MEET THE BEER BLOKES

“ You can’t always be young, but you can always be immature.”

John ( Dr. Lager )

If one were to sit down and list every male cliche you could think of the list would probably consist of:

* likes sport

* likes beer

* likes nudity (preferably female)

The danger of this type of labelling is that it doesn't allow for the myriad of small differences and personality traits that combine to make us the unique characters we are. Stereotypifying males is a dangerous, inaccurate and belittling practise that serves no purpose other than to portray the male sex as a drunken bunch of breast ogling yobbos who enjoy parking their butts in front of the TV for hours at a time watching re-runs of the 1981 Australia v India One Day International. It just makes me angry...

Oh! By the way, I'm John. I like:

* sport;

* beer; and

* nudity.

Pete ( Professor Pilsner )

Born the day after John, Peter spent his early childhood years playing in parks, riding bikes and drawing cartoons. A love of backyard cricket was nurtured by childhood schoolmate, John who, as year 8 captain allowed the budding off spinner to bowl in an interschool match. Having waited patiently for three overs for a ball to land either on the pitch or in the batsmans’ half of the pitch, John wisely decided to continue the friendship but not the sporting partnership. Peter hopes that John will show similar patience in home brewing.

The Bible tells the story of Paul’s epiphany on the road to Damascus, when a bright light blinded the young man, causing him to fall from his horse after which he awoke with a new sense of purpose. As a teenager, Peter discovered beer in much the same way. In good Christian tradition he regularly re-enacted the Bible story by allowing himself to be blind-ed, but getting straight back on the horse.

As he matured he realised that moderation was not an altogether bad way to go about drinking, a philosophy which , in later years, led to a new appreciation for beer and the sudden realisation that many years had been wasted by skolling VB from the can. Except for the momentous and life-changing event in January 1986 when the space shuttle tragically exploded after lift-off. It was on the Australia Day long weekend preceding this tragedy that Peter and John led a team of intrepid beer drinkers on a mission to assemble one years worth of VB cans into a two metre high statue of Ned Kelly. The local daily newspaper, The Sun, took photos and assured us that, owing to a slow news week, the picture would most likely grace the front page of Australia’s highest selling daily. Over night the shuttle went down, we were bumped to page 4 and eight
young men learned a valuable lesson; journalists rarely tell the truth, but beer never lies.

After many years in the Pub and restaurant business, Peter began planning and hosting Beer Dinners in restaurants so as to share the love of beer and food matching to a wider, appreciative audience. This also led to a personal quest, beginning at the end of 1999, to buy, drink and document in tasting notes, every beer available in Australia. He is happy to concede that this may be an ongoing and possibly never ending adventure.

Married with three girls he looks forward to seeing them all grow up and marry nice boys who like beer. Not his wife, obviously, as she has already done so.

WHO ARE THE BEER BLOKES ?

Credentials ? What credentials ?

Let me begin by telling you who the Beer Blokes are NOT.
We are not world renowned beer experts, nor are we beer journalists or writers for foodie mags.
We are not master brewers ( you probably guessed that much ) and we don’t work in the
marketing department of a large multinational brewery.
We don’t spend a lot of time in trendy bars drinking expensive drops from the bottle.
We haven’t got on the juice til’ we pass out.
For a while.

We are a couple of average blokes - hence the Beer Bloke moniker - so clever you’d think we had our own marketing department, huh? and we enjoy a beer.
Or two.

We enjoy the whole culture surrounding beer. The brewing history, the Australian colonial roots and the way in which it has crossed borders and civilisations, the fact that it’s been around longer than wine, the fact that it’s disciples are not tossers like some wine trainspotters are and the way that it unites and defines it’s drinkers at the same time while maintaining it‘s egalitarian philosophy - O.K., that’s the stuff I like about it, Dr Lager just likes drinking it. At this stage. He’ll learn to love it too, like I do, on a deeper level. I think he’s getting there.

P.S. In a future post I will elaborate on my thoughts above about beer writers, brewers and beer marketing types as well as opinions about the beer scene in Australia

BEER BLOKES - A USER’S GUIDE

It’s funny how things start out simply enough and before you can say “ Gee, that’s a nice beer. “, the whole thing has taken on a life of it’s own. So it seems to be the way with this site. “ We’ll just sort of track the progress of the whole homebrew thing and kinda let people know about the ins and outs. Sort of. “ is pretty much how we thought the thing would work.

Til’ one day Professor Pilsner says to Dr Lager, “ You know, we probably should show the gear we bought and where we decided to set it up, and why, and then the punters can see how easy it is to do and then we could have a bit that tells you what we did wrong and how we could fix it which would mean we’d have to have a bit where we post advice from the bloke at the homebrew joint ..” “ … and then I could put a link to the brewing log to set out all the technical stuff … “ says Dr Lager and suddenly we’re creating a website that Google will be paying a kerbillion dollars for.

So, to make navigating the Beer Bloke Interactive Experience easier for you, it has been decided that we will try to classify each post according to it’s subject. Therefore every post will end with the suffix “ BEER”

Wait, that might be confusing. I know, we will use the following code;

For the stuff that’s of interest to first time or “training wheel brewers “ - 101
For those who are already brewing at an intermediate level - INT
For those with a general interest in beer - GEN
For a bit about the history of beer - HIS
For tasting notes and comments - COMM
For those still looking for boobies - NICK OFF

All comments are welcome. At Beer Blokes we think these pages should be a reflection of beer at it’s very essence - egalitarian, non-judgemental, all encompassing, enjoyable and free for all.

