Battle of the Beers at The Highway Friday June 8
Could be a great way to start your long weekend. Lunch with accompanying beers at The Highway. For this bout they have lined up some good local and imported beer to drink alongside some of the always great food from chef Nicholas Finn. There is no menu up as yet but I have enjoyed every meal I have had there. If you haven’t eaten there recently you should make it a point to get in for a meal soon.
The beers for this event are from a wide variety of breweries. From the USA there is the most excellent Brooklyn Brewery. Brooklyn isn’t always as in your face as some of the American craft brewers but they make some of the best beer coming out of the USA. I visited their brewery a couple of years ago and had the beer at the source. Now that we get it in Australia I can say it does travel well. If you haven’t had their beer yet this is a good excuse to try some. Going very local there is beer from McLaren Vale. The Highway has had the IPA from McLaren Vale on tap for a while now and it’s the pick of the line up. I think you can put IPA with just about any food too. The third brewery providing beer is the big boy, Lion Nathan’s, James Squire. While very much considered entry level as far as craft beer goes they still do make some good beers and they have some good people to give talks at these events. If we are lucky they will send along Chuck Hahn.
Sounds like a good excuse to have some good beer and great food to me. Get There!
My Good Beer Week
I’m not going to begin to try to write about all the events at Good Beer Week in Melbourne. What I am going to do is to list and give a very quick summary of the events I am going to. Please say hi if you are at any of these events.
I fly over on the morning of Wednesday the 16th so miss out on a few of the events but I’m not going to miss Good Beer Wheaty.
Wednesday 16 May
Lunchtime – American Craft Brewers Association lunch and tasting at The Courthouse Hotel. This one is invite only. Not sure how I managed to get an invite but I did so yay for me.
Evening – It’s off to Mountain Goat for Abbotsford Collabotsford. I wasn’t a big fan of the beer they came up with last year but it’s always a good event at Mountain Goat.
Thursday 17 May
Day – I will make my first visit to Temple. I had their beers in their first incarnation and look forward to trying again. After that it’s off to the Tramway for Pint of Origin.
Evening – All things going well I’m off to the AIBA awards dinner. If not it will be a big pint of origing night.
Friday 18 May
Breakfast – Hair of the dog breakfast at Beer DeLuxe. I’m told this event has been great in the past so can’t wait to have beer for breakfast.
Lunch – Jose Bones’ Big Good Beer Lunch. I’m looking forward to tackling the whole beast.
Evening – Brooklyn Brewery Party at The Great Northern. Love Brooklyn beers and I hear the Great Northern is a great pub so why wouldn’t I go.
Saturday 19 May
Day – Wandering Melbourne and visiting the beer venues I haven’t yet made it too.
Dinner – I’m wait listed for the Slowbeer pairing, Italian Style.This sounds great and I like the Italian craft beers I have had so far. I really hope I can score a ticket to this. If not maybe I will take five minutes off to rest the liver.
Night – Good Beer Week closing party. Should be a good wrap up to the week and a chance to catch up with everyone before going home and suffering what promises to be a monumental hangover.
So that is my Good Beer week. What are you up to? Get There!
Good Beer Wheaty 12 – 15 May 2012
Taking inspiration from Good Beer Week in Melbourne Adelaide’s own Wheaty is having it’s own beer Festival, Good Beer Wheaty!
There is going to be a ton of exciting events. Check out the link to the program above and read my take below. While I want to jump straight into the event I will be involved with lets start from the start and work our way through. There are also some as yet unconfirmed events I will cover quickly at the end but will focus on the events that are currently on the schedule.
To kick things off and get everyone warmed up on Saturday 12 May we have a hop nerdery session hosted by Stephen Nelsen. This will focus on new and emerging Australian hop varieties. The session will cover everything from hop basics through high hop nerdery so don’t be surprised if you hear terms like alpha acid and cohumulone. To make things more exciting there will be tastings of new and rare beers featuring these new Australian hops. If you don’t get to the session you may never get to try these beers again. Better get in and get your tickets as this one will sell out fast.
Next up on Saturday evening is the launch of the Beer Here, Northdown and Nelsen collaboration brew. This beer is a version of the Beer Here Hop Fix except it features Topaz hops. The new version is called Topaz Fix. This is one of the new Australian hops that will be featured in the hop nerd session earlier in the day. The beer will eventually make it out and around the country but the first keg will be tapped at 1700 on 12 May 2012 at The Wheaty.
If you can back up for another session on Sunday it’s going to kick off nice and easy with a whisk(e)y tasting session. This is the event I’m involved with but I can’t go into the detail so as to maintain the mystery. Whisky(e)y is just distilled beer after all so it fits into the theme of the festival. Run by local whisk(e)y gurus Dr Paul Gooding and The Odd Whisky Coy’s own Big G. There will be a bunch of tastings at this event from wort, through wash, new make spirit and some finished whisk(e)y. Should be fun and you get to learn about the whole production process.
If you have the staying power to keep going there is even more on Sunday. The afternoon session is the Cherry Experiment with Alistair from Lobethal Bierhaus. Alistair has taken some local sour cherries and added them to his heff and the oatmeal stout. Fruit in beer isn’t really my thing but I am keen to give it a try. Should be a good contrast to the malts from earlier in the day.
