Australia's most over rated beer

My father in law knows I like good beer, but he doesn't know much about beer himself. Unfortunately for both of us he bought a case of Crown Lager. Like 99% of beer consumers in Australia he equates Crown Lager as a quality product. The reality is that its over rated shit. Basically you are paying $60 for a carton of VB. The Australian beer market is interesting. Quality is expensive and bullshit marketing talks and somehow makes shit products walk. Take the marketing spiel below;
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"Without a doubt, Crown Lager is one of Australia’s most iconic brands. It is the country’s original premium beer and continues to outsell any other premium beer on the market. Crown Lager had an auspicious start. It was launched to the Australian consumer in 1954 to celebrate the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. Prior to that it was available only to an exclusive group of individuals made up of diplomats and visiting dignitaries. It’s the special care taken to select only the choicest Australian barley and the best Pride of Ringwood hops, along with the attention to detail in the brewing process, like the extended lagering, that creates this premium beer. This helps produce the creamy fruitiness, rich malty mid-palate and crisp clean hop finish to deliver Crown Lager’s distinctive, full flavoured premium lager taste. The brand’s understated elegance has seen it emerge as an icon - a classic in its own right."
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Hmmm, what a bunch of lies. The only thing premium about this beer is the inflated price. Hops fell by the wayside years ago and synthetic hop extracts are now the norm. Rich malt flavours, hop finish, full flavour and creamy fruitiness?? Where, not in this beer. This is like shit sprayed with perfume. It looks and smells good from a distance, but up close its still shit.
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The most disappointing aspect of the whole affair is that with all the great beers available in Australia, this is the beer that most Dad's and tradespeople buy themselves as a treat over Christmas. While it is a rubbish beer, I do rate it higher than other mass marketed swill like Toohey's Extra dry. But only just.

Back into the Arts

As promised while a while ago, I have started to venture back into the brewing arts. It has been over 4 years since I last did brewing of any kind and as such my equipment is scattered across various parts of NSW and I had to make do with what I could find at my parents place. The fermenter you see here was covered in dust and mould but cleaned up pretty well with plenty of love from sodium percarbonate. I couldn't find a lid so I used the old cling film and elastic band trick which I believe is superior to an airlock anyhow.
As it had been a while I wanted to keep it simple and stuck to cans of goop. These things can be pretty ordinary if made up with adjuncts (or following the instructions) but passable if you use all malt extract. I used two cans in conjunction - A Coopers Pale Ale and a Coopers Dark Ale. This should afford me a robust porter, and should be balanced to style. After plenty of aeration I pitched only the yeast that came with the Pale Ale. This yeast sachet contains both a lager and a neutral ale strain so I should get a pretty clean tasting product. I didn't bother taking any gravity measurements as I couldn't find a hydrometer, but with 3.4kg of malt extract it should be about 1.045 which will leave me with a finished beer of about 4.3%. I'll leave it to ferment for two weeks and then rack it to a cube and cold condition it for a further two weeks. This specimen is going to be bottled in 375mL VB stubbies for consumption sometime in November. Luckily I have plenty of piss sitting in my phat flat to tide me over till then.

It's called soccer not football

Why do nearly all soccer fans outside of the UK support Manchester United? Like Manchester really.... I’ve always considered it a northern shithole. The only good thing about the place is they film Spooks Code 9 there and even that’s not enough afford any respect. I find it really ironic that everyone I know who comes from Manchester seems to support either Manchester City or Brummie team Aston Villa. When people who are local to the area don’t support a team then I guess it’s not worth supporting. So why the fascination with Manchester United? I guess it stems from the fact that they won shed-loads of trophies in the 90’s and are still relatively good performers, even if their line-up is completely comprised of moronic chavs like Wayne Rooney. I guess it’s more fun supporting the winning team than the loosing team. But why do these people become fanatical about man U for? Why don’t they just change teams and follow whoever is winning in any given season?
I don’t follow soccer but I have a soft spot none the less for Fulham as I happened to live in the area. I was local, not someone jumping on the cool bandwagon from 20,000 miles away.
Another thing that’s been winding me up a bit is Australian’s who try to insist that soccer is called football. I’m sorry this is well out of order. It’s soccer and that is the final word. I don’t care if it’s an acronym for association football. Australia and the UK use different colloquialisms for various things. For the last three and a half years I have had to put up with joggers being called trainers, capsicums being called peppers, zucchini’s being called courgettes, eggplant being called aubergine and I won’t even start down the track of what a “thong” is in the UK. So in Australia ‘football’ is rugby or any other code played by men. Soccer is a game for pseudo-men who are too scared to play football. No word of a lie.

I realise that this has absolutely nothing to do with beer, but I had to set the record straight. And finally, Rugby is the game they play in heaven while soccer is the game they play in cold shitholes in Europe when they either come up from a mine or knock off from a hard day in the copper smelter.

New Dig's

I'm now completely settled in my new apartment. It's snazzy and close to town. I like it. All I need now is a 40+ inch LED TV and my life will be almost complete. Oh, I also need to sort out some Internet so I can post more frequently but it's hardly a priority like the TV is. The downside is that I don't have any room to put my all grain rig together so I will be putting up with cans of goop and fresh wort kits for a little while longer, but hey at least the weather is nice here.

