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A Happy Surprise in Ballarat

This weekend I took a drive out to Ballarat, which is west of Melbourne, to meet up with the @blockdeals team and launch our new website. Take a look at our introductory post here if you haven't seen it already.

Since we were in Ballarat, we decided we might as well make a day of it so hit up a couple of the breweries that we happily discovered had popped up in recent years and looked well worth trying.

We had time to visit two breweries while there and both were excellent in their own right.

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Athletic Club Brewery

If I had to choose between two breweries, this one would be the winner. And only because it had the most amazing Bitter Ale on offer.

We tried a paddle at this brewery, which included a port from a guest brewer: Grand Ridge Brewery - Hatlifter Stout.

The beers worth noting were:

Athletic Club Brewng's Extra Special Bitter

This bitter is aromatic (lots of malts and hops on the nose), powerful with strong flavours of hops, a powerful bitter aftertaste, and incredibly smooth on the palate. I am a huge fan of this beer and walked away with a 6 pack for later.

New England Pale Ale

This pale was a little different from the usual pale ales that I've been drinking of late. It was creamy, heavy on the hops and bitterness and nicely aromatic. It wasn't fruity like many American Pale Ales but was extremely pleasant all the same.

Grand Ridge Brewery - Hatlifter Stout

This stout had strong notes of chocolate and coffee in both the aroma and on the palate. It's a lovely full bodied stout and apparently has won some awards for this small Ballarat brewer. It's a stout brewed in the Australian style (which I didn't know existed) and is well worth trying if you ever have the opportunity.

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From here we headed on to our next brewery. This one was actually recommended to us by the owner of Athletic Club which always gives us hope that it will be something worth trying.

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Cubby Haus Brewing

Cubby Haus Brewing is located in an out of the way industrial area on the outskirts of Ballarat. We expected to walk in and find the place empty but were pleasantly surprised to find the place full of people sitting about chatting and having beers. There was even a brewery dog wandering about greeting all the patrons.

We had another paddle here and spent quite some time chatting with the owner and some of the patrons. We spent so long chatting that it soon became quite dark and well past our dinner time.

The beers here were definitely decent and worth trying, however didn't really stand up against the beers we had at the Athletic Club.

The noteworthy beer at this location was:

English IPA

This beer was hoppy, bitter and very creamy. It had a powerful aroma of hops and bitterness which followed through to the palate. It didn't have the fruitiness of the IPAs that I've been drinking lately, which works well with this beer. The bitterness lingered long after your sip which was oddly pleasant.

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Well that was more beer than we were expecting

From here, we were tired, hungry and very much full of beer. We headed off to dinner at a local restaurant and then on the long drive home.

I wasn't expecting to encounter such a great range of craft beers in Ballarat. It was a very happy discovery. I'm even more happy that I grabbed a few of the Extra Special Bitters from Athletic Club for next weekend. They are now nice and chilled and waiting for me in my beer fridge.

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