If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

Ok, so slight backdown on my part. I have ranted and raved in the past about how abhorrant middies are and that they have no right to be drunk and that I would publicly ridicule anyone who partook of them in my presence… right well…. it seems I MAY have changed my mind

Thanks to - of all things - VB! Their midstrength beer not only tastes great but doesn’t bloat me at all. Normally I don’t see the point in drink anything other than full strength beer but here’s my quandry: I drink so much and have such a ridiculous tolerance to it that I have been getting spastic every night and becuase there’s no hangover the next day - I just keep doing it! I’ve decided that since I’m actually losing large chunks of each evening that I need to cut down.

So I tried… and failed miserably….

I think I just like a certain amount of beers, like 5 or 6 per evening… it’s just the habit I’m sure but 5 or 6 full strength beers coupled with the fact that I frequently forget to eat dinner equals mass brain-cell death!

BUT, if I drink middies I still FEEL like I’m drinking the same amount but I can still actually remember how I made it to bed and why I’m wearing a pair of my husband’s shoes…. (that’s a memory I’d really like to have back…)

So, I’ve been converted.

We’re all allowed to change! But I still wouldn’t touch xxxx Gold with someone else’s hand - just for the record

xxx

This morning I woke up with a car in my bed.

A yellow, toy car.

I had slept the whole night with it in the bed and I didn’t notice. It’s a new low. Next I’ll be forgetting where I live, slopping beetroot down the front of myself and drinking port and lemonade… oh it’s a slippery slope…

Toy cars aside - my husband has gone to play lawn bowls. I know. LAWN BOWLS!! He assures me it’s ‘cool’. My only thought was surely the beer is still 1972-cheap but apparently not. So why is he there? What could possibly be the attraction?!  Why would you go somewhere filled with a disproportionate amount of senior citizens to physically exert yourself (albeit it minimally) and pay full price for your drinks? There’s a place you can go to where you don’t have to lift a finger except to indicate that you would like another pot - it’s called a PUB!

I’m bitter. He’s left me with no beer. I have 3 Cascade Stouts that have been in the fridge for a year and I’m drinking them - but I’m not happy about it. I like stout in winter. In summer it’s just wrong!

I’m going to go stick that toy car under his pillow now.  I should staple it to the mattress - that’d teach him to leave me with no beer!

Hmmmfff!

Lately I have taken to drinking beer warm. Body temperature warm.

Not by choice, but just because that’s the only way I can manage to consume an entire can. It’s kinda for the same reason that I can’t seem to drink a cup of coffee while it’s still hot and not starting to resemble cooling tarmac… because I can’t seem to get to either of them in time.

I have taken on a new project which is to sew handbags and cushions for a funky new homewares store that is due to open at the end of November. I’m really exited about it because it’s a huge oppertunity for me. And it sounds so perfect doesn’t it? Being creative, working from home where I can tend to my delightful family, keep house, and generally be domestically goddess-like…

uh, right…

this is what my house looks like at the moment:

the living room looks like an illegal sweat-shop - except there are more breaches of OH&S, on top of the carpet there is another carpet made entirely of cotton threads, the bathroom is so fluffy it has now become an intricately woven mohair jumper, something smells like it has died in my kitchen (it probably has), Felix’s sheets actually stripped themselves and hopped into the washing machine in disgust and there appears to be a small family of badgers living in the pile of clothes next to my bed…

Also at this time when everything dangerous in the house has to be out at once - ie scissors, needles, pins, sewing machine, prozac - Felix has decided to wholly become his alter ego: Accident Man.

So, in between sewing my creations and attempting to keep everyone from coming down with scurvy, I find I am also losing a little bit more of my sanity every time I hear a crash and the inevitable pain-scream.

I have started just scooping Accident Man up and automatically putting a towel over my shoulder because inevitably there is blood and I’m sick of having a permanent shoulder pad made of blood, tears and booger.

After the screaming has died down and I have restored some semblance of order to the house, this is about when i realise I had made myself a coffee 2 hours ago. And, now, this is truly indicative of how my standards have plummetted since beoming a parent, I just think - Oh! A coffee! It’s stone cold, but at least i don’t have to make one now!

And I drink it.

Cold.

And I don’t care.

So, it’s the same with my beloved beer. When once i would have turned up my nose at anything less than freezing in temperature, now my first thought is - I KNEW I’d left a beer around here somewhere - WOO-HOO!!!

Just between you and me, I’ve been scouting about the place this morning - looking beneath the cotton thread carpet, in between the illegal sweat-shop workers and the family of badgers - just in case I did leave a half drunk beer somewhere around… coz I could really go a beer now.

Even if it is warm and starting to ferment into something else…

You know I’m a Cascade girl right? I mean, I’m totally one eyed about it - Cascade Draught is my absolute favourite beer on the planet.

Well, I have some deeply unsettling news for you….

Our last slab was Boags. At my request. I know, please don’t abandon me - I made a mistake ok? Everyone has had a moment of passion where they do something rash, something emotional and that was mine.

