The brewery is just down the hill from the train station, just a short ride from the CBD, so it was easy for us to visit. The tours are done every hour, so we had a bit of a wait ahead of us. You can't drink before the tour for liability reasons, so we just killed some time browsing in the shop. Once you start, you get a pretty full tour of the brewery, they really take you to a lot of different areas, so you see all the machines at work. You can't take pictures during the tour, though, and make sure to wear closed shoes!
Afterwards, since we were on our honeymoon they surprised us with a bag of free souvenirs to take home! We then hung around the restaurant to try our free beers and get a bite to eat - try the oysters and the steak! The video jukebox is free so put on whatever you like. Made for a really fun dinner, they took us behind the bar to show us the proper way to pour their beers, as well.
We had a lot of fun here, would highly recommend. The beers we got to sample afterwards were Castlemaine Dry (which apparently you can only get here at the brewery on tap, much better than the typical "dry" beer) as well as XXXX Bitter, XXXX Summer Bright, and James Squire 150 Lashes Pale Ale. Keep in mind you get to fill up a nice size glass, not the typical 2 oz. tasting glass.
So while I wasn't expecting much after trying XXXX Gold in a bottle beforehand, the brewery trip changed my mind and was an excellent experience. read more