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

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…

I usually have something sarcastic to say. But not tonight. Tonight I just want to say how wonderful summer bbqs are. They are the epitomy of peace. Meat burning on the searing plate. Beer going warm in your hand.

Tonight we had a summer bbq. It’s only spring, but it was a summer evening, the three of us sat and ate our fatty, gristly meat together, grinning through charcoal crusted teeth, squinting into the setting sun.

It was great. It was just how I imagined parenthood would be. Before I actually had a kid and then realised I would never eat a hot and/or complete meal again without a serious case of indigestion and a nervous twitch in one or both my eyes.

Anyway. It was lovely.

A moment to be treasured.

I’m just grateful I’d only had one beer so I can actually remember it…

There haven’t been many posts lately. Sorry. It’s Facebook’s fault. I think I’m developing a problem… there’s probably a medical term for it already…

The thing with facebook is that it’s all fine and dandy to send a keg to 12 of your top friends or give a cask of wine to a special classy laydee, but ultimately it’s not actually a keg you’re sending them is it? It’s a picture of one. It’s not real. Facebook is a fantasy world where admittedly it’s fun and fluffy and everyone is your friend, but people are rated as being heavyweight drinkers because their friends have sent them 50 million fake drinks. That’s just wrong. You’re only a heavyweight drinker if you can drink an entire slab and still remember to urinate in the toilet and not in your pants. And that’s a real slab and a real piss I’m talking about here!

Don’t get me wrong - I love facebook and I love to send drinks to people but let’s keep it real guys. Take a night off facebook. Actually buy a friend a drink. A real drink. At a real pub…

you can take photos of it and post it on your facebook page…

Last night I tried Bitburger for the first time. It was a lovely dry little drop. Quite hoppy and flavoursome. The reason I tried it was because our local bottleshop is having a competition to win a BeerMate but you have to buy Bitburger or Heineken to enter.

Aha! What’s a BeerMate I hear you ask? I know you’re probably thinking that you already have several BeerMates chilling nicely in the back of your fridge but this BeerMate is different…

We’ve always fantasised about having our beer on tap and enjoying a freshly poured 10 oz each evening. The thought of it makes me tingle. But the logistics are frightening. I can see why pubs are still operational because it would take an act of military precision to install a beer tap in the standard kitchen and keeping the keg cold creates a problem that would fry the brain of a quantum physicist.

Well, ok it IS possible but so much trouble that no respectable beer drinker could be bothered.

So the Sunbeam BeerMate is the answer to the age old problem of how to get a fresh icy cold beer poured straight from the keg in you own kitchen without having to turn your house into a pub and employ bar staff. It’s ingenious. And, in our society of the gadget-guzzling-consumer I guess it was only a matter of time before someone invented it and someone decided they needed to buy it.

Basically it’s a household appliance designed to hold a 5 lt keg and to chill - that’s right CHILL!!! - the beer at the same time. It’s about the size of a domestic coffee machine from what I gather and seems to be infinitely more useful! (Says she who nearly went spare without her coffee machine when it spent a week in the shop being fixed - some might say due to a problem caused by overuse…)

My addiction to all things stimulant aside… I think I would like to give this BeerMate thing a try. But at $600 a pop I won’t be buying one on a whim - think I might have to win one. Which means a lot more Bitburger!

Oh well - there are worse things a person might die of… like lack of caffeine…or a perfectly installed tap and no way of refrigerating the keg…

Have you ever reached a point in your life where you’ve just stopped what you’re doing and asked “well, how did I get here?” (Some one should so write a song about that….)

You just wonder at what point did your life degenerate into such a filthy quagmire that drinkng before the sun is even up becomes not only a viable option but a damned attractive one?

I should set the scene before you conclude that I’ve finally slipped cheerily into the arms of alcoholism…

Yes it is 8:32 am. And yes I am indeed drinking beer. I would like to say in my defence that I don’t have any choice. You see, the day started for me with dear Felix barking his lungs up across the hall and then deciding that if he was awake - everyone should be and thusly shouting at the top of the lungs that I had previously believed had been coughed up. This all happened at 5:18am.

