As a foodblogger travelling around Australia, I have made it my mission to seek out and sample a range of local craft beers along the way. I know – an onerous responsibility, but you’re welcome. Don’t mention it.
In recent years, craft beer has really taken off in the UK, and one of the pleasures of travelling around the British regions is tasting the different brews being produced by local independents. It appears that the craft beer market is, at the very least, equally as buoyant in Australia.
On my first (post-jet lag) day in Melbourne, I stumbled upon Dan Murphy’s bottleshop (as they call it here) in Prahan, and went in to ask if they stocked any local craft beers. I was escorted to one entire wall of the store, lined with refrigerators all stocking local craft brews – see my photo below.
From then on it has been a similar story everywhere. Each town and region has its own incredible range.
A good example is the Great Ocean Road Brewhouse – a vast warehouse devoted to regional craft beer. It is in Apollo Bay, a golden-beached seaside resort on the Victoria state coast. Here’s a photo below.
Some friends had invited us for drinks and pasta at their beach house, and I wanted to find some good local beers to take along. The choice was bewildering, but with the aid of some recommendations from the staff, I settled on the Prickly Moses beers shown in my main photo, at the top of this post.
Prickly Moses is a generic name that covers a number of hardy, cactus-like shrubs that grow in Australia’s hot climate. The name has been adopted by a craft brewery in Barongarook , Victoria. In keeping with the prickly theme, their logo is an Echidna, a mammal native to Australia akin to a kind of cute hedgehog (and which, incidentally, we have already seen at least a couple of times in the wild).
As the photo shows, my selection included a good variety, from golden summer ale, red ale, IPA, organic pilsner and low alcohol. Every one tasted crisp and fresh, and went down well with the punters on the sun deck, overlooking the bay. These are probably my favourites tasted so far, based on consistency of quality across a variety of beer types.
A close second is this IPA from Port Phillip on Melbourne’s Mornington Peninsula, which had just the right combo of colour, depth, strength and hoppy taste (see below).
This one probably tasted special as it became a regular accompaniment to barbecuing in the garden, in the evening sun!
It would be impossible to review every beer from the 740-odd craft breweries in Australia, but I hope this will at least give you, um, a taste.
The next track for the ADK Playlist, from an Australian band, was suggested to me at the drinks and pasta party. These are The Veronicas, originally from Brisbane, with Untouched.
A Different Kitchen 