Friends, I like beer.
I realise this may come as a shock to you, so I'll slow it down and go through my position carefully on this. I like all beer, with the possible exception of Hoegaarden, which is named for the Flemish Dutch for 'compost heap of the prostitute' and tastes like Sunlight washing up liquid blended with the stuff they culture lab strains of MRSA in, after the fact. Aside from the Garden of the Ho, I like all beer. I have as much time for heavy, pungent, expressive Belgian trappist ales like Duval or Chimay as I have for the cheapest, nastiest student swill imaginable. In fact, get me in the discount aisle of Dan's and you have yourself a very happy camper. I humbly consider myself the nation's, if not Australasia's foremost expert on the topic of cheap-arse beer. From bargain basement Dutch lagers and Czech pilsners parallel-imported by the pallet, to supermarket home-brand brews which turn out to be actually Tasphobian goodness by stealth - you name it, I've bought it, drank it, eaten pizza on it, gone out on it, failed to pick up on it, gone back home on it and had a massive fuck-off hangover on it. Case in point the beer to my immediate left, in the festy old Brooms Head stubbie cooler (reportage AS IT HAPPENS!!!) - Lion Red, brewed by Lion Nathan in Auckland; not a good beer, but a cheap one ($12.99 a dozen at Henry's).
I blame genetics. I don't think the old man has ever willingly spent more than thirty bucks on a carton of piss. Maybe at Christmas. I have a suspicion it was his dastardly plan to outwit any teenage drinking plans I might have had: stocking the fridge with Reschs Real, or if things looked particularly grim on the budgetary front, Tooheys Red, which I believe has been withdrawn from the market in most Australian states on the basis of severe neurotoxic side effects. Even Vioxx killed fewer punters in clinical trials. So, it would appear, I inherited the cheap-arse pisshead gene from my father, along with a broad sense of humour, slightly dodgy eyesight and a 1997 Mitsubishi Magna (the successor to the Brown Hornet), nicknamed Elvis. Lived in 'Vegas, big arse, had a lot of hits. Turning circle on that thing was a bit of a bastard. Or at least that was my excuse for smearing the corners of it against a range of inanimate objects.
So what have I learned from my experiences with cheap-arse beer that I can pass on to you, the humble (most of you very bloody humble) reader of the World of Bollocks?
The following.
1. Never trust a beer with 'Red' in the name. It is a cast-iron, Teflon-coated, Kevlar-reinforced guarantee of absolute fucking awfulness. Same with 'Blue'. Or 'Gold'. Any colour at all, really, Including 'Blonde'. Especially 'Blonde'.
2. Tasman Bitter is not the same between Australia and NZ. In NZ it is Lion Red in a home-brand box and sold in supermarkets, meaning it is the epitome of both cheap and nasty, and as such will soon feature on the cover of NW mag along side Tittney Beers and Amy Methhouse. Even Lion Nathan themselves only recommend its use in combating very hot curries. In Australia however it is Boag's Original in a home-brand box and sold in Liquorland, meaning it is a pretty handy beverage in a brown paper bag for $30 a carton.
3. Throwdowns (200mL stubbies) are a false economy. They're no cheaper per unit volume, they make you look like a miserable unshagworthy tightwad at parties, and you know that inverse relationship many reckon exists between car size and knob size? Ain't inverse for beer. Sorry.
4. If all else fails, cans. Put 'em in a stubbie holder and pretend you're at Indy or the BDO.
5. Like all truly cheap drunks, I have of course dabbled in the black arts of home brew, although given this was in collaboration with the great Dr Craigos, another Man of Science (the Men of League weren't recruiting that year, just as well as we would have stunk up their calendar like, well, pasty drunks in a nude calendar), it soon developed from 'How cheap can we make this' to 'What the fuck can we put in this to make it drinkable' to 'How fucking complicated and arcane can we make this and still have chicks talk to us at parties'. Via home brew, you can either make very cheap beer very badly, or very good beer for about as much as you would have paid to get Jameses Boag or Squire or some other gentleman of that ilk to make it for you, once your labour costs are factored in. It's fun, it's educational, but it is not, repeat NOT, a game for fewer than two players. Bottling solo is a fucking bastard of a job. And don't cheat by using old Coke bottles like our mate Chrisso. They leak more gas than Lucky Grills and give less satisfying head than [name deleted on legal advice].
