Hi guys, I'm back.
I will probably be there on the 15th - I'll reconfirm closer to the day.
I got back home a couple of weeks ago after no beer since last year. I have been rapidly making up for it since. I passed by the Bridge Road Brewery in Beechworth and met Ben Kraus. They to a great beer and pizza night if you are down that way. The beers are excellent. My pick is the porter as the best I have ever tasted. The APA and IPA are fantastic too. I'll bring some along to the brew day for taste testing.
Further along the rail trail in N Vic we stopped in Bright. We got there too late to visit the brewery so went to the local pub instead to have dinner. It was a bit of your chicken parmigiana and chips style of pub but I asked them if they stocked the local brew. The barman kind of responded with disgust that they didn't but I noticed that they had James Squire Porter on tap - so I ordered one. I sat down and took a sip....sour! I didn't think that JS had shifted the style to a lambic since I was away so I went back to the barman and asked him to taste it. He gave me a bottle of porter instead. This was totally lifeless and oxidised - confirmed by the use-by date being sometime in 2008. I gave up in defeat.
Looking forward to catching up.