homestead brewery

family gathering. visited first time on sunday for family gathering. beautiful location, kid friendly. only complaint is the food. we had pizzas which for the cost were very light on. a crust with sauce, procutio and wilted leaves for $24. the lamb burger for $15 was ok, but no gravy left so the meat was very dry. the cheese platter was pretty boring. $17 for 3 small cheeses and a couple of biscuits in a plastic container. you need to look at some of the other platters in the area which for a few more dollars give you lots more variety and look a lot better.. the cheese was great though. i realise you have only been open a short while and we will be back as loved the setting.

beautiful surroundings but that's it! very underwhelmed by the beer! didn't even finish it! they better improve it or fear wasting their 30mill fit out!!!

living in ellenbrook, we have a large choice of restaurants (and of course wineries!) nearby in the swan valley, however it’s surprisingly hard to find a decent breakfast. so many of the winery restaurants don’t open until late on a sunday morning, and most of those that do open tend to cater to the tourist market with overpriced, pedestrian fare. today we took a trip to the new homestead brewery in the mandoon estate  in caversham (just off reid highway) to see if they do things any differently. as soon as you enter the estate, it’s clear that this is somewhere special. access is easy and there’s plenty of parking – not something to take for granted these days. the service was prompt and very friendly, and it was good to see a decent amount of staff early in the morning. i was expecting the coffee to be ordinary, but my cappuccino was just the right strength and very drinkable. the breakfast menu is relatively small but all of the meals are interesting and there should be something to please everyone. items include house made granola with swan valley honey & greek yoghurt ($11), corned beef hash with fried eggs ($19), fried duck egg with sauteed mushrooms & brioche ($19) and baked eggs with chorizo ($17). i chose the buttermilk pancakes with canadian maple syrup and crispy bacon ($16). no complaints here – the pancakes were light and fluffy, the generous serving of bacon was crispy as advertised and the maple syrup was real. renay chose the toasted sourdough with feta, avocado & slow roasted tomatoes. this was a huge serving, made with top quality ingredients including super-creamy feta that reminds you how bad most of the stuff you buy in the supermarket is. so how much was this dish? a quite amazing $12. where else in perth can you get breakfast this good at such a low price?

overpriced rubbish. ordered snapper and chips and a lamb pizza. pizza was hardly topped and so sloppy that when you picked it up it flopped and everything slid off it. the fish was in 3 small pieces and the chips were barely there. tartare sauce was awful. both meals were below average and no way at all worth what was charged. waiter served our food without napkins or cutlery. went to wash my hands after eating with my fingers and the facilities were locked.

we opted to sit “out the back” in the shady beer garden. there are loads of picnic benches and its right next to the shaded playground – which was a big hit with little chef. there were a few soccer and crickets games being played on the expansive, lush lawns. it had a lovely family atmosphere.

terrible service. don't bother. my wife and i booked for lunch on the monday public holiday just gone. as we booked on the brewery website we assumed we would be in the brewery part of the property and on arrival we were happy to see a live band playing and a nice atmosphere. however after speaking to a couple of staff we were told they don't take bookings and it would be a 45 minute wait. that obviously didn't go down to well as we had definitely booked but it was eventually worked out that we had booked into the restaurant part of the property not the brewery which is what we wanted. so we were shown into the front desk of the restaurant section which was like a church with no atmosphere, background music or anything. certainly not what we thought we had booked in for.

however we had the booking so waited at the desk to get seated. now not a word of a lie we waited for close to 10minutes before anyone came to seat us a and that was only because i was waving my arms around to finally get some attention. there was at least 4 staff working and i made eye contact with at least 3 of them previously but no one came hence i had to resort to the arm waving. so after finally getting seated we were offered water which we accepted and then looked through our menus. my wife decided on a wine and i picked one of their beers to try so we waited to order these before we picked our meals. but we waited and waited as staff continually walked past us without asking if we would like a drink. after another 10minutes of that we decided life's too short to pay good money (it's certainly not cheap) to get treated with crap service like that and we left. true to their service to that point none of the staff said a thing as we left as we walked straight past a couple of them.

in short you couldn't pay me to go back after that experience and i will be advising my friends the same.

really impressed by our visit today, staff were very helpful and food came out fast. they're still getting on their feet (have only been opened 3 weeks) but we really loved the experience! beer and food was delicious. the view from the brewery is beautiful as well. highly recommend.

