He was only looking for context to the restaurant we were going to, but my friend knew that the easiest landmark I would know was a brewery so he asked if me if it 'was the place near Gales Brewery'
The issue was that I'd never heard of Gales Brewery and thus had no idea what it was, a quick google maps detour and I could confirm that it was indeed close to where we were going for dinner, a quick internet search later I discovered that Gales was a brewery that opened in 2022 in Brunswick in Melbourne, Australia and in a craft beer tale as old as time it was two electrical engineers who ditched working in Electrical engineering and decided to shift their homebrewing skills to professional breweries skills and opened in a old warehouse one street back from the shops along Lygon Street.
So scene set you then need to know that I was running 45 minutes early from Dinner as I'd been just a little bit down the road watching the North Melbourne Women's Football team win the preliminary final and thus qualify for the Grand Final (think superbowl) next week.
So what is a man to do other than pop into the brewery for a quick round.
And the Brewery was very nice, great banks of stainless steel tank up one wall, and an industrial/organic look with plenty of concrete and plants
They had a reasonable tap line up - maybe 12 beers or so, with all the usual styles covered. I of course graviated to the hoppier end of the board, and selected two different IPAs. One called West Coast Scenario which was unsurprisingly a west coast IPA and a second called Whirly bird which was simply monikered 'IPA'
They were actually very similar, both okay without being spectacular, they lacked a little bit of balance, erring towards the hoppier side, that was a little strange as they were relatively high ABV at 6.2% and 6.0% so they should have had a little more body than they did.
Where they good enough that I would return, absolutely, hopefully not a on day where I have to rush of for dinner and I can try a few more of their brews. I look forward to walking back through this big roller door for a few more brews someday soon.
And if you would like to watch the highlights from the AFLW match I was at, here they are, North for the Win next week in the big dance:
and of course check out #Beersaturday now in week 438 - the main post is here