Australia 2016

We're almost halfway through our holiday Down Under and we've managed to fit in quite a few old favourites - and some new ones. First stop was to our favourite city pub in Adelaide - the Wheatsheaf (http://wheatsheafhotel.com.au/). Always an interesting selection on here - many brewed on the premises, plus one guest on hand pump and one through the "Glasshopper". They had a promotion in January of sour beers - not my cup of tea, but it seems these are getting more and more popular everywhere you go.

Our first out of town microbrewery was a return visit to Prancing Pony (http://prancingponybrewery.com.au/) in Mount Barker in the Adelaide Hills. We'd been there last year on the very day they moved in to this new site. It's improved a lot in that time - hardly surprising - but don't go there if there's a heatwave on - they don't have A/C installed - just fans! Only one place to start:

All pretty acceptable, although nothing really exceptional. My favourite was the Black Ale.

Not far from where our daughter lives, a new brewery, Big Shed, has recently opened:

Small and cosy but pretty good. They love it when you ask for one of their beers by name - F**k Yeah. Here's some of their adverts:

Another new brewpub, just opened last June, right in the heart of the city centre (CBD) is Lady Burra (http://www.ladyburrabrewhouse.com.au/) where they lay out some of their ingredients on the bar:

The food is Portuguese and they have really nice Petiscos (tapas) for lunch. Their Irish Red is excellent.

Slightly further out of the city in a semi-industrial area is yet another new small brewery, Little Bang (http://www.littlebang.com.au/):

Nice little beer garden (astroturf) out the back where you can practise your putting.

Next was a drive up to the hills to one of our favourites - the first brewpub we visited on our first trip to Australia - Lobethal Bierhaus (http://www.bierhaus.com.au/). It only opens Fri/Sat/Sun but it's always mobbed and you have to book a table for lunch - especially on Sundays. Good selection of beers too:

Goodbier is the best, but the Creme Brulee Dessert Ale is amazing and highly recommended - try it with ice cream and/or chocolate.

They also have several specials on as well:

Our only disappointment was, at this time of year, they don't utilise the four handpumps they have as it's too hot and they don't have the cellar conditions to keep the temperature under control properly. Still, the samplers were good:

The most unexpected was when we took the 4 hour drive south east down to the Limestone Coast and the lovely little seaside town of Robe, where we came across the Robe Town Brewery (http://robetownbrewery.com/). It's a small, back to basics brewery run by a Latvian couple who've settled there. They didn't have much in stock when we arrived:

By far the best is their bottle conditioned Amber Ale - my favourite beer of the holiday so far. They advertise themselves as Australia's only wood-fired brewery - not sure about the veracity of that claim, but it is very basic, with straw filtering and open fermentation:

That's the wood-fired kettle

That's it so far - more to come in the next 3 weeks hopefully.