#BeerSaturday - Farmdog Brewery - Wallington, Victoria, Australia
There are a lot of breweries named with dog in the title - Brewdog, Dogfish Head, Flying Dog, Moondog, Black Dog etc etc. certainly far more than cat breweries. I guess it's because beer is still a pretty Male world, and dogs are Man's best friend, all rugged and manly and such.
There is also a little bit of tradition in Australia of there being breweries attached to wineries (which we have a lot of, and people loved visiting them, because they are often in tourist areas, and they are generally quite beautiful, far more so that a factory that makes beer), It's not at all unusual to to see the brewery named after the wineries Dog. I guess again the Dog is more approachable, and a good friend and the down to earth character in the winery - just like the beer. Now the problem is Dogs don't live for ever, so either you need to keep getting dogs with the same name or deal with the problem of the dead dog beer. The 'Black dog' in paragraph one was Macka a lovely dog I played with at a winery whilst drinking his beer, but next time I was there, Macka was not and then it was a little weird.
So I guess it's practical or maybe just lazy to call the winery attached brewery 'Farm Dog Brewing' You can insert any dog in there as need be. There did seem to be a particulatly dog in mind, from the logo and the portrait hanging in the big old shed which was the bar. He was a classy fella, a Sausage dog, and possibily wore a suit and a Top Hat.
As you can see this little winery/brewery which I'd never heard of was doing a roaring trade on this mid winter Saturday afternoon. But we aren't here for travel advice, what about the beers
I started with what I considered 'The most interesting' which were a Vanilla Bean Stout and a Choc Raspberry Sour. Both were okay, the Vanilla Bean Stout was really just a solid standard stout, I wasn't really getting any vanilla bean, but it suited the day and worked okay once it had warmed up a bit. The Choc Raspberry Sour, again it was a reasonable sour, it didn't really need the 'choc' element as all that did was make it a little sweet and lactose-y which took away from the nice sour characterics.
After so pretty darn good Pizza for lunch it was on to the second round.
I know these look like the same beers again just from a different angle, but I assure you it's another round (the mostly drunk stout is on the right) this is also proof that there were tanks there and thus it was an actual brewery, and yes that is a still in the background, they had their own Gin which I didn't taste and whiskey sitting in barrels not yet ready) These are the Farmdog IPA, which is the type of IPA you brew for locals instead of beer nerds like me. I thought it needed more Hops, others probably thought it was challenging. At the rear is a Dark Ale which is an interesting style, it only really drunk by guys over 70 years old and beer nerds. Unfortunately this wasn't really a great one, a little thin and lacking character.
So the beers were just okay, but I love to discover new breweries, and they were doing a roaring trade at Saturday lunchtime so it was good to see a local business doing well and people happy to drink hand man fresh beer.