We'll be there from Sunday 20th July until Monday 4th August. Visiting Perth, Adelaide, Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane.
Hopefully, we'll get to meet some people and drink some beer. Any tips on good places to drink will be much appreciated.
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17 comments:
I was there last year, the cost of a decent beer is pretty steep now.
I once read that supposedly there is a single pub somewhere in Australia that gets Foster’s Lager in a wooden cask. I doubt it exists, but you could try to look for it.
Fosters is almost dead in Australia and a limited amount is brewed as a "legacy" beer by Carlton United just to keep the trademark. Hard to find.
The cask you refer to is Castlemaine Perkins XXXX from the Milton brewery in Brisbane (Lion breweries). They run off some beer from the line before it gets pasteurised on the way to the metal kegs and it goes into wooden barrels that are pitch lined, much like the old USA, German and Czech method.
The beer is lightly carbed and served on gravity at the Breakfast Creek Hotel just down river from Brisbane's CBD from a chilled barrel on the bar.They have a unique "lift" that brings the casks up from the cold cellar.
It's not "real ale" but is refreshingly smooth and tasty compared to the keg version. They sell up to 20 casks a week and still maintain a cooperage program which trains coopers who are sought after in the wine and distillery industry in Australia.
Breakfast Creek Hotel in Brisbane.
https://drinksdigest.com/2020/10/02/xxxx-wooden-kegs-return-breakfast-creek-hotel/
It's a few years since I've been in Perth and Western Australia but the Swan Valley has some excellent breweries - Feral, Mash, Duckstein to name a few. I'm rather partial to Feral's Hop Hog (been there, got the T shirt). A trip to The Sail & Anchor in Fremantle is a must to sample what the region has to offer.
In Adelaide The Earl of Aberdeen has all of the Cooper range on tap and last time I was there there were 2 barrel aged brews too.
I've twice been to the beer festival in Geelong. There are dozens of small breweries in Victoria. Difficult to suggest one in particular but if you go the Little Creatures complex in Geelong the White Rabbit brewery do some interesting brews.
Agree White Rabbit is excellent - I've got the t-shirt!
I live on the mid coast of NSW now but get up to Brisbane a couple of times a year. If you are staying fairly central a good spot is Felon's Brewing down by the river. There's a cliff face lift to get you down and back up into Fortitude Valley which is home to Soapbox brewing and a short "city glider" bus ride to Green Beacon brewing. You'll need go-cards (tap on, tap off) to use public transport, quite cheap, go anywhere for 50 cents. Buy at airport or heaps of places in the city.
With limited time I'd avoid the actual CBD and concentrate on the Valley which is sort of the Chinatowny area with cheap eats. There's also a Brewdog bar opposite the train station which isn't too bad, with a limited range of their local Aus brews. Be sure to try Toohey's Old if you can find it in Bris, what Mild Ale would have been in the UK without the historical gravity reductions.
https://felonsbrewingco.com.au/pages/felons-brewing-co
https://www.soapbox.beer/
https://www.greenbeacon.com.au/
Tooheys old is very interesting. I wonder when did Tooheys lager overtake the Tooheys ales.
Oscar
Oscar: Tooheys beers across the bar were pretty much ales until perhaps the late 1970s when they enlarged their brewery at Lidcombe in Sydney and put in mostly lager plant.
Their bottled beers had long been mostly lagers which were better for dealing with sudden surges in demand such as heatwaves etc. So for a long time there was Tooheys Draught and Tooheys New. The New was a bottled lager, ever since the 1930s and the Draught was an ale. Eventually the two beers became the same lager and now just called Tooheys New.
The other Sydney Brewery, Tooths, brewed ales up until they were bought out by Carlton and United in 1983 who got rid of the Tooths yeasts are replaced them with Fosters B strain, a lager yeast.
Tooheys Old is a unique survivor and remains popular. One weird thing happened around 1980 when Tooheys got the licence to brew Guinness. Their ale plant was fully stretched to brew Old, so they were allowed to brew it as a dark lager, Dublin OK'd it and said it tasted just fine.
Then Carlton got the licence and it was still brewed as a lager in Queensland, a club member went on a tour and they admitted to it being a lager. Now it's back to Toohey's again following the last world MegaBreweryEvilCorp sort out, so not sure if it's back to an ale or not.
Thanks Bribie, before I bought Michael Jackson’s World Guide to Beer, I thought ale and stout had long disappeared from Australia.
Oscar
No there are some excellent smaller breweries now. And Cooper's of course is always dependable.
Oscar, I'd agree with Mike, a wonderful Stout is Coopers Best Extra Stout, 6.3% ABV and bottle conditioned like all Coopers Ales. Ron I don't think you'll find it on tap but it's pure pre-world war 1 beer and worth a six pack.
Another point about our ales, quite a few successful independent start ups such as Four Pines, Balter etc have been bought out by the major duopoly (Lion and Carlton United) who continue brewing their beers, often with just a token brewpub remaining but the packaged and keg beer made at the duopoly breweries. These are now becoming mainstream brands and it's quite common to see a working guy walking out of a bottle shop with a carton of Four Pines Pale Ale or Furphy refreshing Ale or Balter IPA on their shoulder, unthinkable 20 years ago.
Well that is before I learnt of Coopers, Cascade brewery and Tooheys being the last three of the long established breweries in Australia to brew ale and or stout.
Oscar
Definitely pre world war one with a strength like that.
Oscar
That's amazing. I'm unlikely ever to make it to Australia but if I do I'm going to that pub.
You'll see it (Coopers Best Extra) on tap in adelaide and melbourne in a few choice locations. Southwark old stout is another excellent one from Adelaide, although with the closure of the west end brewery I'm not sure if its still as good
Tooheys old, always a hard one to categorise, Mild, Old Ale or Altbier? Adding to your excellent Brisbane recommendations, I'd throw in Sea Legs, not far from Felons
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