Australia: home to koalas, kangaroos, the Great Barrier Reef, the returning boomerang, and — for better or worse — Vegemite. Many things contribute to the world’s perception of Aussie culture, most of which are indeed valid and uniquely Australian. But anyone who thinks that every pub in the Land Down Under is running through kegs of Foster’s every night has probably never been there, or has spent too many nights at their local Outback Steakhouse.
Not only is the brand largely bemoaned by Aussies, it’s apparently also a rarity to find Foster’s in stores and bars throughout its home country. And despite all the “g’days” and other Aussie terms featured in its marketing over the years, the history of the brand proves that Foster’s is about as Australian as apple pie.
Two New Yorkers, an American Engineer, and a German Brewmaster
Don’t get it twisted: Foster’s was founded in Australia, but its story didn’t begin there. American brothers William and Ralph Foster moved from NYC to Melbourne in 1886. While little is known about the Foster brothers — they never held any press conferences and largely stayed out of the public eye — it is known that they arrived in the Land Down Under with a German American brewer who got his credentials in Cologne and an American refrigeration engineer.
According to “The Oxford Companion to Beer,” the most popular beer style in Australia at the time was imported India Pale Ale, but those brews didn’t hold up well in the extreme Aussie heat, and they were typically served warm. This prompted the Australian Brewers’ Journal to predict that lager “supplied in the proper way, in bulk, cold and fully charged with carbonic acid, will be the drink of Australia.”
And that’s exactly what the Foster brothers set out to produce. Although they weren’t the first to brew lager in Australia, they were the first to do it on an industrial scale. After building their brewery, the brothers officially launched Foster’s Lager in November 1888 and delivered it to bars all over Melbourne with a free supply of ice.
Although the beer was initially met with great fanfare, importers began dropping the prices of their beers to compete with Foster’s sales. And it worked. Within a year, the Foster brothers sold the brewery to a group of businessmen for less than it had cost them to build it, and returned home to the Empire State.
To the U.K. and Beyond
Over the following few decades, Foster’s waned in popularity in its home country. By 1907, the brewery had been acquired by the Carlton & United Breweries conglomerate (CUB), and subsequently faced fierce competition within other brands in the CUB portfolio, including Victoria Bitter and Carlton Draught.
With sales slipping in Australia, CUB made the brand-saving move to take Foster’s international. In 1971, it launched in the U.K. before hitting shelves in the U.S. the following year, where the brand introduced the famous “oil can” format. The timing couldn’t have been better. Drinkers were just beginning to develop an affinity for imported beers, and they didn’t mind forking over an extra dollar or two for a foreign lager.
‘Australian for Beer’
Foster’s international success continued to skyrocket, due in large part to a variety of television ads that went all in on the brand’s Australian heritage. Australian actor and star of the “Crocodile Dundee” film series Paul Hogan appeared in a number of snippets, talking up the “amber nectar” with a thick Aussie drawl. The brand also adopted the tagline, “Foster’s: Australian For Beer,” which it used as the framing for a slew of other ads. By the late ‘80s, Foster’s reigned as Australia’s best-selling beer.
But by that time, Foster’s was also cutting ties with its Australian brewing roots. In 1981, the brand signed a deal with British brewer and pub owner Courage, allowing the company to brew the beer under license for the U.K. market. Over the next few decades, similar situations unfolded in other countries around the world. And in 2011, international beverage group SABMiller (now owned by AB-InBev) purchased the Foster’s brand. It hasn’t been brewed in Australia since.
Nowadays, Foster’s production is relatively scattered. In the U.S., it’s brewed in Fort Worth, Texas. In Canada, brewing is handled by Molson Coors. And in Europe, Heineken International owns the brewing rights to Foster’s and exports the beer to a number of countries. The brand’s website now even refers to the beer as “the most refreshing lager in the UK.” So while Foster’s may have been born in the Land Down Under, it certainly wasn’t bred there, and now it’s essentially Miller Light with a questionable Australian accent.
*Image retrieved from Mirko Vitali – stock.adobe.com
