The Old Bar

The Old Bar has been a fixture of Fitzroy's live-music scene for more than two decades, occupying a shopfront pub at 74-76 Johnston Street with a front bar, a back band room and The Old Bar Gallery upstairs. It runs gigs seven nights a week - single launches, EP releases, residencies and afternoon sets - and is regularly named among Melbourne's best small live-music venues. It's open 3pm-3am daily and is an 18+ room, with a nightly happy hour on pots from 3pm-8pm.

In February 2026, Heaps Normal picked The Old Bar as one of only five Melbourne venues - alongside Beermash in Collingwood, The Edinburgh Castle in Brunswick, Huzzah in Glen Iris and Brick Lane Market - to launch its Original Draught, the brand's first non-alcoholic beer brewed for kegs rather than cans. The launch on 20 February 2026 came with free pours from 5pm-7pm. Original Draught is a crisp, contemporary Aussie lager brewed with low-bitterness noble hops and toasted malt for an amber hue, tuned so its freezing point and mouthfeel hold up through a tap line.

For anyone who wants the pub-gig ritual without the alcohol, that tap is the draw: a fresh-poured alcohol-free lager in a proper glass, ordered at the same bar as the beer drinkers. Heaps Normal is an Australian NA-beer pioneer, and The Old Bar putting it on draught - poured, not cracked from a can in the fridge - makes it one of the few Melbourne live-music rooms where the non-alcoholic option comes off the tap.