Which brings us to possibly the greatest invention in the history of beer, the 5L party keg. More portable and easier to sort than a real keg, but delivering more of that foamy draught beer lovin' than carbonated pasteurised bottles can dream of providing. Five litres ain't just the ideal displacement for V8 Supercars, as was proven across several summers earlier in the decade when 5L kegs were more commonplace in south-east Qld than jacaranda trees and bent coppers. Being scientists, we obviously sought to collect and categorise as many diverse species of 5L beer kegs as we could, with the result that on top of Dr Craigos' gargantuan beer fridge were stored characteristic specimens of Grolsch, Bitburger, the cheap 'n' cheerful Tooheys Newbies that did for me on Straya Day, Carlsberg, Heineken, Becks, and far less successfully, XXXX Gold. As you might expect the Euros were the ones which gained the most for being poured off tap (or down thin plastic straw at least) - though if you broke the spindly bit of plastic which underpinned the entire hydraulic integrity of the Heineken keg, you were more utterly and irrevocably fucked than a fucked thing on a fucked day, as my boss would put it. Drs Craigos and Yobbo also found that the international lager skank of some of the Euros, particularly Grolsch, was a bit too much for the home-brand palates of the cadre of engineering, IT and science students which rolled with our crew at Chateau Dodgy. And we had to teach one or two peeps how to pour a beer, which was an education in misspent youth, and how some people could have used one.
I married my wife because of a five litre keg. Fact. Well, actually it was two five litre kegs ($42 worth from the bottle-o across the street). It was the evening of the UQ Big Gig 2002 - Eskimo Joe and You Am I, since you asked, supported by George (was there ever a UQ Big Gig that wasn't supported by George? Or Butterfingers?) Anyway, we were tuning up for the show with a couple of quiets (followed by a long series of louds) on the balcony at Chateau Dodgy v2.0 when it suddenly dawned on me that I was supposed to be going out on a date, a first date, in about forty minutes, with the superhot 27 year old blonde chick from my lab. Sorry, the superhot 27 year old blonde postdoc from my lab. And I was quite a reasonable way along the pathway to being quite fucking slashed thanks v. much. This precipitated, I am told by people with smug grins and clearer recollections than I, much blind panic, brewing of coffee and generalised running-about-like-chook-with-head-cut-off.
"You gonna be alright, you fucken yobbo?" said one of our number, probably Moff.
I paused, reflecting on my prospects for the eve.
"Yeah, I'll be all right," I said. "I'm fuckin' suave, ay."
And went on to point out that it was 'Doctor' Yobbo to him. Hence creating two immortal items of folklore with one drunken pronouncement, and giving groomsman Moff some material to suggest for my brother's best man speech at the wedding.
Of course, as you'll probably have guessed, I was fucking suave. Ay. Though I'd be prepared to credit the great Timmy Rogers with an assist for providing the soundtrack.
Quite what has happened to the 5L keg in the interim eludes me. From their near ubiquitousness over the summers of 2001 and '02, sightings of these brightly-plumaged creations of wonder have fallen to record low levels, and new species have yet to emerge to replace those which have disappeared from their natural ecological niche, the Grape. (Fucking BWS. Stack 'em deep, sell 'em cheap, and fuck anyone who might want something a bit different in their beer fridge.) Perhaps we should just be thankful to have been fortunate enough to live through the Golden Age of Five Litre Keggage and to bask in the glory, wonderment and joy that was this glorious, all-too-brief moment in our history.
Goodbye, five litre keg. You were too beautiful for this world.
The Doctor is OUT to see if there's anything other than Lion Red in the fridge.
11 comments:
"Perhaps we should just be thankful to have been fortunate enough to live through the Golden Age of Five Litre Keggage and to bask in the glory, wonderment and joy that was this glorious, all-too-brief moment in our history.
Goodbye, five litre keg. You were too beautiful for this world."
Genius.
However, reports of its extinction may be premature - I think I saw a special on mini-kegs of that Jap beer Asahi last time I was at the bottle-o. I'll will vigorously pursue this on the weekend
Good Lord....I once reviewed Asahi, and compared it to paint. 'Nuff said.
The 5L mini-kegs are still around here in the US (I live near Atlanta), but almost always Bitburger, DAB, or Heineken. Having had those many times, the novelty has worn off, and I don't want to take up more room in my beer fridge (which is kept in the garage).
