Sydney Road is a pretty awesome place. You can get kick-arse Lebanese pizzas for $1.50, some of the best baklava in the world for less than a dollar a piece and an espresso for 90c. OK, the coffee's not the best but you get the point. Actually I think it's a bit more than 90c nowadays too, but anyway. The first two are real bargains.

And on top of all of that, there's this unbelievable deal: $5 pints of Beechworth Pale Ale at Bar Etiquette. Well, it's actually not Beechworth Pale Ale anymore unfortunately. Supply problems I think. It's currently St Arnou Pilsner, which obviously isn't quite as good but was tasting mighty fine the other night, and 2 Brothers Gypsy Cider.

And OK, they're not always that price, but it's a pretty insanely generous happy hour: 5-9pm each day. It used to be 5-7pm, but evidently they decided they were making too much money. We managed to go out for dinner the other night and still get a couple of pints in happy hour after dinner (though perhaps that says more about the state of my social life than the generosity of the bar).

Plus it's a great bar. The front is a fairly typical, friendly neighbourhood bar with vintage pinnies and a bar guy who's always up for a chat. Out the back is a graffiti-covered beer garden where the uni students and hipsters hang out. Upstairs is just like any inner-north house party you've ever been to.

It's exactly the kind of bar that makes Melbourne's drinking scene so good. Nothing fancy, but what it does it does well. Cheap beer, a handful of really interesting bottles at excellent prices, and a good, cheap wine list.

I'd be there all the time if I didn't have so much stuff to drink in the back room.

For some reason I'm quite intrigued by the wines of Josko Gravner. If I had the money to be able to afford to taste them I might be even more so.

His shtick is natural wines fermented in clay amphorae buried in the ground, just like the Romans did. From all reports the results are excellent.

In the course of a random conversation with my partner the other night I mentioned Gravner and how cool it would be to ferment homebrew in an amphora buried in the ground.

"Why don't you do it?"

"Wait, what? Really? You don't mind me burying a fermenter in the backyard?"

This is going to be awesome. I'm thinking I'll do a Berliner weisse or some kind of all-brett thing, because it will probably stand up well to extended time on lees, even if it's not traditional. As I don't own a clay amphora I'll probably just bury a glass carboy.

I wonder what the temperature is like 1m under the earth's surface? I might have to bury a thermometer first.

So I've decided I want to brew a Leuven witbier. It's too crazy not to attempt. The procedure seems utterly insane, but at least it doesn't include 12 hour boils or anything stupid like that.

Obviously the book's not a neatly packaged homebrew recipe, so there's a bit of work involved in figuring out what to do.

Here's what I've come up with.

We've kept this one under our hats for a while, but it's time to let the secret out!

2008: two specially-brewed beers made by one brewery.

2010: two specially-brewed beers made by TWO breweries!

This year's commemorative beer (i.e. the bottle you'll get to take home, plus a few kegs to drink of course) will be a traditional double stout brewed at the Matilda Bay Garage Brewery.

The brief was to recreate something similar to the stouts that CUB have been brewing in Melbourne for over a hundred years, whilst keeping the spirit of homebrew (i.e. all malt and all pellet hops).

The beer has been brewed and is apparently looking great. We received an update from Claude "Nine" Nyaguy, the other day: