Australia’s Hottest 100

Beers, of course.




Walk into any pub in any town of any state in this wide brown land and you’ll have no trouble striking up a conversation about beer. Dig a little deeper and you’ll soon have created a passionate debate about which beer is ‘best’.

As stated in these pages so many times before, beer is so subjective a topic. You’ve seen time and time again that I have stood by the motto that ‘there is no such thing as a bad beer, just one you wouldn’t order again’ and I’m happy to stick by that. But that’s not to say you can’t have fun arguing which brew is ‘better’ than another.




The Local Taphouse is again running its on-line poll to find and rank the top 100 craft beers available in Australia in 2010. This has been hugely successful over the past two years and has grown in popularity each year. This poll is not about the most commercially successful beers but the favourites of the punters – the beer nerds and brew geeks as well as the passionate, the craft beer lovers and those who have just recently discovered craft beer and all its charms. In short, anyone and everyone with an opinion.


"Big Ranga!" "Fat Yak!"

Voters just need to access the poll page through The Local Taphouse website/blog and nominate their personal top 5. From these a Top 100 will be ranked and listed on Australia Day 2011. There are no hard and fast rules except that beers must be chosen from product available this year from any brewer other than the two Big Houses (Fosters and Lion Nathan) in either draught or bottled form. The hard part for most will be choosing only five beers.

You can vote anytime from now until January 16th 2011 and all voters will go into the draw to win a case of the top 5 beers selected.

I’ve already voted. And I’ve already had a re-think on my top 5. That’s just how subjective beer really is, I guess.

To vote, click here

Cheers
Prof Pilsner

The Taphouse Top 100

The Local Taphouse is holding its third SpecTAPular* over the Australia Day long weekend in January and to celebrate all things Australian – well all things Australian and beer – Steve and Justin and the crew have launched a competition, a quest, if you will, to find the 100 best Australian beers.

Now, as I have discussed here often, attempting to define or select or nominate or justify a ‘best’ of anything is difficult enough in itself. To attempt to choose beers from all those available is a step above that! To then rank those beers is an even harder task and fraught with the dangers of alienating the fans of one or disappointing the defenders of another. It’s the reason I steer clear of doing reviews here. Having said that, if you can’t have fun debating which is the ‘best’ beer then surely you are taking this whole beer thing far too seriously. I’m in!

Just jump on the link at the end of this post and you can join in the fun. And the fun for me was threefold. Each entrant has to nominate a top ten of Australian beers for 2008 so first I had to actually consider which beers would be left out, let alone included. Then, once I had a shortlist (of about thirty beers!) I had to pare this down, one by one, until I had my ten.

Then I had to decide which would top my list and which one was more favoured over another and then which one would go below that and then which of the ones left would be better or ‘less’ better than the others and then I had a beer and then I changed the order of the top three and then I had another beer and then I changed it back again and then I felt tired and had a rest. It’s more fun that it sounds and, in the end, opinions are not right or wrong they’re just opinions and I had fun chosing mine and I will have more fun defending my choices.

Actually, I may have some trouble remembering them because the survey doesn’t give you a copy of your sent list and I lost the bit of paper that I scribbled my notes on. Now I’ll have to start again. I’m off to buy some more beer. You can submit your list anytime before January 20. The Local Taphouse is giving away slabs of the top five beers as door prizes.

Cheers,
Prof. Pilsner

http://thelocaltaphouse.blogspot.com/2008/10/hottest-100-aussie-brews-online-poll.html

*SpecTAPular is a weekend feast of tap beers and a great chance to try some styles or brands that you may have steered away from in the past. For a small entry fee you are provided with a small tasting glass and a smorgasbord of tempting ales, lagers, wheat beers and others to, well, tempt you. With. You know what I mean. Glass, beer, tokens, try. Smile. I’ll get some more details closer to the day and for anyone who will be in Melbourne that weekend, I’ll race you to twenty!