Tipples Beer review #93 – Urban Alley Brewing – Docklands, Melbourne, Australia

Docklands in Melbourne is a much maligned place, generally seen as a joke and a bit of a cultural wasteland, Melbourians are like reverse snobs – the more dingy and little it is the more we like it, give us grafetti on the wall and milk crate to sit on and we are in heaven.

So a brand new brewery in a massive space tuked under a huge ferris wheel at the end of a shiny shooping centre is a hard sell to Melbournians in general and craft beer geeks in particularly.

But I care about you, the readers so I went a checked out Urban Alley Brewing which has opened a couple of weeks ago in Docklands. As mentioned the space is huge (it would easily seat a couple of hundred people, there is a shiny (albeit smallish) brewery behind glass in the back corner and a kitchen along the other way.

But what about the beers – there were seven beers on tap brewed by them – I tried three of them, because it’s me they were the three ‘weirdest’ so here we go…

Urban alley Blush - a Rye wit bier with raspberries. It is very very drinkable it refreshing, tart but not in a mouth puckering way, it like a Berliner Weiss but with more body. I really really like it.

Alley IPA
A 6.9% IPA that hides that alcohol level very well, I think it drinks a bit like a pale ale, the hops just aren't there enough for me, basically the whole thing is a little hollow. I know they are playing to a non craft beer audience but this is disappointing, particularly given they have another pale and another IPA on the menu and this is meant to be the ‘in your face’ one.

Polish Samurai
This is a little known Polish style piwo grodziskie which is a smoked beer, It's a low alcohol light coloured brew. Jordan summed it up best by saying ‘its confusing in my mouth’, and it is, it smells smoky, the start of the sip is lemon drops and then that fades to a smokey bacon flavoured red waxed cheese flavour, its odd but I really really like it.

I also tried their English Dark ale which was okay without being exciting.

So there you go a craft Brewer in the weirdest of places, with standard beers which are just that standard and then experimental beers which are really really interesting. So much potential – a bit like Docklands itself.

Will be back.

And lastly go check out @detlev Beer Saturday weekly competition, this post is entered, you should enter, you should help me win by voting for me in the comments of that main post: https://steemit.com/beersaturday/@detlev/70-weeks-join-the-worldwide-beer-lover-community-the-steemit-beersaturday-challenge

Finally some of the Food at the bar - pretty standard sort of stuff.