THAT IS STILL NIGHT PEOPLE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I tried to go back to sleep. I really did. But it’s so hard when an 18 month old child has the uncanny ability to make noises that would put large gardening machinery to shame. And I’m talking stump-munchers here. So finally because I guess he felt sorry for me (and possibly because it didn’t look like I was going to ever get up) my husband rose to attend to the noise disturbance and left me in bed. I still couldn’t go back to sleep. I dozed. In between the thundering of toddler feet on the wooden boards in the kitchen and the sound of plastic-ware being reefed out of the cupboard and thrown at any object containing the most capacity for echo and reverberation.

So I got up. reluctantly of course. And now that I’m up, my husband has decided that he needs a bit more sleep so has returned to bed, (aw diddums!), and my son has eyes that look like piss-holes in the snow and is clearly exhausted so I’ve packed him back off to bed too… leaving me alone and having had only one coffee.

And as everyone is sleeping I can’t make another one because the grinding of the beans would wake people in the next suburb let alone people the next room.

It’s too early for anyone to be on Facebook.

There’s no way I’m cleaning at this hour.

So, I feel I have been left with only one choice: to drink a beer alone and whilst still in my pyjamas.

Bintang. An Indonesian Pilsener. Nice. Quite dry. Curiously refreshing at this hour.

In fact if any of you are considering alcoholism seriously, then I would definitely recommend this beer as a nice starter for you. Goes down quiet easily first thing in the morning.

There’s nothing really remarkable about this beer other than the time at which it is being consumed. But it’s good and I would have it again.

Possibly even at this hour.. if fact I’m enjoying it so much I’m considering making this part of my routine - screw the second coffee! I’ll just have a pilsener thanks!

And welcome to the hazy, neurotic world of drinking problems Jems…

I would like to propose a toast:

To Hobart Myer.

More than a store, more like the hub of our beautiful city’s shopping.  Home of the nicest public toilets and babycare room in all of Hobart. The best place to find kidswear on perpetual sale. The only place in the world where I have ever seen a pair of Steve Madden shoes sell for under one dollar. (It’s actually true.) The only place my husband would ever shop. Home to the hottest change rooms this side of the equator. And the last remaining store where sales people actually WANTED to help you in the womenswear section.

A place to meet. A place to walk through.

A place that was just always there.

Until 3:30 on Saturday when it all started going pear-shaped for poor old Myer. I guess they’ll speculate as to the cause of such a devastating fire that appeared to start during the busy trading hours in full view of patrons and staff alike. I expect they’ll never really know however, due to the intensity of the fire and the fact that it left virtually no evidence.

The old building has been gutted and thusly demolished.

Streets are still sealed off and the face of our shopping precinct has been changed forever.

It is a sorry sight.

Dear old Myer. You have left a void in our city and a void in our hearts.

Charge your glasses/stubbies/cans/casks and say a hearty thanks to Myers. For just always being there.

Even if they did have the heating in the change rooms about 15 degrees too hot….

Maybe they should check that out…. could be a contributing factor….

Seriously, how good were those prawns? But yes there was a lot of garlic and chili and salt.

OK I am the other laydee friend who went out to sample some Spanish Tapas and some Spanish Beer and possibly a few more beers along the way, but who really keeps count. I have been asked by our happy beer loving blogger to put my 5 cents worth about a few beers we may have sampled!

Ladies be damned as we called it, or Estrella Damm is also known as was given straight to us ladies and the Mahou straight to the men. It was clearly beer for the ladies! Now I’d better just say that I am not quiet the hardcore beer drink-en gal like my friend here, I don’t down a slab in a night, but I do enjoy the odd beer and I’ll just say I know a good beer when I taste it! And the Estrella Damm was a very good beer. It went down beautifully, it was very smooth, it soothed my poor throat after the garlic chili salty prawns (note to Jems… was there actually prawn in there?) There wasn’t even any after beer burps when it come back up your nose, not from the Estrella Damm any way…. That was the other beer I drank. I certainly will be very keen to taste it again.