Our role will be like that of the malted barley - to provide the platform, the building block, if you will, of the site. Your contributions will be like the hops - the flavouring that makes it different from the next; or the last; the flavour enhancer that lifts the content beyond the ordinary and even helps to preserve the content (so that I don’t have to sit here and type the lot). And the web itself will play the role of the yeast - that strange, omnipresent organism, multiplying, feeding off itself, digesting the sweet word(t) and transforming it to create a magical hyper-brew to be shared and savoured. No, dear reader, I have not been drinking the raw homebrew, I am merely illustrating the depths of fascination that beer holds for me and the passion that its’ study can evoke.

It is also an example of the rich and varied tastes that will be encountered in the wonderful world of Beer Blokes.

A bit like the wonderful world of beer, really.

Cheers

A VIRTUAL TOUR OF THE BEER BLOKES' BREWERY

Shown here is the basic starter kit which has all you need to brew your first 23 litre batch of beer.

For around the $ 150 mark we got a 30 ltr fermenter including a digital thermometor and liquid level indicator, a fully submersible heater, hydrometer (for measuring alcohol content) & flask, stirrer, brewer's sugar, bottle sanitiser and brush, 100 crown seals, sugar scoop (1/2 and full teaspoon ), bottle filler and a free standing bench capper. Included was a premium beer kit of our choice. We added the 2 ltr jug and a kilo of dry malt extract for an extra $ 10.

Finding the right spot to site your fermenter is the most difficult and important consideration. You need to be able to access it easily - particularly early on, as you will be checking on the little fella every hour, on the hour ! Take into account that for steady, reliable fermentation with an ale ( or top fermenting yeast ) you will need to maintain a temperature below 30 c. With the heater, you wont need to worry about the temp. dropping to dangerously low levels.

Also to consider is the day to day operation of your household and family - they may have difficulty sharing your enthusiasm and accepting that the family room is now the world centre for new beer discoveries and the future home to gold medals and commendations at the beer awards.

So find a spot that can be temperature controlled and accessible, that is out of the reach of children and the demented, and that is raised high enough so that the hydrometer flask can be filled easily. If the spot is also easily seen as a kind of centrepiece to all who visit your humble abode, then, BRAVO - all the better, I say. Shown above is a little used corner of a lounge room - no more than a coffee table area - and little used because there is now a 30ltr fermenter on a coffee table there.

This is pretty much all you will need to get brewing without destroying home and/or marriage, I think ( see future posts for updates ). A little knowledge, which can be found in books or, better still, from a home brew supply shop is essential and will see you on your way to your first brew.

You don't need to be a scientist or chemical engineer - though I know of a few of these who have come up with some pretty fine beers, both homebrew and commercial - just pay strict attention to sanitation and cleanliness and don't panic. I think. This, and a little luck and you should be able to brew something that is ...

" FAB'LUSSS !!! "

JUST WHEN YOU THINK YOU'VE GOT IT ALL WORKED OUT ...

Having recovered from the backslapping we'd given each other over the perfectly executed first fermentation, I sat down with a few good books and a very good beer only to discover that our hitchless first attempt at brewing may have been, in fact, NOT PERFECT AFTERALL ! (Cue Dramatic Music).

You see, as necessity is the mother of invention, so too is assumption the mother of all stuff-ups.
Being keen to convince ourselves that we were already beyond the qualifications necessary to become first time homebrewers, we confidently strode ahead to step two brewing - replace sugar with malt extract. As sugar tends to thin the brew and adds nothing in the way of flavour or character, malt extract adds both flavour and head retention and so should logically replace the sugar. Right ? Yeah but not ALL OF THE SUGAR !

We had decided to start brewing in a logical fashion - begin with a brew kit to get the feel for the equipment and stuff and then experiment with hop additions, wort boilings and maturation ( see, we know all the big words) as we became more adept. I had looked at the ingredients in the kit and ASSUMED that the 1 kg of malt extract was for the brew and the 1kg of brewers sugar was for priming at bottling time. In went all the malt, out went the over confidence. Some advice from my Brew Mentor at the home brew supply shop stopped us from becoming dejected - "It may take a little longer to ferment out and be a little lower in alcohol but you haven't broken it."

Two important lessons here ;

One, Take the time to understand the role of all the ingredients and,

Two, Make sure you get first hand advice from a home brew shop.

Having said all that, the brew is into day six of fermentation at a steady 22 degrees celsius and is already at about 2.5 % and smells just like beer - which is good - so we're guessing all is not lost.
Anyway, must prepare for bottling in a few days by sourcing empty bottles. Luckily I have an empty bottle kit in the fridge.

WELCOME

Welcome and thank you for visiting Beer Blokes.
Finding this site means that you probably fit into one of the following categories;

• You like to drink beer
• You like to brew beer
• You like to drink the beer you brew
• You like to drink beer that other people brew
• You like to learn about beer
• You like to compare beers
• You were trying to type "Boob Blokes" & got here by mistake

In any case, you are here now, so stay a while, have a laugh and maybe even learn something along the way.

Cheers,

Dr Lager & Professor Pilsner

Humble Beginnings

Much excitement was afoot as we prepared our virgin brew. It all went without a hitch and the waiting game has begun. See brew details