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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!!!

I take a certain pride in my son knowing how to say “Cheers!” delightedly as we chink stubby to non-spill cup and then both take a hearty, satisfying swig of our respective beverages. I think somewhere deep down I know that this is probably wrong and that the Department of Child Services might be interested in me, but I can’t help it. I just want to show off his endearing talent to other parents. Especially the ones who smugly tell me that they don’t say “No” to Little Johnny, they like to say “Just Looking” because it’s kinder. They tell me this while Little Johnny is quietly but successfully picking the pocket of a large, heavy-set bouncer.

I do have to admit however, that I felt a bit sickened today when we pulled up to the bottleshop and Felix (afore-mentioned offspring) chirped “Beee-ahh!”

I went cold.

How does he know the beer comes from here?

How many times have we brought him here?

Surely not that many…. oh my god… I started to wonder if we were enjoying a harmless joke or really creating deep-seated memories in a future alcoholic?

And then I thought of weedy, sooky Little Johnny and his behavioral problems and his smarmy, sober, humourless parents, and I thought…. so what?! So what if Felix grows up to enjoy a drink or 5?

At least his parents aren’t dickheads.

I had lunch at the pub again today. Massive schnitzel. MASSIVE. Two pots. A good time had by all.

You’d think after such a heavy meal followed by several alcoholic beverages that it would take the edge off beer o’clock. But it doesn’t - I find that drinking at lunch time is the best thing you can do because it pretty much renders you immune to any alcohol you consume after that. It’s true! Many times I’ve had 3 or 4 stubbies with lunch and gone on to drink more that evening than I could normally hold in an entire week.

Bit shit if you’re actually TRYING to get drunk - but quite a useful thing to know if you just like the comfort and monotony of draining one stubby after another.

And I do…

Last night was the type of night that would make you fake having bubonic plague just to avoid going out. It was windy and rainy - the sort of rain that goes sideways and soaks you within nano seconds of being out in it. You just have to think about going outside and there you are - drenched. And the wind was so bad that we had to shut a sock in our front door to stop it banging. A great idea from the inside - but from the outside it just looks like some weird drug-dealer sign, you know like the sneakers over the power lines? Just half a dirty sock hanging out the door, flapping in the wind. We’re all class.

But, having said all that, we did end up braving the elements.

What could possibly lure us out from our two heatpumps blasting a toasty 28 degrees each you ask???

Ham roasted in Guinness.

Oh yes, our dear friend with her bountiful knowledge of all-things-cooking, created an absolute masterpiece! The recipe was again from the Men’s Health mag and was again a total winner. Now I like ham at the best of times, but to be smoking hot out of the oven, basted in stout, and served with roasted carrot and parsnip, mexican corn bread and a perky little relish - it was nothing short of exquisite.

We drank some Grolsch with it which was refreshingly crisp compared to the salty, molassesy ham. It was a good match I think. We were wondering if we should maybe take some stout or a dark ale to have with it but I’m really glad we didn’t. I think a lighter beer definitely complimented the dish rather than over-powered it. The ham already has a very pungent flavour and when you couple it with something like Guinness, I think drinking it with a dark beer would just be overkill. I also had a Boags Premium with it too and that worked in nicely. I guess the crisp beer kind of acted as a palate cleanser in between enormous mouthfuls of dirty, fatty, delicious roast swine!

Anyway, I’m about to go and make lunch now but for some reason I can’t seem to face the little blister pack of 97% fat-free “ham” smirking up at me from the fridge.

I think I’ll just have a guinness instead.

Cheers!

Drinking a dark ale such as Toohey’s Old after 3 Draughts is like drinking molten Vegemite. It’s Bonox in a stubbie.

Thankyou.

That is all.

Picture this if you will, a small community centre filled with at least 50 cupcakes, 70 cocktail savs, 30 kiss biscuits, 25 mini meringues, 12 slices of fairy bread, 800 chocolate crackles, various pastries, a Dolly Varden cake and 10 children all under the age of 3 who had basically consumed half of the above in roughly the time it takes you to go from being a just little bit silly to a big bit spastic.

Now imagine facing this scene with not a drop of alcohol of any variety in sight.

Welcome to the hell that was my day.

Now, it wasn’t the 10 small children hyped up on sugar and dressed as fairies that really caused me distress. (Although this in itself is decidedly distressing) It was the fact that my 15mth old son who is normally sweet, jovial and quite attractive, suddenly decided that today was the day to turn into a screaming banshee that wouldn’t look sideways at anyone without being actually on top of me. Mother of god. I would have willingly severed all four of my limbs and eaten them just to have a few beers.

I had actually prepped myself beforehand with a glass of Bailey’s and 2 cigarettes but trust me, it did nothing. NOTHING I say. By the time we got home with this pink, screeching child dressed as an elf but looking more like some sort of enraged troll, we decided to push beer o’clock forward from our usual 6 o’clock to 4 o’clock. Still about 3 and a half hours too late if you ask me.

The moral of this story is do not attempt to attend a children’s birthday party (particularly one requiring some form of costume) without first ensuring that it contains a designated wet area or secreting a hip flask the size of Alaska.

I’m off to get drunk and try to repress the day’s events.

Cheers.