Our week in WA over, we headed back to Adelaide in South
Australia again. We spent the weekend down in Port Elliot in the Fleurieu Peninsula,
about an hour’s drive south of the city. Our daughter’s boyfriend insisted that
we do as all Aussies do when on a road trip, and stop off at a “bottle-o” – a
drive through one, no less. They have fast and slow lanes there. If you know
what you want, or are in a hurry, it’s the fast lane, where you get served much
like a drive through McDonald’s. Using the slow lane allows you to get out of
the car and walk around in a mini-store which is like one of our off-licences.
We spent a couple of very pleasant hours at the local
brewpub, the Steam
Exchange in Goolwa (http://www.steamexchange.com.au/).
There was an encouraging sign on the bar as we entered:
Regrettably, the cask ale was all finished by the time we
got there. Nonetheless those on keg were pretty good:
The
name of the brewery derived from its origins as a railway shed, as can be seen
from this shot:
We were back in the city of Adelaide for the rest of the
week and their Fringe Festival was on, so we didn’t re-visit some of the nice
out of town brewpubs we’d been to last year, but stuck to the city centre,
where there was lots going on. I would normally shy away from anything that
described itself as a British Pub when on holiday, but, for some reason we were
drawn in to the Elephant (http://www.paddymaguires.com/adelaide/theelephant
) – and it wasn’t too bad. They had a full range of Cooper’s ales on, including
their Extra Strong Vintage Ale, which had a bit of a kick to it – the barman
would only serve it in schooners, not full pints. We also spotted a seasonal
brew from Malt Shovel Brewery – Mad Hoppy Hefe – a wheat beer that was a meaty
7%, but didn’t taste like the usual wheat beers – we decided we’d keep an eye
out for this in future:
Our apartment in Adelaide was adjacent to the Lion Hotel (http://www.thelionhotel.com/) and it
had a huge range of national, international and local brews – including aforesaid
Hoppy Hefe:
It was my birthday when we were in Adelaide so our daughter
bought me a few bottles that she thought I might find interesting:
I think the addition of Punk IPA was done in jest! Incidentally,
a local beer magazine described Brewdog as “exciting, post-modern brewers”! The
2 bottles above with the Bierhaus brand are brewed at the lovely little brewpub
(http://www.ahcb.com.au/) that we visited
last year, in Lobethal, up in the Adelaide Hills. The other three bottles were
from breweries I hadn’t heard of before. Hopwired is from Renaissance Brewing
of New Zealand (http://www.renaissancebrewing.co.nz/default.aspx),
as is the Perfection Pale Ale. Mountain Goat (http://www.goatbeer.com.au/) is from
Victoria.
One local custom I didn’t quite understand was whenever you
were served with a bottle of Cooper’s IPA, you had to make sure the server
twisted the bottle before pouring. I don’t know whether it’s because there is
some residual yeast in the bottle, or whether it’s something to do with
carbonation, but, apparently, if the server doesn’t twist the bottle, then it’s
a sure sign that they’re not properly trained.
So that was the end of our 3 week holiday in Australia. We
were a little confused by the measures being sold in different pubs across the
country/continent – a mixture of
schooners, “pints” (US size, I think) and Imperial Pints – you were never very
sure of what you were getting. The other striking point is price. Obviously,
the strength of the Australian Dollar in the last couple of years has almost
doubled the effective price of a pint for those of us from the Sterling zone,
but we also noticed the huge disparity in pricing between rural brewpubs and
big city centre establishments. Several times we paid the equivalent of £8-£9
per pint – expensive even by Scandinavian standards.
We broke our journey on the long trip home and spent a few
days in Singapore again. The hotel at Clarke Quay was the same one we used last
year, so the brewpubs we visited were also identical – we didn’t venture much further
afield to explore others. The Pump Room (http://www.pumproomasia.com/)
and Brewerkz (http://www.brewerkz.com/)
are both excellent. The former is owned by ex-pat Aberdonians and the latter
sits right on the river – ideal for people watching – and it had a cask ale on:
So that was it – lots of pubs visited and beers drunk – and a
few surprise cask ales as well.
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