It hasn’t taken Wollongong’s Five Barrel Brewery long to get their beers into bottles.
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They opened the doors to the Keira Street brewery in December last year and had an official launch early this year.
Last month head brewer Phil O’Shea took the next step and put his core range (and one or two limited releases) in bottles.
So if you haven’t had the chance to go to the brewery, then you can still pick up some Five Barrel beers at select bottle shops around town.
So far, I’ve seen it at Crown West Cellars in Wollongong and Cellarbrations at Warilla.
There are around five different bottled beers – the golden ale is missing from the photo – but you won’t go wrong no matter which one you choose.
In terms of a favourite – it's a toss-up between the pale ale and the ESB. But I could have easily picked either of the other two as a fave.
The pale ale is a nice and balanced number, with the zing of passionfruit and citrus upfront which then gives way to a biscuity malt body.
And the ESB, well, I’d always heard that style spoken of as throwing marmalade characters but I’d never really understood that until I tried this beer.
With the added tinge of caramel in the malt, it makes for a tasty beer as the weather turns cooler.