I guess we all have to go to work on Monday so we have to wait until evening for the next event. What an event it will be though. The good Doctor himself, Darren Robinson, of Doctor’s Orders Brewing will be at The Wheaty for Doc Goes Locum. On the night a new beer from Doctor’s Orders Brewing will be poured three ways. You get to taste the latest concoction from a regular tap, through the glass hopper and from the hand pump. The style of the beer is still under wraps and knowing Doc this could be anything. Doc doesn’t tend to brew the same things as everyone else so whatever this is it’s sure to be very creative and something you haven’t tried before. As Doc says “Come get your beer prescription”.
To wrap things up on Tuesday night there are some more international visitors at The Wheaty. Visiting to talk and share their wares are Stu and Sam of the Yeastie Boys. This promises to be a fun event with a tasting of the range of Yeastie Boys beers, some seasonal releases and possibly a couple of surprises. The guys are also going to talk about contract brewing which is something that tends to have a bad name here in Australia but is a well accepted norm in New Zealand craft brewing. I’m personally a fan of the concept and look forward to the talk. On top of all of this there is rumours of some announcements too. You won’t want to miss this event or any of them for that matter. I personally plan to be at every one of them. They make really awesome beer too so go drink some of it.
That is the quick run down of the scheduled events. On top of those, already scheduled, events there are a couple of unconfirmed possibilities that sound pretty exciting. There is a chance that The Wheaty will be part of the Good Beer Week People’s Pint launch of Double Hoptondre. The other unconfirmed event is a possible strike tasting of Brooklyn Brewery Black Ops. No details on when this will be so you better just get to every event. There are very limited quantities of both beers so just make sure you are at the pub all day for the four days so you don’t miss out.
So that is Good Beer Wheaty! You aren’t going to want to miss any of it. I’m planning on being at every event and have taken time off from my day job for the purpose. Get There!
Weird Beer at The Wheaty
The first Weird Beer Session has happened at The Wheaty and I couldn’t be happier with the result. We had a great group of beer lovers get together and enjoy some amazing beers. We ended up with ten people for the first session and got through around ten different beers. With one to two bottles between the group we got a large enough sample to get a good taste but small enough that we weren’t rolling on the floor at the end of it.
An amazing group turned up, some I had met before and some I hadn’t. People of all levels of beer geekery and beer tastes but really cool and fun people all round. We started the session according to plan with a couple of Cantillon sour beers. From there it went all over the place. There was organic IPA from NZ, Saison from Belgium, Imperial stout from the USA and much more. We couldn’t have picked a more diverse and fantastic range if it had been planned in advance. The highlight of the day for me was the coffee and Fig stout from the Epic Epicurean range. It wasn’t big on the fig flavour for me but the beer was fantastic with an amazing coffee flavour. So many fantastic beers though. I can’t wait to do it all again.
The plan is to try to get something like this going once a month or so. I will consult with the other attendees and see if we can’t set another date with a bit more advance warning this time. Hope to see you at the next event.
Odd Beer Tastings
I have wanted to do this for a while but out of some other conversations have finally decided to actually do it. I want to do some odd beer tastings. If you are anything like me you are often at the pub and see these out there beers you would love to try but aren’t going to commit to a 750ml bottle of 11% sour beer when you don’t have any beer geeks with you to drink it. These beers are often quite pricey too. So I thought why not try to get a group together to defray the cos and have some people to talk about the beer with.
I wouldn’t mind it becoming something semi regular but thought about starting this Saturday the 21st of April around 1300 at The Wheaty. For the first session I’m thinking of going for some treats from Cantillon. There is a good range in at The Wheaty at the moment so what better time to do it and what better beers to start with? Some of these I have never tried. The idea for the session is that everyone comes along and based on the numbers we get we buy a certain number of bottles of beer. I’m thinking a 750ml between four people is probably a good portion and trying around four beers would probably be enough. So each person would pay the price of a single bottle but get to try four. The plan isn’t for this to tasting to be led by one person telling you all about the beer but just for a group to get together and talk about beer together. The beers I am thinking about are Mamouche, Vigneronne, ‘07 Framboise Cuvee Lou Pepe and ‘09 Kriek Cuvee Lou Pepe none of which I have tried before. That said everything I have had from Cantillon has been nothing short of amazing.
Interested? Let me know. Not sure if this is going to appeal to a large number of beer geeks but it would be cool to get together for some weird beers. If you are interested you can leave a comment on this post but it’s probably best to send me an email aaron at imhereforthehops dot com or send me a message on twitter @hereforthehops. Hope to see you there.
What is Going on At I’m Here For The Hops?
Posting frequency has gone down lately but with good reason. Besides the day job being busy I am also working on a side project involving brewing. Can’t say much about it right now but it, hopefully, isn’t too far off.
In the interim I will attempt to get some more posts up on the site. Coming up soon is Good Beer Week and Good Beer Wheaty so they should provide lots of fodder for postin. I just have to find some time to write between hangovers. Details should be out soon for the Wheaty event so I won’t say much now but there are some exciting things going on.