Dirty Granny

Here's a link to my latest article published in Australian Brews News.

Don't say that I don't make it easy for you, huh?

http://www.brewsnews.com.au/2011/07/granny-gets-a-hipster-replacement/

Cheers,
Prof Pilsner

Braggot finds new friends

The Courthouse Restaurant Beer Dinner

I have to admit that I was going to begin this post by telling you how many Beer Dinners I’ve hosted at The Courthouse Restaurant over the last 6 years but I can’t actually remember the total and I can’t find all the menus that I’ve kept which would have given me an idea at least.

Let’s say that I reckon it’s about twenty.

My point was going to be this; each dinner has featured at least five and sometimes six and one time seven beers and I have only used two beers more than once (Schofferhoffer Kristallweizen and Bridge Road Brewers Australian Ale) and rarely use more than one beer that we already have on the Beer List, so it’s fair to say that we have always tried to give value for money.

But, to be fair, I have generally had to cater mostly to a market that, while willing to try something ‘new’ is not one to really embrace anything ‘different’, and so particularly early on we had to use a more mainstream standard of beers to make sure we didn’t scare too many away. After all, you don’t win a Grand Prix on the first lap.

But, as the base of regular supporters has grown (I’ve done Beer Dinners early in the piece with a table of two and a table of four and, more recently for 56 people) I’ve found that I need to ensure that the maturing palates are not disadvantaged. The beer selection has consequently matured to include lesser known styles and unfamiliar brands including a growing emphasis on Australian Craft Beer.




But the last Beer Dinner I took things a step further. Not only were the guests introduced to the mysteries of Dark Lager in the steely form of Matilda Bay Dogbolter, we then crashed their palates with a very hoppy Anchor Liberty Ale and then completely changed their perceptions of what beer CAN be by finishing the night with a Bridge Road Brewers Megachile Pluto Braggot. As you can guess there were so many foreign words in that one that it took us ten minutes just to introduce the beer!

Braggot, that Ale/Mead hybrid so well loved of the Medieval Britons, was recently reintroduced to the craft beer scene by Bridge Road Brewers Nardia McGrath (amazingly and coincidentally at the same time by Red Duck Brewery as ‘Ugly Duckling’ at 14%!). The Bridge Road Braggot uses a rather generous 85kgs of Beechworth Red Stringy Bark honey in its 800litre batch and this gives it warmth and mellowness and a nice big hug with its 10% alcohol level.

And here’s the point of this whole post. The Braggot went down an absolute treat. The response was terrifically positive and, considering the guests had already had at least four beers and four courses by then, there was very little left undrunk. Beer, that is, not people. Although, as I recall, there were very few people left un-wobbly! But happily so.

So from here on in I need to readjust my thinking when I’m standing in the beer aisle choosing the beers to suit the dishes I have in mind. While I still have to make sure that the beers fit into the per-head budget I reckon I can throw in at least one – and maybe even two – beers that are outside the comfort zone for the average drinker.

I might even call it The Braggot Principle. Thanks, Nardia.

Cheers,
Prof Pilsner

Oh, and Ben? I might grab some B2 Bomber for the next Beer Dinner on October 15. I know you guys are still fighting over whose beer has the most positive review! You might even like to invite yourself down and I’ll make it a Bridge Road Beer Dinner...?

The Courthouse Restaurant overflows

About six years ago a bloke who loved his beer and loved sharing his love for beer sat down (over a beer) with a Chef who loved his beer and loved matching food with beer and discussed the idea of hosting regular Beer Dinners at the restaurant the Chef owned and the beer bloke managed for him.

After a few more beers they took a punt and marked the date in the restaurant’s diary. They put up some posters in the restaurant and started spruiking to anyone who’d sit still long enough to listen. After a few weeks they had heard plenty of people say; “Oh, that sounds ... interesting”, but the bookings book stayed blank. As the day approached they rang mates and regulars and eventually got the thing off the ground. A table of four and a table of two.