It all started because of a bad experience we had at the Cascade Brewery Visitor Centre on Father’s Day. I won’t go into it in detail but it was basically a mish-mash of incompetance, misinformation and very poor customer service and it resulted in us walking out on our booking. I was so mad. I am usually a very easy going patron - I don’t send meals back to the kitchen, I ALWAYS thank the staff and tell them it was lovely even if it wasn’t and I HATE to make a scene. So you can see that the experience must have been pretty bad for us to leave without even eating.

So I got so lively about it all that I decided to switch brewers and turn to my arch nemesis Boags. My reasoning was that we drink so many slabs of Cascade a week that gradually over a year the brewery would damn well miss our custom.

Once I sobered up and began thinking rationally again I realised that this was a preposterous form of protest and that the only person suffering would be me because I was drinking crappy Boags. We bought a slab of The Northern Beer anyway - and drank it - but I didn’t like it. Even while I felt moderately smug about our purchase, the smugness and satisfaction quickly evaporated every time I had to actually drink one.

So the moral of this story is: your favourite brewery can do whatever they like - they can even employ an entire workforce of full-frontal-lobotomised monkeys, (and I think a certain Visitor Centre actually does), and there’s not a darn thing you can do about it because they make fucking good beer.

2 chicken breasts chopped into large pieces

1 bottle of draught

1 tbsp chopped thyme

1/2 leek finely sliced

1 tsp sugar

2 tbsp butter

6 pitted dates

1 cup mushrooms sliced

1 tbsp cornflour

1 bay leaf

salt and pepper

Fry the chicken in 1 1/2 tbsp of the butter until golden in a heavy based pot. Remove from the pan and add remaining butter. Add leek and sprinkle with salt and sugar, fry until transparent. Add the beer, bring to the boil and return chicken to the pan, add the mushrooms, thyme, bay leaf and prunes. Simmer and then add the cornflour mixed with a small amount of cold water and stir until mixture thickens. Cover and simmer on low heat for an hour. Season to taste with salt and cracked black pepper.

Serves 2

This is my own recipe. Hope you like

Whilst I enjoyed my blink-and-you’d-miss-it trip to Queensland, I do have a bit of an issue with the Sunshine State’s drinking habits. For a start the drink of choice is XXXX Gold. Now, when I travel, my outlook is this: wherever you are drink the local drop. If it’s good enough for them, it should be good enough for you. Besides, what’s the point in drinking your usual beer while you’re away anyway?? Where’s your sense of adventure?? That’s how I feel NORMALLY. However in Queensland I have an entirely different opinion…

I’ll start by saying that I think it’s largely because of the climate that almost everyone - even the biggest , hairiest men I have ever seen - drinks mid-strength beer in Queensland. Let’s face it - it’s hot and sweaty and you need to drink a lot to stay hydrated. So I guess if you were slamming down full-strength beer all the time you’d be spastic in minutes.

So that would explain why it seems to be home to every conceivable kind of mid-strength beer. I didn’t even KNOW Crown Lager had a mid strength version. Until my parents told me they had a couple of Crownies downstairs and I almost tangled myself up in myself trying to actually get in the fridge with them until I realised they were a slightly alarming gold colour….. That’s right. Crown Lager Gold.

Cast Thee Out.

It’s not that I’m a beer snob - you should know by now that I’m not. It’s just that mid-strength beer to me is the single most abhorrent thing you could drink - next to a shandy. (Sorry Cash!)

It bloats me, seems to lack taste and most of all it lacks that delightful ability to get me drunk.

And I just don’t like the way it makes me feel. Probably because I am sober enough to realise that the beer tasts terrible.

So that’s why drinking in Queensland can be an awkward experience. I have no doubt that if I spent more time there that I would aclimatise and end up drinking middies with pleasure. But until such time, I will continue to fight for the full-strength beer’s rights. Mostly because I live in a place that is so cold for half the year that you need to drink full-strength beer just to stop you from slipping into hibernation.

But also because mid-strength is wrong. Wrong, wrong WRONG!!! It’s half a beer. It’s not quite a beer. It’s the apathetic beer!!

FIGHT THE APATHY!!!

Crack a full-strength beer now!!!

Tallies are the free thing we are getting with our slab at the moment. I know I should be grateful because basically I’m getting free beer with my beer - but I’m not grateful. I’m annoyed. Something seems to go horribly wrong with beer when it’s housed in a vessel this big. You pour it out and no matter how much gravity you employ it still remains flat and without head. And it gets warm.

Also anything to do with tallies makes me want to shuffle into to the nearest TAB, put on my checked slippers, start talking with a slight whistle and curiously have memories of serving in World War II.

Much like Cascade Lager, tallies are a bit of a Poppy’s drink. Although the Poppys probably drank them back in the 60’s and 70’s before they became Poppys and now can only manage half a stubby at a time. In fact I can just see the look of joy on hundreds of time-wearied faces as the brewery suddenly announces they are going to produce 8oz pony-sized stubbies!

