It was meant to be a relatively quiet Saturday evening but things happened and it ended up a little bigger than expected.
It started earlyish - we started at about 5.30pm with a trip to one of our local pubs - Bobbie Peels. this is a traditional Australian style pub, during our time living around the corner from it it's had maybe 5 different owners and looks, everything from traditional English style pub, to craft beer focused, to Eastern European food orientated venue to it's latest, which is a little of everything.
This shot is actually taken a few weeks ago - tonight we are sitting on the high table between the two arches, and it's significantly busier.
It's had an actual renovation, which isn't major, it's just done away with the remnants of the previous incarnations and made is comfortable pub focused on tables for food, groups of 5-6 is the norm not 20 people rolling in for after work drinks.
I get the concept this is the style of pub lacking in our suburb, but it's probably lacking for a reason, all of the gastro-pubs have closed down, you need to be providing great high end food to be charging the prices they are to make this a success, and the food at Bobbie Peels is okay, but there is better fare to be had at one of the many restaurants in North Melbourne for the same cost or less.
But they do still have some good beers, and it is a good place to sit and chat and graze as we did on antipasti. The two beers in questions were both from Melbourne brewers Kaiju. They are two beers designed to be drunk in tandem - A West Coast IPA called Dopesmoker and a New England IPA called Space Lord. So it's Coast Vs Coast
Dopesmoker (front in the photo above) is a classic old style IPA that would have been super innovative 6 years ago and is now nice reminder of simplier times. It's a little bit of dank (hence the name) a little bit of resin and wholly satisfying
Space Lord is the way modern IPAs are far more gentle, very hazy, perhaps not as fruity as it should be, but still a very good beer
Bobbies wasn't really doing it for us, there were a few to many families eating meals and kids around, there was a lack of anything interesting on tap so we decided to walk the two blocks back past our house and two blocks in the other direction to our other local - Benchwarmers, where it's all craft beer all the time.
Taking our usual spoke in the window we started to try the stuff on tap - First up was a brewery called Boomcat, which have existed in a commercial sense for about a week and a half and have exactly 1 beer - and this is it a Dry Hopped Pale Ale. It's a reasonable beer, nothing to seek out but as I explained to my wife 'If we were driving through Ferntree Gully (an outer suburb of Melbourne where this brewery is located) and you said 'Let's go to Boomcat' I would say - Yeah (admittedly it doesn't take much to convince me to go to breweries)
Now Benchie's are a great bar for supporting new breweries (hence the Boomcat) and they are now moving into importing small Japanese craft breweries, which I absolutely support and our next beer is a product of this move. It's from a brewery called Vertere about a 1.5 hours from Tokyo.
The beer is Tristis - a 10% Triple NEIPA and it's amazing - It's solid and balanced and fruity and amazing all at once - I'm very excited about trying their other beers.
Next round, not pictured was a Carrot Cake Sour from Gweilo Brewery out of Hong Kong (but some beers brewed in Australia) which was amazing, it tasted exactly like a Carrot Cake - I suspect it has a little lactose in it becuase it captured the cream cheese frosting flavour.
Now we had a problem - it was raining, and if you remember earlier in the story it's two blocks to home and I have no interest in getting rained on, so there is only one solution - stay and have more beer.
And we decide to get a little weird. On Saturday's Benchie's do 'Bottle Pours' they open a bottle of something a little special and then sell it in 150ml pours - this is how we came to be drinking Duncan's Negroni Barley wine - on the left in this photo.
Now I don't tend to like Negroni's but I want to support this concept so that Lachie (the owner) continues to do it. I have to say this beer was better than I expected, it was complex and big and bold and very very drinkable for a 11.5% barleywine (maybe it was the small pour). Not something I would have picked myself but that is the beauty of a good bar - finding things you wouldn't otherwise try.
And our final beer. Benchie's is also a bottleshop that sell takeaway cans and bottles, but you can also drink these cans on premise, and so when I saw 'Jaw Dropper' by One Drop I was in. They have a series of Pastry Smoothie Sours and everyone has been amazing and this was no different.
I'm going to use so quotes from untappd to explain this:
A big, fluffy mouthfeel that is almost like yoghurt. Mixed berries offer pops of tartness while balanced with the earthy banana. Sweet vanilla and smooth oats round out the finish to make this so balanced and complete.
Tastes like Jabuticaba. And then tastes like lactose. Pleasant notes of Jabuticaba complimented by lactic undertones. Mmmm lactic. The Jabuticaba really shined through.
One drop do no wrong in the pastry sour style. 3rd birthday banger. Big raspberry jam front end and a sweet marshmallow mid, and a balanced squirt of sour and tart in a creamy mouth feel. Just glorious.
The biggest smoothie bomb of a beer out there! Cannot fault this one. Everything blends perfectly together. One Drop are the masters
Like a morning smoothie with a subtle hint of alcohol. Delish!
and simply
OMG
It doesn't taste like beer, and I don't really understand was a Jabuticaba berry is, but this series of beers is truly amazing.
So there you go, what was a quick trip to the pub for one round, somehow became a night where we had some truly amazing beers, and that's why drinking in venue is always better than drinking at home
First photos with the candles look like the beer is glowing. It’s like the holy beer! 😁
They seem to have a great variety in this pub and you’ll happy to have such one around.
Cheers!
Admittedly it is quite dark in there it was about the only way to actually get some light