obviously new! lovely surrounds - that's gonna cost ya!. public holiday monday but didn't seem to be over capacity by any means judging by the available car bays. we waited an hour and a half for our meals which came out at different times. by the time the food had arrived, we were a bit over it and not so hungry any longer which wasn't such a bad thing as the portions were very small. $28 for a burger and chips which was comparable to a maccas mini-burger in size. quality was fine however.

teething issues.... as another user pointed out the friendly staff and majestic grounds was let down by disorganisation and miscommunication during busy times.

being put on a waiting list for an hour and a half for a table and then to be told the kitchen was closed isn't a good look. it's a shame because the food genuinely looked good. hopefully things will improve in the coming months as this place has a lot of potential.

a bit bodgy. we arrived at 11:30 and put our name on the waiting list then took a look around the beautiful gardens including the swan river and adjacent sandalford wines. enjoyed $9 no. 1 belgian pale ale and $17 potato pizza (the kids were starving by now) in the beer garden.
at 1pm i went back to brewery to see where our name was on the list and noticed half a dozen names below mine had already been crossed off. after being seated we order and are told food will take 35-40 minutes (at the longest). an hour later we ask how much longer our food will be and are told 'another 20 minutes'. we're now over it so ask for a refund at which point the food arrives immediately!
i must confess that lunch would've had to be pretty good to redeem the experience. it wasn't. my $29 charcuterie plate was just meat and bread - no sign of the promised cornichons or caperberries - and the 'triple cooked chips' were soggy.
the architecture and grounds at homestead brewery are impressive but they weren't ready for the number of people there today.

beer tasting at arrival, the girl was really helpful. we dropped name for a table and was informed for 60mins waiting, so we had a glass of beer and went to their garden area and waited.
60mins later, checked again and still three table ahead and 20mins more waiting. fair enough, it was busy day.
20mins later, i could find four empty tables so asked a manager if we could grab a table. he answered two groups were ahead, even on his name lists, groups after us were allocated. so i pointed out where the tables were available at the time then he led us to one table.
we thought finally we could order... then we were told "kitchen was closed 15mins ago."
how bad service. we wasted our time. i could wait for a table if they are really organised for the busy day, but manager should know when kitchen closed even it would be accidentally early close. no excuse even you are recently open.

we visited homestead brewery on the very first weekend they opened. it was a lovely warm day and we were greeted by a friendly staff member who gave us a quick run down of the menu. we started by having small tastings of the 4 beers they had on tap. i chose to drink the thunderbird ipa which went down very nice and didn't leave that heavy feeling in my stomach that i usually find with craft beers. we took a seat on the veranda in the beautiful sun over looking the newly sprouting green vines whilst looking over the menu.     the menu is great, you can order some tapas and cheese platters to share with friends over a few drinks. light and main meals are also available, kids meals and a pizza menu where the wood-fired pizzas are made using house-made dough. out the back they have a new, fully fenced playground with soft-fall and shade sails. the grassed area is huge, it has heaps of bench tables, is shady and is a great place to being a picnic rug and sit under the trees or in the sun. t

overly busy for what it is. beer tasting is free, win, but the beer is quite average. incredibly busy for what it is.

have heard great things about this place especially how kids friendly it is so we chose this place to have lunch to celebrate our wedding anniversary.

this place is huge and very nicely designed. we ordered the buffalo wings, pulled pork tacos, pie, kids spaghetti & meatballs and lemon drizzled cake with chai latte. it was ok, nothing spectacular and the price was alittle high for the quantity of food served.

we loved the kids playground though and the grass area. we'll be back in a couple of weeks so will try other things on the menu then..

i was trying to hold off visiting the new and improved mandoon property for a few weeks, but the sun was shining this past saturday and it was just the perfect day for a nice cold beer or glass of vino in the sun. it didn’t take much convincing for mr. spittoon and i to head out there! i have visited mandoon estate a few times since living in perth and have always been fond of their verdelho and cab merlot plus the lovely irish lady who was always on the cellar door was an absolute pleasure to chat to. over the past 12 months or so, mandoon has undergone a massive makeover and upgrade. their cellar door which originally opened in 2011 backed onto the working winery, which i loved but they decided to step up their game and are definitely now a major contender for the bigger wineries out in the swan valley since opening their new doors on monday 15th september 2014. with the new homestead microbrewery, the new cellar door, the a la carte fine d