Our Melbourne Trip – Where To Find Barrel Aged Beers In Melbourne

Last week, me, Eddie, Goff and Brewer Tosi went on a scouting mission to Melbourne to learn more about barrel-aged beer. Next year, we’ll be launching our own barrel-aging program, and we’re hoping to gain some insight from the folks who are doing it right now.
In this post, I’ll cover the melbourne places we visited and some of the highlights for any readers planning a trip down the mountain.
We messaged some breweries before our trip and we tried to contact all the breweries that could have us, but we also popped into some of them when we knew their restaurants would be open.
First Day Stomp

We arrived in Melbourne in the melbourne afternoon and tried to squeeze in a couple of brewery tours on our first day to warm up.

Shaking the Earth
On every trip to Melbourne that I can remember, we always went to the melbourne stomping grounds first. It’s an epic brewpub, arguably the best in Australia, with great beer, great food,

amazing decor and atmosphere. It helps that the founders are all deadly legendary, and we were lucky enough to be given a full tour by Guy and Steve (two of the three) for an hour or so (shown above).

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Not only is Stomping Ground a great brewpub, it’s also a fast-growing craft beer brand with a number of retail outlets and taprooms in Melbourne. You don’t have to go far to get a mulled beer and the brewery is filled with tanks melbourne and is constantly being upgraded.

At the time of our visit they were installing larger tanks at the brewery and had just commissioned a new 6 head canner.
They also have more and more kegs in there that they’ve been experimenting with as part of their move into the forest range. We were able to check them out and pick their melbourne brains about sourcing kegs and managing the project, and also try some beers.

You can buy bottles for takeaway or pay the corkage fee and buy them on site (we have both).
The Melbourne Beer Tour can’t be done without Stomp Field, and with their Mullabane and airport set to open in early 2020, it will be easier than ever.

Bodridge.

We’ve heard a lot of stories about Bodriggy since it opened, and it made sense to come around the corner from the stomping melbourne grounds and drop by next. It certainly didn’t disappoint. It’s a huge, well-designed venue that stands out from other beer clubs, especially because of the amazing food on offer. Most importantly, the beers tasted great.

It wasn’t on our list of barrel aged beers, but we had to go and see melbourne what all the fuss was about. They also have a very nice, fairly large brewery there, not your typical brewpub that’s for sure.
We caught up with our friend Ben who was brewing beer there and got to taste their beer. We highly recommend a visit and make sure you go at dinner time for a delicious meal.

Days 2-8 Brewery

On our first day, we lined up a busy schedule, visiting 8 breweries and taking an epic day trip down the coast to Dandenong, Mornington, and back.
Hop Nation

The boys at Hop nation have always been great to us, so we were happy to come back and catch up with Sam at our first stop the next day. He was very generous in letting us sample their barrel-aged project beers and tour their melbourne brewery and barrel-aged storage facility.

While they are known for some regular beers (like Jedi Juice), they have a damn solid barrel program that is carried under their Site fermentation brand.

They have two barrels (big ass barrels) and over 100 kegs and are melbourne brewing some outstanding beers. My favorite is the Malbec blend ferment, but they all taste great.

We were able to gather a lot of tips and ideas for our own barrel aging and connect with contacts who source our counterparts and barrels. If you get a chance to try any of their fermented beers, I highly recommend them.

While the restaurant was not open while we were there, it did open on the weekends and looks like it will be a great place to go for a beer.
Boatrocker
Boatrocker tops our list and has a great reputation for brewing barrel aged beers. They also have a still for gin and malt, and the co-founder and brewer was even able to give us a taste of the distilled beer he was playing with.

Golden Sour was my favorite, and the other boys liked Fitchol Sour so much they bought about 5 bottles. Strawberry Wheat was another standout.

Virtually all of the beers were great. It’s not exactly on the way to the airport, but it’s a little detour and also in the direction of Carwin Cellars, so it was worth it to head in that direction on the way home.
It was a great trip and it was great to see what was happening down there,

especially with the barrel aged beers, it’s always a pleasure to be treated so well in this industry. Thanks to all who hosted us and we can’t wait to give back to everyone when we get the barrel program up and running next year. Watch this space!