Tumut River Brewing Co will open a Canberra venue in early April, setting up an ACT home on the Causeway side of Kingston.

Co-owner Tim Martin said Canberra was the obvious choice for the first off-site venture.

"Canberra has been one of our biggest supporters since day one," he says.

"It's where the majority of our beer goes, and we've always considered it our local market because we're only 100 kilometres as the crow flies from Canberra, so it just makes sense for us to head over."

Martin and his mate Simon Rossato started the brewery back in 2012 after Martin moved back to Tumut from Canberra, realising his childhood home, known for forestry and agriculture, had potential as a tourism destination.

But the last few years have been tough. After finally getting through the 2019/20 bushfires and COVID lockdown, the brewery has been embroiled in a fight with the NSW government about roadworks outside their site which Martin says has cost them about $1 million in revenue.

"Our losses from this roadwork are big," Martin told The Daily Advertiser in mid-2023.

"We've had over a-year-and-a-half without access to our driveways. Do you have any idea of how [much] that would affect a hospitality business [like ours]?"

He's expecting a warmer welcome in Canberra, despite the duopoly of BentSpoke Brewing and Capital Brewing Co.

"I tell people we're the third biggest brewery in the area, we're just a very distant third," he says.

"They are definitely the front runners and set the standard, one day I'd like to think we'd catch them, but every time I upgrade something and I think we're edging closer, they do too and we start again.

"I have so much respect for what they're doing."

Martin says fresh deliveries will come over from Tumut regularly during the week.

"We've nicknamed the menu 'A taste of Tumut' so that people can come to the Kingston site and sample everything we have on the menu in Tumut and get to know our brews," he said.

There'll be a food menu too. Parberry's brick-style pizza oven is still in place and they'll fire that up, alongside some salad options and toasties to start with.

There's capacity for close to 200 people and a lot of seating outside.

Stay tuned for more developments.