Fast forward to last Friday and the dining room of the very same restaurant was as full as fat lady’s sock with 42 people awaiting the commencement of the very same restaurant’s fifteenth regular Beer Dinner. They had beaten another dozen and a half folks who left their booking a little late to secure their tables as well as at least twenty more who had replied that they had other engagements on the same night. I know how THAT feels.

I guess that counts as success borne of persistence, experience and being too stubborn to admit defeat. It also points to a pretty healthy state of affairs in the Australian Craft Beer scene that more and more people are (A) aware of what a Beer Dinner entails and (B) willing to turn up to one and enjoy themselves. That more and more venues are also now taking a chance and hosting Beer Dinners is also a great sign for the future. Just saying, we blazed the trail, OK!

Special guest for the night was Matilda Bay Brewing Company Head Brewer, Scott Vincent, who led the assembled mass through five of the brewery’s finest drops, all matched to some sensational dishes from the Courthouse kitchen.





Beginning with the iconic Redback Original wheat beer and a similarly beer battered prawn with chermoula mayo, Scott told of his passion for brewing beer and, in particular, the joys of being the head brewer and thus brewing beers that you prefer to drink yourself. A short history of the brewery gave the guests an insight into the growth of the craft beer scene – without giving away the answers to the upcoming trivia quiz, planned by yours truly.

The next course, courtesy of one of our local suppliers of fine meats, was a German style Bratwurst matched with a German style Munich Helles, Big Helga. She turned out to be one of the most well received beers of the night as the Bratties were ... how should I put this? ... a little more spicy than the ones we normally get! There was a little trepidation throughout the room at the realisation that a Potato & Cauliflower Curry was listed as the second entree!

Fortunately, the curry was a flavour, rather than temperature-based dish and the Matilda Bay Bohemian Pilsner partnered delightfully with its sweet malt backbone, cleansing mouthfeel and taut bitterness. Just the thing to lead us into the main course, a mouth-wateringly sweet and rich lamb shoulder, slow cooked for six hours and accompanied by my MB personal favourite, Alpha Pale Ale.




I had promised in my introduction to the evening that Beer Dinners at The Courthouse Restaurant are designed to inform and educate – even delight – but also to challenge the drinker. Challenge the perceptions of what beer really IS, to challenge notions that ALL beer is pale gold and fizzy and the challenge palates to accept that FLAVOUR in beer is not a dirty word. Or an optional extra.

Alpha is probably the perfect beer to do all of the above and so it came to pass that many who had never tried it before said they would probably not have thought to seek out such a beer but were glad they had tried it. Others were kicking themselves that they had taken this long to discover it. For others it was a case of “I understand why you came up with Fat Yak”.

I always prefix my Beer Dinners by encouraging discussion. I point out that I don’t brew any of the beers on the menu and therefore I won’t be offended if someone doesn’t like one of the beers. Obviously, there was a need to qualify that statement when you have a brewer of the calibre of Scott present and, as predicted, somewhere between Beer Number Three and Beer Number Four (not counting the two or three ‘earlies’ consumed) plenty of opinion was offered. Fortunately, much was positive and the appreciation for the combinations of beer flavours and food characteristics made up for any lack of love for a particular beer style.

To finish, the now well-warmed crowd was treated to a rich chocolate mud cake with Carla’s dreamy coffee sauce and a homemade tuille with a decorative “MB” piped onto it. It was paired with Matilda Bay’s limited release coffee-infused dark ale, Longshot. The retelling of the meeting between Scott and gourmet coffee roaster Toby Smith from Toby’s Estate had the guests realising that beers can sometimes come from the most unlikely sources and that sometimes a true story can be better than anything a marketing man can up with.

If the previous beers hadn’t challenged perceptions, then this one certainly did.



I’m glad that early setbacks with hosting Beer Dinners didn’t deter us from ‘fighting the good fight’ and persisting with the concept. I’m glad that people like Scott and Neil from Matilda Bay are happy to ‘invite’ themselves over when I call them for some tasting notes. I’m especially glad when I look around a crowded dining room and see so many familiar faces mixed with new faces, all of whom have taken a punt, like we did, to try something different and to allow oneself to enjoy it.

