Oh yeh, I forgot the Fat Yak, that's nice ...

I'll send you a photo of the ex-wife if ya like

Yes it's fat Yak for me every Wednesday night in the Last drop.

keel

Coopers Sparkling Ale red label 6.3%

Brew you own

www.thebeerfactory.com.au

Around 200 flavours to choose from


Stu

Tried a similar company called "brew brothers" a few years back. 4 of us put some $$$ together. For $120 we got 6 cartons of pretty tasty beer.... though you will always have that "essence of homebrew" with these kind of places, it just can't be avoided.

disadvantages : You've got to provide your own bottles. You've got to store it in the fridge afterwards... but the biggest one, you've got to bottle the beers yourself. This is a major pain in the back side.

advantages : if you have a friend who knows the owner, you can sit there all day and just drink their beer.

This concept of brewing your own beer at someone else's premises, is a nice option to have... but it is fairly hard work and not really that cheap either... hence it hasn't really taken off.

You only buy the bottles once.
After that the beer is approx half price.
we pay around $1 a bottle.
You think that spending 1 hour with your mates on a Sat morning drinking beer whilst you bottle it is hard work ?

It depends.... you've got to travel down there, do the bottling, travel back etc. You're really looking at using up your saturday morning for this.

Look, I enjoy the drinking part. I'm not arguing there. It's just the other parts that aren't so great !

I guess that for some people it works, for some it doesn't.

I've read about these places before & a mate did get me to invest once in a trial of some U.K type bitter, it wasn't to bad actually. I think we got about 6 cartons of stubbies for $150
As the price of some of the Squires & Coopers range is rapidly reaching $20 a 6 pack $1 a stubbie seems like a reasonable price.
When my folks lived here we brewed vast amounts of homebrew. It kept my dad busy with fermenting, drinking, bottling, drinking, cleaning & drinking I simply don't have the time to do my own anymore
I do have vast amounts of sterilised tallies & stubbies still though If I lived closer to one it's an enjoyable way to spend a Saturday morning once a month

I have brewed my own beer from grain for over 30 years....it is identical to, or better than, commercially brewed beer.

I am not sure what you mean by "essence of homebrew"?

bollocks

I second your "bollocks" and raise it with a "bullshit"

I raise your bollocks and ask you to cough.

He is South African, we need to make certain allowances for his limited knowledge of great tasting beers. After all SAB did give us such palatable delights as Pilsner Urquell or Castle Lager. Anyone raised on drinking either of those is going to think German or Belgian Beer is the dogs danglies I'm not sure they are even a step up from Fourex maybe more of a sideways shuffle towards Fosters Poor lad

Just my experiences to date. I reckon that I could tell the difference between a home brew & a retail beer, in a blind taste test. Hard to define exactly what that "essence" is, but it is all in the flavour....

Of course I could be completely wrong and merely imagining this.