I have slowly started exploring the local area and have sussed out how expensive beer is in Sydney. A Schooner (425 ml) of Little Creatures Bright Ale which is a golden style summer ale in proper real keg form is $6.50 which is pretty expensive in comparison to UK prices. This is at my new local the Kirribilli Hotel which is a bit of a "too cool for school" venue so a premium is also added, but it's still a bit rich. On Sunday I wandered over the bridge (the Sydney Harbour Bridge that is) with the missus and had a look around the rocks. I bought a nice new pair of RM Williams boots and gawked at people like the intrepid tourist that I am. Plenty of proper real keg to be had in the pubs about this part of town with old favourites such as the Lord Nelson and Lowenbrau still going strong. I managed to pop into the Australian Hotel later in the afternoon for a pint of Scharer's Lager. This unfiltered Bavarian style lager is brewed in Picton and sold on tap only in The Australian Hotel in the Rocks and the King George IV in Picton. It has varied in quality since the brewery changed hands a couple of years ago and my schooner was laced with DMS. The beer literally tasted like cooked corn. Not one to be wasteful I finished it off without complaint and headed home to finish reading the paper over a bottle of Warsteiner and Sunday afternoon television. Next time I will stick with the Little Creatures Pale Ale, but still it's only beer.

31 is the new 21

I have been too keep the blog up to date recently. It's sad I know but I have not had time to keep up with the 'lucky few' (the small handful of blogs I could be bothered actually reading daily) either. Moving across the world seems harder the second time around and time has been at a premium. Actually the only time I have actually had to relax and kick back was on Saturday which was my birthday. It's official, now I'm 31 I have shed the cloak of youth and am on the cusp of embracing the daunting period known as middle aged. To celebrate the milestone I had a bit of a party aptly titled "31 is the new 21". I managed to polish off the remains of the case of Gage Roads IPA I picked up last week and also received a pile of German Lagers as gifts , which I will endeavour to get through. The highlight of the German piss is a 5L mini-keg of Bitburger. Should make for an interesting session. I'm not letting an oxygen 'condition' this beer!
On the work front I started my new job on Monday. The jury is still out as it's only been two days but it seems pretty good so far. Whilst I slog it out at work my wife has been sorting out our new flat. I burnt through $10K in two hours on Friday buying furniture and white goods but we are on track to be settled in on the weekend. Fingers crossed I will be able to resume regular posting soon thereafter when I get back into a routine. Until then as sausage would say, take total care.

BTW - I hope this has been more exciting than day by day accounts of the GBBF, BrewDog Tokyo and other themes which seem to be polluting the beer blogs of late.

Stranger than Fishin'

OK, I know its been a couple of weeks but lots has happened. Not a lot to get excited about on the beer front but busy none the less.
I spent a week in Thailand and earned the summer that the UK seemed to forfeit. It was nice, 7 nights of clear sky', 35 degree weather and Thai food. On the beer front things were limited to two choices. 1. Singha - A 5% abv premium lager in the pale pilsner style. Cold and wet it was perfectly suited to the tropics. Besides it's temperature it was a little bland. More interesting was option 2. Chang - a 6.4% maibock style lager. This beer was an awesome match to the fiery Thai dishes it was so often consumed with. On an interesting note it seems a piss weak 5% version has been released in the UK. Personally I wouldn't bother. I think the heat, humidity and exotics of Thailand really make this beer special. Somehow it wouldn't be the same sipping it on Clapham common.

Anyhow after Thailand I enjoyed the Rubbish service that British Airways has to offer and finally made it back to Sydney in one piece. Just as an aside, I think BA deserve to go under if they want to run their business the way they do. Actually I hope they go under. Beer wise I haven't had much of an opportunity to explore the local scene yet. I have drank all my old man's VB, my father in-laws Crown Lager and half a case of Gage Roads IPA I picked up from Dan Murphy's. The Gage Roads is a little tame compared to the US IPA's I have been getting into recently. Don't get me wrong it's a nice beer with a great hop aroma, but it's severely lacking in the bitterness department. Whilst in Dan M's I was pleasantly surprised that the craft beer selection has increased from 2 isles to 7 over the last 3 years - not that I buy beer here very often. I also plan to get back into brewing quickly. I don't have my AG rig available to me at the moment so I picked u a coopers pale ale and a coopers dark ale kit. I plan to mix both kits together and ferment it out with the pale ale yeast. Should make for a nice malty porter. Fingers crossed I'll be able to get some all grain up and running sooner rather than later but its looking bleak for at least the next 6 months. Other important news is that I have found a new place to live in the lovely suburb of Kirribilli. It's a bit of a poncy area, but will be nice until we buy a place in 6-12 months time.
I couldn't be assed typing anymore so I guess that's it for now. Fingers crossed I'll get time to blog again before I start my new job on Monday.

Stranger than Fishin'? I recently told someone not to fish in their own pond. Well it appears that I have been proven wrong. I have heard from a reliable source that said person has caught a beauty and the happy couple have been seen about town. I offer my congratulations to the happy couple.