Just kinda makes it all worth the effort, really.

Cheers,
Prof Pilsner

Launching a Longshot

If you’ve ever wondered how a brewery gets its beers “known” to the end consumer – look away now. I have no answers to that one.

I’m not going to shed any light on how the marketing types attached to the brewer dream up ways of pushing product or image-branding or market penetration or whatever other terms are used to describe what I think we used to call ‘advertising’.

But that’s not to say I’m not fascinated by the journey of a beer from an idea to an item – that can be a pretty cool process. Earlier this year I found myself in the middle of one beer’s journey from concept to consumer and was more than happy to float along in the moment rather than worry about how it all worked.

Longshot is a coffee infused dark beer released earlier this month by Matilda Bay Brewing Company in collaboration with gourmet coffee roaster Toby Smith from Toby’s Estate. Over a quiet ale or three in Darlinghurst’s Local Taphouse the conversation turned from “isn’t it interesting how coffee beans and barley malt are roasted in a similar way?” to “let’s make some beer and work out a way to get coffee into it!”

What they’ve achieved is a well crafted and rewarding dark ale that tastes a treat on its own (I was fortunate to receive an invitation to visit the garage and sample the beer with Toby and Head Brewer Scott Vincent before the coffee was added) and when combined with a cold-extracted coffee made from Ethiopian Yirgacheffe beans creates a nicely balanced, easy drinking but very rewarding ale.

There’s bitterness in there and your palate will have trouble discerning whether this is derived from the coffee or the hops, so seamless is the meshing of beer and bean. It looks good in the glass, it has nice aromas on the nose and, if you close your eyes and let your mind wander as you sip, you could feel yourself sitting in a big comfy chair by a gently crackling log fire. It’s nice that a beer can do that.

A seasonal release, Longshot will be limited to a run of 5,000 slabs and is available only at Dan Murphy’s. This element of the marketing strategy is the one which is sure to divide opinion. On the one hand it can be argued that ‘them who truly support the craft beer industry’ have been ‘locked-out’ or, on the other hand, we can be hopeful that a few more ‘average Joes’ will be exposed to beers of a more challenging nature for the fact that they are on sale in the land of bland beer.

While I can see the validity of both points of view, I’m happy in the knowledge that good craft beer is more readily available to those ready to take a chance on a new beer – afterall, if I look at where I was twelve years ago, I found my way to more interesting beers through places like Dan’s. I probably wouldn’t have felt as much ‘at home’ in a specialty beer shop as I do today. And, from a commercial viewpoint, I’m sure that the bean-counters were more than comfortable with Dan Murphy’s offer to effectively fund the experiment by guaranteeing to buy the end product.






Back to the launch on Thursday last, it was a treat to be part of an intimate setting for a dozen like-minded souls, hosted by Liquid Ideas and Toby Smith and Scott Vincent. A casual sit-down with Matilda Bay beers matched to respected Melbourne Chef Andrew Blake’s inspired canapés, served in an informal ‘interactive’ dinner party format – very nice! Good beer-blogger company, good food and good beer – did I miss anything? Think not!

There has been plenty written about the beer in the blogosphere and wether it ‘ticks the boxes’ or not – is it ‘coffee enough’, is it too exclusive, is it beery enough, does it compare to coffee flavoured stouts; my advice? Buy a four pack, pour them one-by-one into a nice glass and decide for yourself.

Cheers,
Prof Pilsner

Matilda Bay percolates a Longshot

I’m one of those blokes fortunate enough to be present at the birth of each of his three children. Actually, it’s not as difficult as some people make out. I don’t have any issues with the inconvenience, the stress and all that pain – as long as it’s not happening to me. But it is an experience I’ll never forget, and one which I thought I’d never repeat.

