The Margaret River region is a wine region. But if you would like a beer in between, you find two beer breweries in the region.

The first brewery, we visited, is called Bootleg Brewery and looks at the first sight like all the other wineries. It’s a big estate with a lake in it. The slogan of the brewery is “An Oasis of Beer in a Desert of Wine”.

Funny enough the brewery looks like an Austrian “Heurigen”. That’s a wine place, where you can drink the local wines and get really good food. The only difference is that the beer is not served at the table, you have to order, as in any pub in Australia, at the bar. The Bootleg Brewery produces its own beer and you can have a beer tasting. But different to the wine tastings, you have to pay for the beer samples.

There are 6 beers available for the beer tasting:

• Wils Pils
• Amber Light
• Settler’s Pale
• Raging Bull
• Tom Brown’s Ale
• Sou’ West Wheat

The beers are all without preservatives and have won a lot of awards. You can also view the beer brewer making the beer.

Mike as tester of the beers says about the beers:“The Wils Pils is the best beer out of the six. It tastes like a beer should taste. The other beers are interesting and not bad, but you have to get used to the taste.”

The second brewery, which we visited, is called Wicked Ale Brewery. This brewery is 2 minutes away from our hotel, the Yallingup Lodge. The brewery is quite small and produces some sort of experimental beers and wine mix drinks.

Mike tasted following beers:

• Yallingup Old
• Wheat Beer
• Chilli Beer
• Bad Frog Citrus Beer
• Chocolate Beer
• Lavender Beer

Note: There is no chocolate in the Chocolate beer, it’s just dark and sweet. But there is real chilli in the Chilli beer and lavender in the Lavender beer.

Mike’s test results: “The beers are extremly different and don’t taste like beer at all. Most of them are quite sweet. The wheat beer is the best of them and after a few wheat beers you start to like it.”

Barbara tried following wine mix drinks:

• Ginger Beer
• Passionfruit Beer
• Mango Madness
• Scream’n Cream’n

Barbara’s test results: “I don’t like ginger beer to begin with, because I don’t like the taste of ginger, so I can’t really say something about it. The Scream’n Cream’n tastes like a rasberry cordial. My favorite was the passionfruit beer, altough the neon green color seems a bit strange. It’s very refreshing and dangerous, because you don’t taste the alcohol content of 4.5 Vol% at all.”

Both breweries were crowded and if you want to eat your lunch at the Bootleg Brewery we recommend to make a reservation. We went there two times within the week and both times no free tables were available. Personally I think that’s because it has a “Heurigen” atmosphere. It’s really nice and cosy there. And for parents it’s extra nice due to the huge children playground they have there.

Our short trip to the Southwest of Western Australia is described in 6 articles:

1. Short trip to the Southwest of Western Australia
2. Yallingup Lodge - our romantic hideaway hotel
3. Wineries in the Margaret River region
4. » Beer from the wine region of Margaret River
5. Ngilgi Cave tour
6. Music in the local pub of Dunsborough