They don't do any draught beer at all - it's all bottles and here's the range:
It's all pretty new looking - the building and the equipment:
Worth a return visit, despite the lack of draught.
Aussies, like the Americans, enjoy their beer very cold - hardly surprising - and they all like to neck it straight from the bottle. To keep the beer as cool as possible "stubby coolers" are all the rage - you stick the bottle in them and then hold it by the cooler jacket and thus your hand doesn't warm the beer up as you drink it.
Of course, we Brits like our beer a bit warmer and I tend to take beers outside to sit in the sun and warm up a bit before drinking them. I also prefer drinking from a glass, which is seen as an almost effeminate trait by some, but when in Rome ....... there's always a compromise:
Yes - I managed to find a glass that would fit in to the stubby cooler for this IPA from Ekhidna.
We had a weekend up in the Clare Valley, north of Adelaide, an area we'd never been to before. It's Riesling country primarily, but we managed to find some beer outlets too. The first was the Knappstein cellar door in the town of Clare. It's primarily now an outlet for their wines, but there's been a brewery there for a while, albeit they only brew one beer - a lager:
Big operation for just one beer. Only a conglomerate (Lion in this case) could contemplate such a strategy.
The day after we arrived in the Clare Valley, we drove back down to Auburn, where we knew the Hop & Vine, a cellar door for the Clare Valley Brewery (http://clarevalleybrewing.com.au/), was. Nice place - and the beers were good:
Internally, there were numerous religious artefacts and you may notice that the middle section of the frontage of the building says "Good Catholic Girl". We never got to the root of why.
They did sell growlers here, but like every other place we've asked, they will only exchange their own - they won't refill a growler from another brewery. The dreaded Health & Safety apparently. I hope nobody tells the Americans about this - there are many businesses over there who don't hesitate to refill - in fact, there are some businesses set up to only do this.
We discovered two other wineries in the Clare Valley who also did beer. One is brand new and looks to have made a pretty serious investment - Pike (http://www.pikeswines.com.au/oakbank-beer/):
So far, only 3 beers brewed, but they obviously have plans to expand this.
Paulett Wines have a beer as well - but only one, and it's externally brewed, so it was barely worth the detour. Much more fun was on our way back to Adelaide, when we took a slight diversion to go through the lovely town on Tanunda, in the heart of the Barossa.
Barossa Valley Brewing (http://www.bvbeer.com.au/) is exactly the type of rural/rustic brewery I really like. As with our earlier trips to similar places, it only opens at weekends, but then it gets pretty busy at peak times. Watch out for their Imperial IPA at a hefty 8.5%!
In our last week here, I wanted to make a return trip to the "Wheaty" (http://wheatsheafhotel.com.au/), the best pub in Adelaide, and a brewpub to boot, which also always has one of its beers supplied by handpump. Their selection this week was:
Second from the top, you may notice the beer is supplied through the "glasshopper", a device that sits beside the font and the beer is fed through it to give it an extra injection of hops (usually). This week, however, because it was a wheat beer on that keg font, they put water melons in!:
Another nice little pub in a quiet back street off Hindley St. is the Clever Little Tailor (http://www.cleverlittletailor.com.au/). Only 3 beers on draught, but all good and an interesting selection:
So that's about it - a lot of places - and beers - to return to on our next visit, plus a couple to avoid.
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