We make home brew

This is the second in a group of posts on how I got involved in home brew. It follows up from part 1. This second part outlines where my beer appreciation took a big step up.

After drinking a lot of lager for many years the discovery of beer with flavour was like a breath of fresh air. What was to follow was like a hurricane.

Ian introduced me to a pub in Melbourne called Mrs.Parma’s. They are famous for two reasons: a big range of parmas, and having only Victorian beers. The only mainstream beer they had on tap was Carlton Draft (earlier this year they finally removed that as well!). All the other 15 taps had craft beer.

It was back in early 2011 that the first challenge was born. After another, somewhat regular, visit to Mrs Parma’s there was a story shared about one of Ian’s friends who ate 99 parmas in one year. What? 99? Surely he could of had just one more and hit 100. Hey, that’s less than two a week. We could do that! That’s a good idea, let’s do that.
And so, with that, the parma challenge started. Target was to eat 100 parmas in 365 days. Photo evidence required. Review strongly recommended. Any other information, like “out of five” score or cost, great to have.
At the end there were three of us who made it: Ian, his wife at the time, and me. I topped the list with 143.

The parma challenge started in Feb 2011 and finished in Feb 2012. As we got to the end of 2011 we started thinking about what we could do for the next challenge. As big fans of Mrs Parma’s we thought about their other offering, beer. Hey, next year is a leap year as well. Maybe we could do something about 366 days. One a day? Is there that many beers?

So we started looking. Where there that many beers made in the world? Okay, looks like that’s not a problem. Could we get at least 366 of those beers in Melbourne? Looks like it.

The rules were debated back and forth. Would it be one beer every day? Or seven in a week, allowing to cram in seven beers over a couple days and rest for the rest? How would we provide evidence of having the beer? How about some sort of “good” side to the whole thing?
Rules were agreed as follows:

• One beer every single day. No excuses.
• Photo evidence required with the date. Bottled beer has to be open/beer poured into the glass. Tap beers need to have the tap or description/name included.
• Review is required. To include beer name, brewer, percentage of ABV (alcohol by volume).
• No home brew. Beer has to be commercially available.
• No ginger beer.
• No cider.
• For every beer $1 to go to the charity of your choice.

A test run was done in December. It went quite well.

Each month was going to have its own theme: Australian beers for January (Australia Day), American beers for July (Independence Day), German beers for October (October Fest), and so on.
Halfway through January it dawned on Ian and I that there was a crazy amount of Australian beers out there. We were discovering about one new brewery every day! Quickly we both agreed to stuff the themes and try to have Australian bees for the whole year.

Wow. What a year. 366 Days of Beer was a big success.
Technically I was the only one to completed the challenge successfully. Both Ian and I had holidays overseas. I packed my Australian beers in my luggage (which required a reshuffle of items to keep us under the weight limit). Ian was away for nearly two weeks and posted them over. They didn’t turn up. On returning to Melbourne he did two a day to catch up.
Leah was the other person to do the challenge properly. Major dental work took her out for a week and by end of year there were a few other days missing.
Ian put his reviews up on his blog. Mine are going up slowly on mine.

Throughout the year collectively we tried over 600 Australian beers from most of the Australian breweries. Despite that there were many beers, and even some breweries, missed. What was definitely gained was a much greater appreciation of beer, and a deeper understanding of what we do and don’t want in a beer.

-Mikey

I mentioned in one of my first posts that there is story behind how I ended up wanting to home brew. Over the next few weeks I’ll share that story with you.

Unlike the stereotypical Aussie male, I didn’t get into drinking beer for a long time. I grew up in a household where wine was by far the first, second, third, forth and fifth choice of drink. Oh, and there was tea. The focus on wine was so important that family holidays tended to be based around visiting wine regions. At home there was a good small range of spirits, but no beer.

It wasn’t until the end of my first year of Uni that I really started drinking beer. I only had a few beers here and there in my first year Then I went on an Archaeology dig in Cyprus for two months from start of November to end of December. The wine was horrible. The spirits weren’t akin to paint stripper. And beer was amazingly cheap, especially when you return the empty bottles. There was a lot of beer consumed.
After that, there were many Archaeology digs where beer was the drink of choice. I remember one dig at Port Arthur in Tasmania. We worked out that between a small group of us we drank about a pallet of beer in three weeks!

Apart from that, beer still wasn’t my first choice when going out, or staying in, for a drink. I wasn’t excited about the stuff. Every beer tried seamed to be pretty much the same, mass produced tasteless lager.

Over a period of 8-9 years I would slowly learn about things other than lagers. Guinness, Kilkenny, Coopers and Mountain Goat were some of the first adventures into non-lager beers. Little Creatures and some of the more obscure ones would pop up from time to time.

A turning point for me was the very first Harvest Picnic at Werribee Park, maybe 2005 or later. There were a few micro breweries with stands, including Grand Ridge and Red Duck. It was here that I tasted for the first time, and feel in love with, Red Duck’s Golden Dragon, a Celtic ale.

Then in 2008 on holiday in Europe I met up with a friend in Bristol and discovered the amazing world of real (English) ales.

The following year I met a guy through work who was originally from England. Ian would become a great friend. Over the next couple years we would discover the wonderful range of quality beers in Australia.

-Mikey