Welcome to Good Beer Week

Happy Good Beer Week!

Here in Melbourne we are having the first Good Beer Week celebration as Victoria is the craft beer state of Australia. I have today off work to get things off to a bang, and also hoping that through the week I keep to the beer theme when not at beer events, as I am working on some entries in an amateur beer writing contest.

Ok, as for today, I will be having lunch at Mrs Parma's where Moon Dog Brewery have a Coconut and Pineapple Brown Ale to go with a Hawaiian Parma. I also have my Hawaiian Beer shirt to wear, which I hear will get me the beer for cheaper. Then at 5pm I head to Beer Delux for ACME and North Coast Brewery Launch in Australia. I have actually visited the North Coast Brewery in the U.S., so hoping to find out how they got all their beers so creamy when I tried them there. Then I make my way to the Terminus in Clifton Hill for a beer and food pairing dinner. Thanks to Jimmy for setting that one up for me.

On Tuesday I am booked in with Team Harrod (Harriet and Jarrod) for a chocolate and beer tasting with Ian Morgan from Holgate Brewery at Sabroso. I am probably looking forward to this most because of my sweet tooth and to possibly (please please please!) taste the Empress again. Team Harrod, we shall be discussing our IPA contest. Stass and I are onto what we want to do.

Wednesday is the guest beers at Mountain Goat Brewery, where I finally get to try some Wig and Pen beer, something I have waited for a while to do.

Thursday is the NZ brewers tasting at Purvis Beer, which is going to have the brewers and something like 20 beers from Epic, 8 Wired and Tuatara.

Friday then becomes another tasting at Purvis with 18 beers that have either won gold previously or look they they will have a crack at getting gold this year. Thanks to Damien at Purvis for getting me on this event after I 'helped' out serving beers at a recent free beer tasting Friday I had there.

On Saturday, Stass and I will look to keg the the dark ale we put in the fermenter last Saturday, hit the System Wars event at Grain and Grape (so we can learn 'all grain' brewing), before we have our own private Good Beer Week event at my place, trying out the Russian Imperial Stout we brewed with a gaggle of other RIS's from around the world to see how well we did (or didn't do).

Sunday finishes us off with with the Slowbeer 'Around the World in 18 Beers' tasting, which will surely be our final undoing (if I haven't already ben undone by then).

I would also like to do the Crafty Pint taking over the taps at the Royston, and check out more of Moon Dog's beers at The Local Taphouse, Josie Bones and Biero.

Phew...and all this with a new flatmate about the move in with me today. They will get to know me pretty quickly this week I suspect.

Anyway, good luck to us all getting through this week. Will try to put up any notes from the events in whatever capacity I have to do so through the week.

Here is to 'good' beer!

Beefy