Gage Roads and Jack Robinson Turned a Surfboard Into a Rideable Beer Tap

Gage Roads Brew Co. has turned a long-running surf argument into a stunt, building what it bills as the world’s first surfboard filled with beer. The Western Australian brewery tapped legendary shaper Chris Garrett of Phantom Surfboards to create a board that holds ten litres of its crowd favourite Single Fin Summer Ale and still catches waves, then handed it to part-owner and Olympic surfing medalist Jack Robinson to find out whether the thing actually worked.

The premise started as a running joke about how surfers measure their boards, but the execution was anything but simple. Getting a board to carry ten litres of liquid was one problem; making that beer both pourable and drinkable while keeping the board surfable pushed the project into genuinely complex territory. Sealing it was hard enough, and adding pressurization brought a fresh round of headaches, including a few explosions along the way.

At the centre of the board sits a food-safe chamber sealed to keep the beer fresh and ready to drink. Garrett carved it out in a shape that references the Greenough Spoon, the experimental design that first surfaced in the 1960s, tying a piece of surf history to a build no one had attempted before. A removable tap handles the pour, while a separate valve lets the chamber be pressurized so the beer actually flows.

For Robinson, an athlete used to precision equipment and heat scores, the appeal was flipping all of that off. “Yeah, it was sick. I’m normally pretty particular with my boards and everything’s about performance, so it was good to completely flip that and just go surfing for fun. No scores, no heat, just trying to see if this crazy thing actually worked. That’s what surfing’s about too,” he said.

The weight made itself felt the moment he started paddling. “You definitely feel it paddling. There’s ten litres of beer moving around in there, so it’s not exactly a normal board. But once I got to my feet it actually went way better than I thought. It had heaps of paddle power and once you got it moving, you could actually surf it,” Robinson said.

Riding a board that traces back to the Greenough Spoon put Robinson in conversation with surfing’s more experimental past. “Yeah, that whole design is sick. Those old boards were so experimental and guys were just figuring things out and trying different stuff. I like that. This is obviously taking it somewhere completely different, putting beer inside it, but it still has that same kind of experimental surfing feel. Just seeing what you can make work,” he said.

He shared the maiden voyage with free surfer Brendan “Margo” Margieson. “Margo’s the best. We were both just laughing at the whole thing. Then he got up on one and the board actually started going and we were like, no way, this thing actually works. It was just a really fun session. Pretty hard to take it too seriously when you’ve got ten litres of beer under your feet,” Robinson said.

For Robinson, the whole build is a distillation of why he backed the brewery to begin with. “Yeah, I think it sums Gage Roads up pretty well. It’s WA, Aussie coastal living, surfing, good times and not taking yourself too seriously. That’s why I wanted to be involved with Gage Roads in the first place, it feels really connected to surfing and the ocean rather than just being a brand putting a logo on something. Doing something weird like this and actually making it work is pretty Gage Roads,” he said.

The man who made it work has been shaping since 1979, first for himself and a tight circle of friends before founding Phantom Surfboards in Kirra in 1980. His boards have carried plenty of decorated surfers, from junior world titlists Nick Wallace and Dave ‘Rasta’ Rastovich to Hawaiian Triple Crown winner Neridah Falconer, and he has worked with names like Kieren Perrow, Andy Irons and Dean Morrison over the years. These days he splits his focus between mentoring young talent and refining his hand-shaped work through the digital AKU shaping platform, which is the kind of range that made a beer-dispensing board feel like a problem worth solving rather than a bridge too far.

Robinson walked away from the session with a story he never saw coming, and a first pour he won’t forget. Here’s what he had to say about riding surfing’s most unlikely board.

When the Gage Roads team first pitched filling a surfboard with their Single Fin Summer Ale, what went through your head?

Haha, yeah, I thought they were joking at first. Ten litres of our Single Fin beer inside a surfboard is pretty wild. I had no idea if it was actually going to work, but I was definitely keen to give it a crack. It’s one of those ideas you just have to see through.

A board you can tap a beer from sounds like it shouldn’t work. Were you surprised by how well it actually surfed?

For sure. When I first saw it I was like, “There’s no way this thing is going to go properly.” Then we got it out there and it caught waves easy. Chris did an awesome job with it. The funniest part was looking down and being able to see straight through the board into the ocean. I’d never had that before. It was pretty cool.

Chris Garrett had to solve food-safe seals and internal pressure to make this work. What was it like collaborating with him?

Chris is a legend. I basically got the easy job, turn up and surf it. He had to work out how you put ten litres of Gage Roads beer inside a board, keep it sealed, make it safe to drink and somehow still make the thing surf. That’s pretty crazy. He nailed it though. It went way better than it probably had any right to.

After the maiden voyage, how good did that first pint poured straight from the tap taste?

Haha, unreal. I definitely never thought I’d be pouring a Single Fin straight out of a surfboard. After actually getting the thing out there and surfing it, that first one tasted pretty good. Hard to beat that.