That was until an invitation arrived from ‘The Garage’, Matilda Bay’s brewing home and source of new and interesting beers and something of a ‘beer birthing suite’ when it comes to the special things in the beer world. From this unassuming building in Melbourne’s outer south east we have seen all sorts of weird and wonderful creatures emerge - from a Barking Duck and Flamingo, a Dogbolter and a Fat Yak to a Redback and a Beez Neez. Couple these with Grayston and Big Helga and you could be forgiven for thinking that that this brewery was, in fact, some sort of mad scientist’s lair.

What I was here to see was the ‘birth’ of Matildas Bay’s latest brew, a coffee-infused dark ale called Longshot. Created from an idea shared over a beer (or maybe two) from the imaginations of Matilda Bay Head Brewer, Scott Vincent and gourmet coffee roaster Toby Smith from Toby’s estate, Longshot is a dark and warm and made for a cold winter’s evening.






The beer itself had already been brewed, keeping strict parameters in mind – this one needed to stand up against the coffee content without masking the subtleties of the roast – and so this day was all about tasting and smelling the coffee blend. An Ethiopian Yirgacheffe was chosen to partner the dark ale with the hope that the lemony aromas would complement the roasty spicy nature of the beer.

We spent the next hour or so ‘cupping’ with Toby and, while this might sound like a new SBS reality show, it actually involves pouring water over the ground coffee in a cup until a crust forms. The crust is gently spooned away and the aroma taken in. I’ve been making coffees in restaurants for a while and just ten minutes with Toby gave me a whole new appreciation for the dark bean. Having tasted the beer from the bright tank earlier, we were now getting a feel for just how the coffee would work alongside it.




Having seen the ‘birth’ of a new beer, I can’t wait to see – and taste – the finished product. Some very nice food pairings are coming to mind and, who knows, it might even be a nice ‘finisher’ for those who don’t drink coffee after dinner!

Cheers,
Prof. Pilsner

Longshot will be Matilda Bay’s winter seasonal and will be confined to a fairly limited run. You will find it only in Dan Murphy’s outlets from July 1. It won’t be for everyone and it certainly won’t be a ‘knock-it-down-fast’ session beer but you’ll probably want to get into it quickly. Maybe a nice cup of coffee to get you going before you hit the bottl’o!

Matilda Bay Brewing Company
Toby's Estate

Big Helga and the Professor

As a Beer Bloke I’m often asked for an opinion on a beer. Usually it’s a guest in the restaurant or a mate at a function or even that little old lady in Dan Murphy’s who was happy to ask a stranger (I was also the only other person in the craft/imported beer section at the time) for some advice. And while I’ll never just bag a beer – I might strongly suggest an alternative – I always try to say nice things.

When there is an added incentive to say nice things – say, the offer of a very nice, badged beer glass and some free product, well, you know...you know how it is... ?
It doesn’t make any difference.

When I was approached to accept a free gift and some free pots in return for promoting a new beer I said I would be glad to help out. Anything to get more people drinking better beer and all that. I added that I didn’t really do ‘beer reviews’ and I wouldn’t say anything that I wasn’t prepared to stand behind.

At this point I wasn’t told which beer I would be spruiking, although; “A large boutique brewery client that wants to send you a 6-pack of their new, unreleased publicly Munich style Lager/Pale Ale” did lead me to suspect that a rather tall German lady might be arriving shortly in liquid form.* And don’t we all want that!

Plenty has been written and spoken about Big Helga in the beer blogosphere recently and I have to admit that I already had a soft spot for Matildas Bays’ latest garage-engineered brew, having sampled it with the brewers at the Microbrewery Showcase back in November.

She is a lovely light-golden lager who, while maybe not strictly speaking an Oktoberfest lager, certainly has the required ID that would see her easily admitted to the beer tent in Munich. There is a bit of debate about as to whether or not it has too much hop flavour to be a true Helles or not enough to be an Oktoberfest beer, but either way, she is refreshing and rewarding.