Not all reds are nasty....one or two of the earlier reds that hit the market here in the US were nice and caramelly sweet, and there's a good microbrewed one in Canada, but the ones that followed were trying to capitalize on a fad, and they tasted like chemicals.
And while I now choose quality over quantity, I do miss the days in college when I'd drink my weight in Old Style.
Lermy, I'd be all over that Asahi. Definitely rate it - actually to be fair I rate pretty much all beer, in its proper context. It's just that some contexts are more elusive than others. The context in which Bud Light or Monteiths Radler works, I'm yet to discover. Asahi is as dry as buggery so it makes a lot of sense with seafood. Or if you're backing up after a couple of nights on the turps and need to get back on the horse. The 5L keg is still about the place - Heineken have been promoting one with their Champions League sponsorship which has an even more bizarre and over-engineered tap mechanism than before - but the days of $21 kegs of New are long gone I fear.
Steve, DAB was the other Euro I was trying to remember, thanks for bringing that up. I think one of the boys brought it up anyway, it was a bit too Euro for him. I actually didn't intend to slander all of the Irish 'Red' beers (which neither Lion nor Tooheys Red are, they're just nasty inferior-grade lagers) along with the crap - in Australasia, 'Red' is usually a big-brewery euphemism for 'cheapest beer in the range' - and have no beef at all with Kilkenny, Caffreys or even NZ's Monteiths Celtic Red. None of which come in 5L kegs sadly.
Had a 5lt keg xmas day, it was only Heineken though.
It's difficult to fill your glass from it when it is sitting in a full esky. Ended up having to get the wife to run backwards and forwards doing it for me.
The New is definitely nowhere to be found. Boozle.com is no help.
Heinken is still available and I look forward to Lermy's Asahi recon work.
I too have supped at the cheap beer table both through necessity and at times, through sheer bloody-mindedness. It was also a counter to those who'd bring a six pack of Czech Pilsener to a party and drink a case of Tooheys and take their two remaining imports home as 'roadies'. I agree totally on the Red. I've mentioned this before but a wise man once told me "there's only two types of beer - good and better".
Great post.
Naut, this sounds like you have sussed the ideal solution already. What we ended up doing after extensive trial and error and more trial was putting the kegs on a fairly high shelf of the fridge (she was a monster of a thing) that you could slide out a touch after opening the door so as to be able to get a glass under there. Problem was that often the kegs would get incontinent with their increasing age - once the seals were compromised to let pressure release and beer flow, they tended to have trouble stopping flow completely - so we used some sort of tray (probably stolen from Maccas) under the fridge to collect spillage. Eskys were problematic unless you kept the thing in the ice right up to the point you yanked it out onto a table to pour with, as we did at BBQs. By that stage in the day we were all too slashed to give much of a shit whether it shook the beer up or not.
Agreed Therbs - a philosopher mate of mine once said, 'Beer is like sex - it's never bad'. Actually he said the same thing about pizza too which was a bit of a worry, mental images of sex being greasy, dripping with oil, and topped with cheese.
You know, some beers are like having sex in a canoe....fucking close to water. Aside from one or two standbys, which we call "Lawnmower Beers," I stay away. I found that on hot days, the best beer is a German Hefeweizen.....Franziskaner, Paulaner, etc. They export heavily, so I'd be surprised if they weren't found in Australasia.
And I didn't realize "red" was a category indicating quality, like whisky makers often use. I'm just used to the red beers brewed in the US which tried to capitalize on the Irish Red style and ended up sucking balls.
Lovely work, a few points. I don't bottle anymore I use kegs (nineteen liters), and blonde beers are female beers. Blond beers are male beers (I think blond/e may be the only word in English that varies spelling with sex).
Yeah - there are others but they're mostly nicked from the French eg fiance/fiancee. We didn't have the capital to invest in a full draught storage and pouring system for the homebrew being cheap arsed students, but we did think about getting an old fridge and setting something up.
Alas and alack I skipped the keggage rite of passage. Always served Resches Real to old men and Tooheys red and VB are koala piss... Oops ( did I really type that?? ) I thinkw e know what Dr Y wants for Christmas - a 5 litre keg fileld with something cheap...
Post a Comment