Ladies and gentlemen, we have a new name to add to Melbourne’s best new beer gardens.

Girdled by the forbidding bluestone walls of Coburg’s Pentridge, one-time home of Ned Kelly, Ronald Ryan and Chopper Read, BrewDog Pentridge has turned the old E Division into the easiest hangout of Melbourne’s summer, our (so far) capricious weather be damned.

A partnership between the globally ambitious, sometimes controversial Scottish brewer and the Australian Venue Co (owner of Garden State Hotel, Middle Park Hotel, Kewpie Fitzroy and what seems like a gazillion other drinking holes across the country), it’s an ambitious transformation of stern Victorian-era real estate into something that pushes the city’s infamous hipster-proof fence a little further north.

Opened at almost the same time as BrewDog’s first Sydney venue, it’s a space that takes their trademark jazzed-up industrial approach to design and adds a welcome-all-comers policy, from kids (who have a special menu section dedicated to their chip-centric needs) to pets.

Melbourne’s sheeting December rain had patrons scurrying for the safety of indoors on our visit, but the plant-strewn red brick yard is the place to be, whether or not you’re eyeing off the table tennis table in the corner. Cannily designed with nooks and crannies circumventing the vast size, it adds the penitentiary cosplay of undercover booths separated by bars skirting the periphery, where you can pretend the screws are about to burst in to check for contraband.

It’s a brew bar above all, with the 14-strong BrewDog menu coming from Brisbane – there’s a hop-driven nod to the new location with the E-Division Pale Ale, while the Shandy Shack gets its lemon-accented nostalgia on (and at 3.5 per cent it’s perfect for pacing through a long afternoon).

Guest drafts from the 26-tap shipping container bar include Hawkers and Hop Nation, and while cocktails aren’t a strong theme here, you’ll get a classic margarita that passes muster.

Like Andy Dufresne’s Shawshank prison buddies, food plays a decent back-up game without threatening to steal the show.

This is a kitchen with cool efficiency at churning out a greatest hits of contemporary pub cuisine. It’s the sort of thing you could recite in your sleep: burgers, parmas and wings, with the non-carnal able to order pretty much the same menu transmogrified into vegan form thanks to fauxteins (and cheers to the plant-based burger with mock bacon but the beetroot-coloured bun is ickily gummy).

But we can throw our support behind the fried haloumi tacos with their zesty salsa, and the straightforward good sense of supersized onion rings with a piquant chilli aioli. Fried calamari is another dish laughing in the face of cutlery, while the six-strong pizza menu shows good puffy crust action, albeit a heavy hand on the cheesy gloop factor.

It’s the sort of nosh you wouldn’t break any laws to get at, but it serves its purpose of sating the appetite of drinkers who’ll be happy to while away hours celebrating a return to almost normal under pops of festoon lighting. Prison moonshine is a distant memory at this sparkling newcomer. Chopper would surely approve.

Related review: Full Moon Fever brings desert vibes to a Melbourne rooftop