One of the things I like to do if I'm away from home is to visit the local craft breweries. We are now at a place in the Australian craft beer scene that pretty much everywhere you go with likely have a craft brewery either on the way or within maybe a 20 minutes drive of your destination.
So in between Christmas and New Years, which is also our summer holidays in Australia we headed to 'The Beach' which in this case was Somers beach on the backside of the Mornington Peninsula. There are a number of breweries down that way, but most were closed for the holidays but at dinner one night at the local cafe I tried a West Coast IPA from a local brewery called Tar Barrel - it was good, like really good, good enough to start me goggling where they were, which was Mornington which was about a third of way home. They were open, we would need to stop somewhere for food on the way home so it was decided Tar Barrel it would be
I should actually know more about this Brewery - it was originally the Mornington Pennisula brewery, which were early in the scene, grew to be pretty big, started another production brewery, got sold off, and then two of the original 4-5 founders started this brewery in the original place where Mornington Pennisula was called it Tar Barrel.
So what of the beer? well Round one was an Imperial Pilsner called Dead End Friends (at the front in the pic above) which was a hopped up lager, and it was really good, clean fresh and quite hoppy with a good body. At the back is Mixed Emotions (I have a feeling the beer namer is going through something) which was a sour, which was a little less successful, it was okay but more just a generic sour without much character.
As you can likely tell we have found outselves a table up in the rafters of the warehouse, perched above the stainless steel brewhouse
For those not fimilar with a brewery system. The actually brewery is in the middle, where the bags of malt are and the control panel, and the two shorter tanks. What takes up most of the space in a brewery are the taller tanks which are storage and where the beer is pumped to (and the yeast is added) and where the malty liquid is turned into beer/alcohol over a the next 3-4 days.
But onto Round 2...
The half drunk one is called Irrational Confidence ad is a imperial IPA - and the reason why it's half drunk is that it was so good I forgot to take a picture before I started drinking - this was absolutely the beer of the day and is a very solid wonderfully hoppy west coast style IPA.
Next to it is a beer for their core range - the Process Porter, which was a pretty solid porter but nothing to write home about.
But all in all we thoroughly enjoyed our visit to Tar Barrel and will return next time were are down that way and will seek out their beers more often - beyond the four pack we bought to take home with us.
And as always this is part of #Beersaturday - organized by 
and for good measure, here is another shot of the brewery, also if you are at a brewery and you see a house going into a bucket of water (like the bottom right) then that tank is fermenting, yeast will treat bubbles when the water in the bucket stop bubbling the yeast has finished it's work.
