There's going to be some names missing from this post - to protect the guilty in most cases.
A mate at work had found out that
The Macquarie Hotel has just started a microbrewery. Us both being interested in homebrewing (our brews went down a treat at the housewarming), this tickled our fancy as it is just a quick stroll up the road from work.
He had also heard that last night was opening night via the internet somewhere. A quick phone call confirmed this.
So, finalising some stuff at work, off we went. Rather than the more obvious entry of the public bar at the front, I spotted one labelled "Brewery" at the side. Promising. In we wandered.
Up to the bar, we wanted to grab perhaps one of each of the types of beers to rate them a bit. Ordering the first two from the bar went kinda like this: "Two wheat beers please". "Here you go. Next!". Notice the lack of monetary transactions there. I did.
So, we had to try a few more of course. We went downstairs to tour the rather impressive brewery bit. We listened to the Minister for Gambling and Racing ramble on about how good it was that pubs brew beer now. Also the brewer and owner spoke up - far more interesting overall.
We tasted both the wheat beer (my favourite - starts like most other wheats but the finish is more lagery) and the pale ale (not quite to my taste but accepted nonetheless at the price) a few times over, just to be sure. We ate various finger foods. We listened to the rather good jazz band they had playing there. A lovely little party.
I spotted the owner of a well-known brewing company that I have had previous conversations with and had a quick chat which went I started something like: "This is a good beer, but it's no [name of one of his beers]". Him: "Yeah, but it will get better. It would want to". He put the beer down and walked away after a cheery goodbye.
Going back for perhaps our sixth round, the girl behind the bar asked me "Do you have a sticker?" "No", I answered truthfully. "Well bring it next time please", handing me my order. We had noticed some of the other people there had name stickers on them, but not all.
It was about this time that we deduced that we weren't really supposed to have been there. I should point out at this time that nobody challenged our entry, nobody challenged us being there and we would quite happily have paid reasonable sums of money to try out the brews.
I'm sure we'll get back there at some stage, so they'll win from us out in the end.