Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Breweries
391
The Microbrews of Melbourne
The Flip Side of Foster's
Melbourne, Australia
Considering Australians' reputation as
world-class beer drinkers, it's surprising
they have been so slow to jump on
the microbrewery bandwagon. But in
Melbourne—home of the behemoth Fos-
ter's brewery, which brews mainstream
best-sellers Victoria Bitter, Carlton Draught,
and Melbourne Bitter—a spunky crew of
independent little operations have begun
to preach the real ale gospel Down Under.
Wednesday and Friday evenings, head
for the inner suburb of Richmond to check
out kegging sessions at the
Mountain
Goat Beer
brewery (North and Clark sts.;
&
61/3/9428 1180;
www.goatbeer.com.
au). Opened in an old tannery building in
2004 (although they've been brewing
since 1997), this environmentally minded
craft brewery has won a slew of prizes for
its two year-round all-natural ales, their
Pale Ale (a dry, grassy Australian-style ale),
and Hightail Ale (a malty, full-bodied Eng-
lish-style ale), as well as robust Surefoot
Stout in winter and 100% organic India Pale
Ale in summer. At those biweekly brewery
nights you can also sample some intrigu-
ing single-batch experiments. On the
nights Mountain Goat isn't open, pop
around the corner to the
Royston Hotel
(12 River St.;
&
61/3/9421 5000;
www.
royston.com.au), a mellow old working-
man's local (in Australia, “hotel” is a com-
mon term for a neighborhood bar), where
the tannery workers used to congregate
after work; now it's a homey pub devoted
to microbrews, with at least a couple of
Mountain Goat brews always on tap.
In the northern suburb of Thornbury, the
Three Ravens Brewing Co.
(1 Theobald
St.;
&
61/3/8480 1046;
www.3ravens.
com.au) set up shop in 2003, brewing
top-fermented, unpasteurized, cask-
conditioned ale. Even their bottled beers
are bottle-conditioned—the antithesis of
watery commercial lager. Every Friday
afternoon they open the brewery for an
extended sampling session of their five
award-winning beers: White
(witbier),
Blond
(altbier),
Bronze (pale ale), Black (stout),
Dark (smoke beer), and 55 (a full-bodied
American-style pale ale). In South Mel-
bourne, the city's oldest microbrewery
started in 1988 at
Bell's Hotel
(157 Moray
St.;
&
61/3/9690 4511;
www.bellshotel.
com.au), a roomy, rambling corner hang-
out with no fewer than four different bars in
a Victorian-era corniced stone building.
Bell's boutique brewery produces five tradi-
tional slow-vat, full-mash ales. Favorites
include their flagship all-grain Hell's Bells
bitter and refreshingly crisp Black Ban Bit-
ter pale ale.
Downtown at the renovated Portland
Hotel, the upscale
James Squire Brew-
house
(115 Russell St.;
&
61/3/9810
0064;
www.maltshovelbrewery.com.au)
is tied to the Malt Shovel craft brewery in
Camperdown, Sydney. It has a working
brewery on-site that produces small
batches of Malt Shovel beers. The real
draw here is the excellent food, like beer-
battered sea bream or beer-braised kan-
garoo and beef sirloin served in a crusty
baked bread loaf. Another James Squire
Brewhouse recently opened in the Water-
front City development in Melbourne's
Docklands.
Now that the microbrewery gospel
has spread, there's even a tour operator