So really what I’m saying is that tallies are a bit old fashioned. A drink of the past. You can just imagine the looks you’d get if you turned up to your in-laws for Sunday lunch with two tallies. It’s just not socially acceptable any more. But 30 years ago - clearly before anyone realised that beer was best drunk cold and fizzy - it was common practice to cart at least a dozen tallies round in the back of your Holden ute.

Real men drank beer out of a tallie. Or a glass.

Ah those were the days.

What am I saying? I hate beer out of a tallie! Maybe it’s just the thought of tanking round the countryside in a beat up old car, the sound of 12 tall bottles of beer slowly going flat and warm in the back, am radio blaring tinnily from the shot speakers, and knowing that all your worries were soon to be dissolved by those 12 bottles of lukewarm, dead-flat, shaken-up beer.

Or it could be the fact that it’s 10:39 am and I’m sober and any sort of beer would appeal right now.

Yep. That’s definitely it.

You know what I love? Free stuff that comes with a slab. It’s the best kind of free because you were going to buy that slab anyway - you ALWAYS buy a slab. So it really and genuinely is something free - you didn’t have to lift a finger to get it. I don’t even care what it is that comes free. About 4 months ago the freebie was a Cascade glass with a handle that looked like it could render a large sexed-up bull unconscious with a flick of your wrist. I don’t think it even held beer - it was just a solid mass of glass. But I found myself clapping my hands with glee and arranging them slightly obsessively in my cupboard each time my husband brought one home.

Just for the record we ended up with about 5 and they are still arranged lovingly in our top cupboard and I am still yet to use one.

Stupid handles.

The best thing that I ever got was a Cascade beer glass that was perfect. It made the beer taste even better than it does straight out of the bottle. It made made me feel immediately calm and serene - and that was before I poured the beer. It was a great shape too - not to short and dumpty but not too tall and pretentious either. It just felt right in my hand. I loved that glass. I used to rinse it out after I’d finished drinking out of it and put it in the fridge to chill. Never even washed it - imagine the seasoning on that glass!! The other thing that made it so right was the amount it held. It was a 10 ounce - so you’d pour your can or stubbie into it and then when you were finished - Behold! More beer left in the stubbie! You just don’t get a surprise like that drinking out of the taller glasses that hold the whole can.

Yep. I really loved that glass.

And then someone broke it.

He’s tried to replace it. For the sake of our marriage. But unfortunately for him (and me), because it was a freebie there’s no chance of getting another one.

So I’m drinking out of stubbies now.

But I still get a flutter of excitement whenever I see the bottleshop attendant reaching for a brown paper bag to accompany my slab. I’m just secretly hoping that instead of the stale chips and tickets to a regional footy match, there might be another perfect beer glass in there.

There never is - but a girl can dream can’t she?

I like to write. I like to drink. I like to get drunk and then write. A beer blog just seems too perfect! I’ve been anticipating this first entry for so long now that I suddenly feel under enormous pressure to get it right. What if you read this and it leaves you cold? Or worse still - FLAT. And I’m talking flat like the beer you chucked in the freezer coz it wasn’t quite cold enough….. only someone dropped round or you went to sleep or passed out on the couch in front of a Midsomer Murder and didn’t find said beer for 2 days, after which time it had frozen solid. And you’ve thought - well i’m not throwing perfectly good beer out. I’ll just leave it to defrost in the sink. It’ll be fine.

Sure.

Until you knock the top off it and instead of making that satisfying SHCHICK……. you are greeted with dead silence. But ever the optimist and reluctant to throw a beer out until it has been proven to contain actual botullism spores, you take big hearty swig and… it’s flat as a tack and tastes just a bit not right.

Well that’s what I’m frightened of. An entry that’s as flat as frozen beer.

So, my own performance anxieties aside, I am actually here to chat about beer. Because what better subject is there to write about? Tonight I am drinking my usual Cascade draught. Now I do like a good import or a boutique beer, but I was only commenting the other night (over a few Cascade premo’s and a bloody hot spa) that if I had to choose one beer to consume as my last, it would be a Cascade draught. Now it’s strange really because I actually grew up in Devonport on the North West coast of Tassie and my Dad fed me “shandies” (about 99.1% lemonade - I WAS only 4 years old!) made with the local drop of Boags. So you’d think I’d be a Boags drinker. But I really came of age here in Hobart and so, Cascade is my beer of choice. Although, when I was coming of age I would have willingly drunk anything so long as it was in my price-range and didn’t cause too much blistering of the esophagus. Which didn’t leave much. Sunnyvale cask wine still has a special place in my heart….

Anyway, back to the revered amber liquid… I hope you have found this first entry to be a crisp SHCHICK and not flat and disappointing (but still beer and thus not to be wasted!) and that you will return to read my future ramblings.

Cheers. I’m off to have another beer. A Stella.

Because some nunk-nunk didn’t get the next 6 pack of draught in the fridge in time and it’s warm and we all know where this is heading………..