Deepwater Brewing

With the Royal Tour currently on a pause until our February trip, the blog will return to it’s roots with the first of a series of beer and brewery write-ups and recommendations. These might not be as regular as the Royal posts, but they will definitely be forthcoming. And the first brewery of this series of posts will be the one that I teased multiple times over the past couple of weeks: Deepwater Brewing.

When planning Royal trips, I try to work in some interesting non-Royal stops along the way as well. And in the case of the most recent New England leg of the tour, I had the opportunity to work the schedule so we’d be able to stay in the town of Deepwater for the night and visit Deepwater Brewing.

As Deepwater Brewing is only open on Fridays and half the day on Saturdays, this represented a minor logistical hurdle. But it was one I was all to happy to clear as I’d had Deepwater Brewing on my list of breweries to visit for a while.

Just a quick side note, if you ever find yourself staying a night in Deepwater, I highly recommend staying at the Bank B&B. It’s literally the town’s old bank and still has the vault and manager’s office and everything and has period décor throughout. It’s one of the cooler places we’ve stayed on a trip so far.

So early on a Friday evening, we pulled into Deepwater, scurried across a narrow highway bridge with no footpath, and found ourselves at Deepwater Brewing. The brewery is located on the edge of town in what appeared to be a few shipping containers connected together. But when you go in, they’ve turned the interior into a warm, welcoming, comfortable place to sit with a schooner or 4.

As this was a Friday and the only day they were open for dinner, I had phoned ahead to make a booking. We got in at about 5 and the place was pretty quiet. So I wasn’t sure whether that had actually been necessary or not. But before long what appeared to be the entire population of Deepwater started steadily streaming through.

The menu at Deepwater Brewing is exclusively pizzas and the local MO appeared to be: order takeaway, stop in for a cheeky pint or two of tasty craft beer, pick the pizzas up and take them home for dinner. There were a few that stuck around to eat there and have a few extra pints. But that seemed to be the primary local strategy.

And I definitely couldn’t blame them. Sometimes the food, especially pizzas, at a regional craft brewery is almost an afterthought. That’s definitely not the case here. These pizzas were awesome. I had a great one with bacon and mushrooms, but even John’s veggie pizza was damn good.

So in general, we were all quite happy with the decision to come to Deepwater Brewing for dinner. And that’s before we even get to the beer. And the beer was really really good. If you check the Deepwater Brewing website, there is a truly intimidating number of different beers that they brew listed. We knew the dozens of beers from the website wouldn’t all be on tap when we arrived. But they still had a pretty impressive variety on offer. We each went for a tasting paddle. And we each came to similar but slightly different conclusions on the pick of the lot.

For me, tops was the India Red (the same one we later found on tap at the Royal in Tenterfield). John and Bert crowned the dangerously drinkable Imperial Stout as their favourite. And I have to say, that was a close second for me. Everything was good though. Their IPA wasn’t on tap when we were there. But I had one from the bottle and it ranked right up there with the India Red and the Imperial Stout.

But really, everything they made was good. I know I tried them all. A couple of them multiple times. We did have to put in a solid few hours to make it all the way through the tap list (with a few repeats). But that was a sacrifice we were willing to make. We were one of the first ones in and one of the last to leave.

Bert proclaimed it “The Best Brewery in Australia”. That’s a big call. I’m not sure I’m 100% there with him on that. But I did love it, and I can see where he’s coming from. The town, the venue, the pizza, the beer. Everything was on point.

If you find yourself passing through Deepwater, or you’re in the New England in general, stop in to Deepwater Brewing. I can’t recommend it highly enough. Just make sure you check their opening hours first.