Swan Brewery
Swan Brewery was founded in October 1857 by Frederick Sherwood on the banks of the Swan River in Perth and grew into the dominant brewer of Western Australia, holding close to a state monopoly from the 1950s onward. It took over the neighbouring Lion Brewery in 1888 and its main rival, the Emu Brewery, in 1927, which is why the Emu beers still run under the Swan name. Alan Bond bought the company in 1981; it has belonged to Lion, and through it to Kirin, since the 1990s. The Canning Vale plant closed in 2013 and brewing moved east, with Swan Draught returning to Fremantle in 2022.
Beers by Swan Brewery
6 beers
← scroll to see all 6 beers →
The recurring character behind the beers
Swan Brewery brew within a single family — the differences sit in how, not what.
Across these 6 beers, 4 notes keep showing up:
Four notes carry across the range. That's a tight house style — most breweries in the catalogue share just one.
Compared with 31 other breweries brewing Australian Lager, Mid-Strength Lager and Foreign Extra Stout:
How we measure this
Two thresholds are at work here:
- The signature list shows notes that recur in at least 6% of this brewery's beers. A low bar — enough to flag a pattern, not high enough to call it an exclusive trait.
- The peer comparison below shows only notes where this brewery's coverage differs from similar breweries by at least 20 percentage points. A higher bar — enough to call a real difference, not a nudge.
A note can appear on the signature list without appearing in the peer comparison: it recurs here, but similar breweries do the same thing.
Emu Bitter
Their beers place in the Top 33% of the catalogue on average, across 6 ranked beers. One clear standout well ahead of the rest.
Similar Breweries
hopIQ exclusiveBased on style overlap and flavor profile
About Swan Brewery
Swan Brewery was founded in October 1857 by Frederick Sherwood on the banks of the Swan River in Perth and grew into the dominant brewer of Western Australia, holding close to a state monopoly from the 1950s onward. It took over the neighbouring Lion Brewery in 1888 and its main rival, the Emu Brewery, in 1927, which is why the Emu beers still run under the Swan name. Alan Bond bought the company in 1981; it has belonged to Lion, and through it to Kirin, since the 1990s. The Canning Vale plant closed in 2013 and brewing moved east, with Swan Draught returning to Fremantle in 2022.
Other breweries from Australia