What started out as something to do on a slightly rainy Saturday afternoon (walk to Crafty Robot Brewing and have a beer) turned into an odyssey of epic proportions – along with a minor obsession for drinking stout.

Yes, this was not a day trip – it was TWELVE seperate outings with only one purpose – DRINK STOUT!

Initially we thought that we would only visit places within walking distance – but we soon got carried away and began taking public transport to any part of Adelaide with a brewery. We also managed to find some pubs where they changed the beer on tap every week and we started to include those as well.

Going even further astray from our original mission, we occasionally deviated from ‘stout’ and also tried some ‘porters’ and ‘dark lagers’ – which we felt were in the same intended tradition. The one time that we didn’t have some kind of black coloured drink was when we had a very pale looking ‘coffee lager’. Yes, when it comes to anything to do with coffee then all rules can be broken – it was delicious.

The first month of our stout drinking was done in a fairly calm manner – once weekly afternoon visits to a nearby brewery or a pub that had a stout that we wanted to try. During our second month we got carried away and we started going out for the whole day and including lunch and two stout venues.

This commenced with a trip to the suburb of Bowden to visit the Bowden Brewing Company (6km walk) (where we also accidentally discovered the Bowden Bird Walk), and then we walked another 4km to the Shapeshifter Brewing Company. On the way we found a dinosaur and a mural of the legendary South Australian hip hop band The Hilltop Hoods. We returned home by bus rather than undertaking the 8km return walk.

For the next outing we walked to Bowden again for lunch, and then headed for the nearby Brightstar Brewing (1km away). From there we continued to The Suburban Brew (5.5km). This time after completing our mission we walked home (2km).

We were now running out of breweries within walking distance, and so for our next excursion we took the bus to our favourite Sri Lankan restaurant at Ingle Farm, and then after lunch walked from there to to SixTwelve Brewing (6km). We returned home by bus (1km to the bus stop).

Our final far flung destination for stout drinking was Port Adelaide – and in line with our tradition of walking lots of kilometres during the stout drinking, we walked 4km to Adelaide Railway Station and took the train to Port Dock. We then visited Pirate Life Brewery and after that walked onwards for 3km to Big Shed Brewing. It was then a brief 1km walk across to Alberton Station for the return train.

The final part of our stout drinking quest could best be described as ‘searching the internet for anywhere that has an untried stout within walking distance’. We also bent the rules slightly and included a stout that we drank at home. This was allowed because it was Southwark Old Stout – a traditional old school stout that has been brewed in South Australia since 1886. Now though it is apparently owned by the Japanese brewing giant Kirin and perhaps not actually brewed in South Australia anymore.

By the time that the three month stout-drinking extravaganza was brought to a close the grand totals were 22 different beers (15 stouts, 5 porters, 1 dark lager, and 1 coffee lager), 13 different venues, 12 separate outings, and 50km of walking.

The stout drinking venues can be viewed on this handy map