Beer

Serendipity – the happy accident – author of so very many of the advances or discoveries we think of as our own when perhaps, at first, we were little more than fortunate bystanders to circumstance.

At least 5,000 years ago a quite extraordinary chain of happy accidents involving grain, water, natural yeasts and glorious warm sunlight combined to produce a thick and pungent porridge in some village storage vessel in the kingdom of Sumer. Rather than tip the contents on the ground in dismay at the waste of so much harvest labour and in resignation to an empty stomach deprived of that day’s bread, some brave soul scraped aside the foamy scum and scooped a handful to their mouth. To their great surprise it had a pleasant toasty sweetness and a strange warming sensation on their tongue. Several greedy mouthfuls later, their hunger satisfied and with a lightheaded glee, they shared their fortune with others in the small community and the drink to become known as beer was born.

My partner and I spent several happy hours last Saturday at The 7^th Annual Australian Beer Festival held at The Rocks in Sydney. I’m pleased we arrived as early in the day as we did (12:30pm) and I suspect if the festival continues its increasing popularity into future, they will need to close a greater portion of the streets surrounding the Australian Hotel to accommodate the large and enthusiastic crowd. With offerings this year from 24 Australian brewers, a good third of the space seemed to be occupied by the display stalls, so by the time we left a few hours later it was a long, slow squeeze past the band and through the jostle of noisy participants to find the exit. Additionally, there was an almost complete absence of seating and inadequate toilet facilities which, combined with the sporadic presence of smokers, made it difficult to actually ‘enjoy’ the beers with any degree of leisure.

The beers themselves however were certainly, on the whole, most enjoyable. The entry price of $15 got you a tasting glass and ten tickets, with additional tickets available at 10 for $10. With each ‘taste’ being about 65ml, it adds up to what you’d expect to pay for a pint of craft beer at the pub anyway – but with the bonus of getting to sample a wide variety of brews without making yourself either poor or sozzled! Besides which, we cheated (as did others we observed) by sharing our glasses to double our sample count to 20. Most of the brewers had more than one style on tap so there could well have been close to 100 alternatives to choose between. Therefore we elected from the outset to preference brewers we’d not seen at our local suppliers or styles with which we were unfamiliar.

A wide spectrum was on offer from a bock, through lagers and pilseners, wheat beers, golden ales and IPAs, to the darker amber or brown ales and porters – though I don’t recall seeing a stout. Twenty beers with different aroma and flavour characteristics are a lot to keep in your head without confusion and I wanted this experience to inform future purchases, so I made notes from the outset in my ever-present notebook (a real one – made of paper). My partner and I would compare impressions and give independent scores out of 10, whilst I attempted with my limited experience or descriptive vocabulary to write something that would help me recall the positives when it came time to select a six-pack at the local bottle shop. We were perhaps being harsh in our judgements since we scored nothing over 8, despite there being some very good beers to savour, whilst we did both score a 2 and even a 1!

The standouts? For us the top three (with an 8/10 from both of us) were:

Endeavour True Vintage Beer – Reserve Pale Ale (Their Reserve Amber Ale is superb too!)

Murray’s Craft Brewing Co – Punch & Judy English-ish Special Bitter (Beware their Grand Cru hybrid Belgian Trippel – it really does pack a punch at 8.8%!)

Balmian Brewing Company – Bock (Clean, dry, toasty, chocolate & cool – brilliant.)

Bottom of the pile? There was one offering from a company that may perhaps need to spend less time surfing and more time refining their brewing technique. It tasted dirty and watery and could only loosely be described as beer. I poured mine out and we both scored it a 1/10. But keep trying guys – you can only improve from here!

Funnily enough, after all that, the thing we both most desired was to sit somewhere quiet and enjoy a nice cool glass of good beer. So we retired to Harts Pub, just around the corner and home of Rocks Brewing, where we had a half-pint each of their pale ale and red ale to share and compare. (The pick of the two for me is the pale.) Unfortunately, like so many pubs, clubs and bars, it was almost impossible to find a seat without a TV screen beaming some idiot game of football at you non-stop, so we decided to move on yet again. We knew it was just a short walk to Sydney’s oldest pub and Australia’s oldest pub brewery – The Lord Nelson. This time we found some comfortable seats in a quiet corner and slowly savoured another half-pint each. I was going to have a Nelson’s Blood (Porter – 4.9%) but they’d just run dry. Bugger! So we went for a Victory Bitter (British Pale Ale – 5.0%) and an Old Admiral (Old Ale – 6.1%) to wash down some sea-salt crisps. Just perfect and a great finish to the afternoon – just a nice walk back to the bus-stop and home in time for dinner … and a nice beer.

So, immerse yourself in the sensible enjoyment of finely crafted amber brews. Relax, chat, savour the aromas and flavours of roasted malts and delicate floral hops, soak up the atmosphere and always keep at least a small part of your senses alert for happy accidents – you just never know what they may lead to.