When it comes to repurposing a building for a brewery-restaurant, Blackhorse has an interesting story.
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Their restaurant – Blackrock Brasserie on the Princes Highway at Sylvania was once a car yard.
I drive to Sydney from time to time along that road and I reckon a brewery is a much better sight than a car yard.
To be completely fair, the Blackrock Brasserie is a bit more than a brewery. Yes, there is some stainless steel brewing equipment but it’s housed in glass and surrounded by an upmarket restaurant.
It doesn't sound like it should work but the gleaming steel does somehow seem like it belongs there.
Their beers are in the market under a different name – “Blackhorse Brewhouse” (most of which are made at an off-site brewery in nearby Kirrawee).
My understanding is they weren’t able to use the Black Rock name for the beers as there was already a homebrew company operating under that name.
Bummer.
The bottled beers are starting to make their way down the coast And there is a decent range – with six on offer.
Some of them didn’t really float my boat – I wasn’t a fan of the steam ale or the New World Ale (which didn’t come across as hop-forward as promised) and the porter I sampled had an unpleasant bitterness through the middle – which almost certainly was not meant to be there.
Much better was the mid-strength beer called The Punt. It has a slightly fruity character and a decent level of malt that helps to camouflage the lower alcohol. At 4.2 per cent it’s probably just high enough to avoid the thin mouthfeel that can affect mid-strength beers.
My favourite Blackrock beers are the pilsner and the black pilsner. The straight pilsner has a dryness, and a bit of what I always describe as the flavour off the back of a postage stamp. Which is totally fine for this beer.
The black pilsner doesn’t taste like they’ve just taken the pilsner recipe and added dark malt to it. There’s a bit of a difference in alcohol content too – the black pilsner is 5.5 per cent, compared to the pilsner’s 4.7 per cent.
The black pilsner has some very distinct caramel notes that I really liked but hadn’t experienced in this style before. The beer also ends in a subtle but lingering dryness that nicely wraps things up.
It was definitely my favourite of the range.