And, as it is with all good beers, it has some stories attached. I can promise you, from years of suggesting and then pouring various beers for guests, the easiest ones to sell are the ones with a story. Big Helga’s ‘heritage’ may be straight from the first chapter of the Marketing For Dummies Manual and you can take that for what it’s worth, but it has a very credible back-story concerning the lass representing the ‘original’ Big Helga at the product launch back in October.

MB Executive, Jamie Fox had found it impossible to find a model with the suitable height to carry the role until a late night tram ride revealed a possible candidate for the future Helga. Apparently half-tanked and inarguably half her size, he made the last-second decision to jump off the tram when she did and accost her in the street. The old yarn about the girl-on-the-tram and the ‘modelling agent’ could easily have played out with the pint-sized stalker gazing at the night sky from the gutter – he didn’t even have a business card on him to back his sketchy claims! Fortunately she took the chance and now Big Helga lives!

For those beerily-minded folk reading this Big Helga’s ‘stats’ are as follows;
She sits around the 20 IBU mark, giving her roughly the same bitterness as a VB or Toohey’s New and she weighs in at 4.7% ABV. For the really beer-nerdy among you, her ‘complexion’ is 12 EBC making her just a little more golden than a Helles might ordinarily be. She is bittered and flavoured with a NZ Pacifica hop in both kettle and dry form producing plenty of flavour without too much bitterness. Just what you want in a good woman.

But, to finish, she IS a little different. Brewer Scott Vincent describes her as a good lawnmower beer for the session drinkers but a beer which rewards the Thinkin’ Drinker with some inner complexity. Some tropical fruit aromas and a dry resonance makes her very palatable and a good partner to the increasingly popular older brother, Fat Yak.

Did I make you want to go out and get yourself some? Because I could do with some promo stuff and I gotta earn it first!

Cheers
Prof. Pilsner

*At the time of posting, she still hasn’t arrived in the promised six-pack form.

P.S. The pic I found on Matt's blog probably doesn't show just how tall Big Helga is - Matt is a pretty tall streak himself. Is it too late to ask if I can use your pic, Matt?

MovemBeer Update

For those following the Beer Blokes Melbourne Cup syndicate, a review.

We did our dough.

However, Dr Lager and I managed to trifecta the Cup Day Sweep. And he was in Sydney!

The Movembeer beer front was far more successful than the syndicate. A couple of MOuntain Goat Pale Ales, a couple of James Squire Pilsners (Pilsner being my MOniker!) and a couple of Fat Yak Pale Ales (Matilda Bay's MOst popular beer at the moment!)

I realsie that a couple of those may be a tad tenuous, but that's the way we roll in Movembeer here at Beer Blokes - No Rules for a good cause!!

Cheers
Prof Pilsner

But wait there’s more...

I had written the preceding piece (or the one following piece if you haven’t read it yet) at the end of last week and set it to post over the weekend. This was partly to make up for being a bit slack the last month and because I knew I was in for a busy weekend.

Well, you wouldn’t believe it, but I was ‘talkin’ beers’ with some guests as I delivered their initial drink order – A little Creatures Pale Ale and a Cascade Light, for those playing at home – when I started talking up Matilda Bay Brewery in general and Fat Yak Pale Ale specifically when two of the group mentioned they knew one of the brewers.

“Not Neil Whittorn, is it?” I asked.
“Yes. It is! How do you know Neil?” they asked excitedly.
“Beer.” I offered matter of factly.

What a coincidence. Again. I’m genuinely talking up a beer, again, only to find that I’m ‘singing to the choir’, so to speak. Coincidence, or Beer Karma? Again. What are the chances of talking about a particular beer, only to find that you’re talking to the brewer’s sister-in-law?

And if you’re reading this, Neil, the photo that the group asked me to pose for shows a tray of Fat Yaks and Beez Neez but only Beez Neez glasses. I only had Beez Neez glasses. I don’t have any Matilda Bay or Fat Yak glasses. Yet.

Hmmmmm.

Cheers
Prof. Pilsner