So we do Kris Kringle on one side of my family, and we are have a little bit of a tradition that if myself or my partner get my partner's brother in the Kringle then the 'gift' is a brewery crawl with all expenses paid for the brother and as an added bonus we also get to go along and experience a few breweries.
So that is how we found ourselves last Sunday visiting six breweries in the inner north of Melbourne
The crawl started at Rocky Ridge which is has been in this location for just over a year (I spent a very good afternoon at their opening party) and I would say this and the final venue would be duking it out for best venue. It has a impressive array of taps and lots of interesting beers, n fact it was so good that on venue one we had already broken the first law of the crawl, which was 1 round per venue, there was just too much to choose from.....
The highlight - the wonderfully named for Muppet enthusiast 'Capitalists in Space!" a really well balanced Red IPA, shown right in the picture above.
Best looking beer is this Red beauty called Yass Queen, a reasonable fruited sour.
But then it was on to the second venue, a quick zip up on a well timed tram and we were are Bridge Road Brewery, which is actually a brewery in Regional Victoria and this is there relatively new Melbourne brewpub. It was also the only venue I hadn't been to before, and is also the most different.
Most craft breweries are smallish affairs in some industrial space, but this is in a brand new residential development. and let me tell you it would be dangerous if I lived in this apartment building.
Inside it is huge, two outdoor areas, huge indoor eating venue, where we had some pretty darn good burgers for lunch and so, so many taps, with all the Bridge road favourites and seven of them more experimental things brewed on premise
Both Myself and Stu elected for the Spider Pig, we might have just been choosing by name at this point - it was a fairly solid IPA, nice and refreshing. My partner had a Toffee Apple Sour which when I tasted it was....odd.
From there is was just a short walk to Gales Brewery, which is a place that until a few months ago I didn't know existed but was also the place that I did come up with the idea for this crawl so had to be included.
This is more what breweries look like in Melbourne
Unfortunately the beers here weren't great, I choose a coconut infused beer which tasted like suntan lotion, and whilst I fully admit it was my fault for choosing it, I didn't understand why this beer existed, but we were half way through the crawl and I was confident it was all going to be up from here.
Enter Inner North Brewing, a place I always like, they make pretty solid beer, I choose 'Just Chill: Rockmelon, Lime and mint fruit gose and it was exactely what I needed after this much walking, refreshing, light and tasty.
But it's the vibe I like here, it feels like a locals brewery, as you can see we are seated in an areas that looked a little like my Nan's lounge room, importantly too they had a free community library/book swap thingy, which I always like to look through and I picked up something that I think will be interesting.
I picked it up because it was called 'Funky Town' and I wanted to make a Pseudo Echo joke (which only makes sense to Australians) but it turns out it is a book about a town of Frankston which is about 10km from where I grew up and is set in the early 1990's so it speaks to me. I had to take it which means I now owe them a book, so I guess I have to go back.
But soon enough it was off to Co-Conspirators which is literally around the corner from Inner North, in another old warehouse (we are in West Brunswick which was very working class until quite recently, and because it's cheaper and there a looks of warehouses you can imagine it's a haven for breweries, artists, and general cool people.
Here is the before mentioned book with our co-conspirators round, both these beers were really good (as I shared with my partner) but the pick in the one on the right, which is called The Don (all their beers a characters, the Dancer, the Matriarch etc, the co-conspirators if you will) It one those beers that has an edition each yar and it's a 11.5% Russian Imperial Stout and it is everything you would want from a Russian imperial stout, big boozy, luxurious and complex, so so enjoyable.
But it was off to the last venue, anorther quick zip on a tram and we were at Sub-Culture, a small shop front brewery I stumbled up about 2 months ago, and was mightly impressed with that night and I have to say again I was really impressed, this is a one man show and he is producing consistently good beers, I've had six different ones now and he hasn't put a foot wrong. Today's was called 'Neck the Madness' a, you guessed it IPA which we enjoyed in a tiny lettle beer garden out the back with a view back in towards the tanks.
All in all a good afternoon, it's always great to support the local breweries and of course nice to spend some time with good people.