Along with another beer I sampled that night…. and there were many, and wine, red and white. But Jems wants to hear about the Mafia Beer I tasted at a very cruisey little bar later in the evening. This place was fantastic. If you didn’t know it was there…. well you wouldn’t know it was there except, from the beefy guy at the door. It had this very mellow trio playing. The singer was a super tanned guy banging the big bongos, he was great but the guitarist and the base player just looked awkward like they knew they weren’t as good as the singer and they weren’t. At this stage in the night I had had a lot to drink and something about this scene made me think about Magnum PI and being on some sort of luxury yacht. Magnum PI in a good way.

Right so… they had a menu of drinks more like a book of drinks. I chose myself a drink , Moet & Chandon $150 a bottle. Sadly, my husband hadn’t heard my request over the bands version of “Fly me to the moon” , So he choose a beer for me and Jems I’m sorry but I don’t remember what it was called only the picture on the front - A Mafia man in black suit and tie and one of those Mafia hats, white straw type thing with a black ribbon, oh and the beer was made in Italia!! now I think it tasted good, remember I had the chili garlic prawns (or the chili garlic) and I think it had a slight bitterness to it, but apart from that it was good too. Not however as good as Estrella Damm.

But give me time and I will go and have another taste and I’ll keep you posted!!

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.

I am drinking out of a new beer glass. A new “Perfect Beer Glass”.

It has Tooheys New printed on it but I don’t care - it’s a good shape. I like it.

It came from a fabulous shop in Queensland called The Beerless Bar. I know! Normally a concept that would deeply upset and concern me but this shop was GREAT! It had all kinds of bar paraphernalia and it housed my new Perfect Beer Glass. I was in a happy place!

Anyway - back to my new Perfect Beer Glass… it actually came as part of a two pack. Initially I thought - “No good. I only want ONE Perfect Beer Glass.” But after much consideration and browsing I decided that two was probably an economical buy. I thought I would take one glass back home with me and leave the other for safe-keeping with my parents in the event that anything untoward happened to my glass then they could offer a near-immediate replacement.  I also didn’t want two of the same glass in my house because then I wouldn’t have the Perfect Beer Glass I would have One Of Two Possible Perfect Beer Glasses.

I don’t like to share.

And my husband is the clumsiest person I have ever met and I didn’t want to give him the opportunity to destroy two glasses at once.  Interestingly he only seems to be clumsy with my belongings. I can rattle off all sorts of my favourite items - usually and unfortunately made of easliy breakable substances - that have met with a high-impact demise: my favourite vintage blue bowl, my favourite vintage blue plate, one of a set of my four favourite latte mugs, and finally the Absinthe glass that I had imported from the U.S. as a gift for the Husband of Hands with Many Thumbs for Christmas.

I usually hear a dull crack from the kitchen (it’s rarely a spectacular affair) and the quiet but slightly desperate sound of my husband panicking… and then I know. Something else that I love has just bitten the dust.

So, you can now see why I was:

A. reluctant to bring anything into my house that I atually like

and

B. pretty thrilled at the fact that these glasses seemed to be hotel standard and made of 2.5 inch thick bullet-proof glass.

Having said all this I am now obliged to tell you that my new Perfect Beer Glass is still in one piece.

HOWEVER…

it has been put in the dishwasher by someone attempting to be tidy and now the lovely glossy Toohey’s New logo has been eroded to a deeply upsetting matte. It’s so horribly matte that it makes me think of blackboards and hence fingernails scratching down blackboards every time I touch it.

It’s so off-putting that I’m having the second glass sent down as I write.

I can only hope that Husband of Hands with Many Thumbs keeps said hands to himself this time.

I’ll keep you posted…

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!!!