I'll be in Sydney for a week and would love to drink some solid, local brews. Are there any sours worth checking out in Sydney?
For solid local brews (non-sour), check out Spooning Goats in York Street, Sydney. 4 taps, 3 from Riverside and 1 guest tap. It's about 30m south of the Forbes Hotel on the same side of the road. Just look for the Golf Mart sign and the stairs going down, otherwise it can be easy to miss. If you want to catch up for a beer, let me know.
Generally there's not much by way of sour beers. The Illawarra Brewing Company released Love Bug the week before last, a barrel aged ale with lactobacilus, which I quite liked. It might be on somewhere. Check out: https://twitter.com/PouringInSydney It's not a bad resource for quickly seeing what's on where. If you're near the southern side of the city, Bitter Phew, The Local Taphouse and the Royal Albert make a good, walking distance circuit. Keep in mind it's nothing like Portland here and you will find the beers pretty expensive. Governments in Australia aren't that kind to small business like they can be in the US.
I don't know why everyone keeps blaming the Government for beer prices - our beer is cheap relative to our income. We have an amazing standard of living and relatively high wages, so how hard is it to connect the dots between labour cost (across the whole economy) and beer prices? If we're going to blame to Government for anything, it's for not reducing the minimum wage so that we can make beer bloody cheap - because that's the big problem, right? Drs Orders brews some sours but I can't see any on tap around Syd atm - though (as Scotty mentioned in another thread) Doc's Quadrupel IPA collab with Sixpoint was just kegged, and has just been tapped yday at Cammeray Craft in Cammeray. If you like sour cider, 2 Meter Tall's Poire was just tapped yday at Red Oak (and Red Oak may or may not have some real/pseudo sours). Usually very funky (like most 2MT). HopDog BeerWorks Brett the Bloody Orange was on at The Local Taphouse in Darlinghurst yday as well as Prickly Moses Nigella Sour Coffee Stout. Couldn't really say whether any of the above are solid or worth checking out, but HopDog have made some great sours in their short time. Red Oak are certainly well awarded. Not sour but I'd definitely recommend tracking down some Riverside.
Basically sours in Australia are few and far between and the chance of you actually getting a decent one is even more remote. You might find some berliner weisses around now, HopDog Alluvial Peach is a good 'un Depends on the brewer. Some of them have been taking the piss recently. Sick of 500mL bottles being used as a pretext for overcharging. The Kiwis only get away with their overpriced 500mL bottles because some of their beers are world-class.
It's called tax. US brewers pay around 10% of the excise that Australian brewers pay on beers at around 5% abv. The excise on a 50l keg of 5% abv beer is about $70 in Australia and $6 in the US. For a case of beer here you pay about $13 excise yet only about $1 in the US. It gets worse for higher abv beers because of our sliding tax scale. There's a few dots for you.
This explains some of the difference but not most of it. Lets look at the extreme end of high pricing - a 11% limited release RIS in a 750ml bottle. Excise is levied at $46.30 per litre of pure ethanol. So in Australia that bottle has a grand total of (wait for it) $3.81 of tax. Cost of that beer in Australia - A$70 for Clout Stout. Cost of that beer in USA - A$22.76 including tax for Hunahpu. Even with no excise tax in USA that leaves a difference of $43.43 which is not explained by excise. So what does explain it? There are some other small taxes (GST is 10% instead of 7% in my American example). Regulatory fees on businesses are probably higher here too. However, the big killer is going to be that standard business overheads cost more here. Staff wages are a minimum of $16.87/hr (plus other staff costs) here compared to $7.93/hr in Florida. Electricity prices are higher as are land prices and rents. The cost of transporting your product is higher and many ingredients need to be imported. And even once you've gotten over the hurdles of those higher input costs, you get to add the joyful fact that the market is smaller with less people and volume to help spread out all of your fixed costs. So, yes, the Government is partly to blame for the high cost of beer in this country but it sure as hell ain't the only reason beer costs a lot here.
Cantillon is Cantillon, so I bought it every time I saw it anywhere. The price was usually between $30-36 at random places like Frankies Pizza and The Local Taphouse. Harts Pub in The Rocks occasionally has one on rotation as well as Local Taphouse. The Quarrymans hotel in Pyrmont seemed to always have something funky on tap. They always Bacchus on and that dude brews wild stuff. Atomic Raspberry from Bacchus is a really good berlinerweisse and Sourpuss from Wayward Brewing is excellent. Good luck finding it though, there's usually very few taps of anything sour/funky and they come and go with little to no warning. You'll be flooded with "golden" ales and pales at every stop, so I recommend the above places to branch out.
