Back in the day, a beer drinker would visit Artarmon to buy weird and wonderfuls from Beer Cartel. The Freeway Hotel was also an option. Well, Beer Cartel closed its physical store in 2022, the Freeway Hotel is still going and now you can visit a Depot Brewery, which is cunningly disguised as Artarmon Home HQ.
The first stop on the Artarmon Beer Crawl should be the venerable Freeway Hotel. For @Untappd Uniques hunters there are three beers, I’m pretty sure you won’t find anywhere else. High Octane, Low Octane and RB. Hard to determine the provenance of these beers – but a unique is a unique.
No shortage of screens of screens (around 16 I reckon – not counting the TAB screens). Worryingly for rugby not one of them was showing the Super Rugby that was on.
Depot Brewery and Buckle Cafe & Distillery has far fewer screens, but those that they have are huge, and in the heart of rah-rah territory one was locked in on the Super Rugby. It is a bloody big venue, and has capacity for 400 people. Plenty of that is outside, but with persistent drizzle we happily sat inside.
The brewers have a solid pedigree with Young Henry’s, Endeavour and Rocks Brewing experience. The core range of six styles is straightforward and would appeal to most tastes – and is excellent value during happy hour.
There are six rotating taps. According to Untappd they’d brewed 13 different beers since launch and five seasonals were available on the night I visited. I am a complete sucker for an Amber Ale, and Depot’s version was an absolute belter. Looks fabulous, great malt flavours and lingering bitterness. A superb beer.
The Czech Dark Lager and Hazy IPA were also very solid. The food is pretty good too. The twice cooked wings were exceptional.
Looking forward to many more visits to Depot.
back of the ferry 