uncertainty within the industry after COVID, which even made Monkey Tree have to move to its new location, but Monkey Tree had started to regain its pre-COVID levels of excitement.
“There was a massive drive and excitement for where Monkey Tree was going prior to COVID, COVID put a massive spin in the works,” she said.
“But like we have hope again now, we’re seeing some fantastic things come out of like where we are going. We’ve got the groups coming back. We’ve got events happening. We’ve got the place looking fantastic, so it’s created hope again that we can get back to what we used to be.”
Subscribe to stay up-to-date with news from across Logan. You’ll receive a link to our digital newspaper direct to your inbox each week. It’s free.
