Australian National Homebrewing Conference

Beer Ramblings

GABF Results

The Great American Beer Festival results for 2008 have just been released.

Other than the fact that the number of categories is insane, I don't have too much else to add. Most of us will never see the overwhelming majority of these beers. Actually I seem to recall writing that this time last year.

Of all the place-getters, I think I've only tried fourteen. Rogue Hazelnut Brown Ale and American Amber, Pelican Le Pelican Brune, Alaskan Smoked Porter, Sam Adams Utopias, Firestone Pale Ale, Flying Dog Old Scratch, Alesmith Speedway Stout, Old Numbskull, Decadence and Wee Heavy, Great Divide Yeti, Left Hand Milk Stout and... Coors Light.

I'll stop showing off now.

Of what I've tried, I'd only rate a few of them as 'world class' - in my opinion of course: Alaskan Smoked Porter, Firestone Pale Ale, Speedway and Yeti. But that's the beauty of beer competitions. They never get it right!

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More Exciting Beer Importing News

On top of the exciting news about the beers coming in from Innspire in Qld (check out here and here [look carefully at the photo]), the International Beer Shop in Perth has announced it's getting in another crazy shipment from Europe.

Check out the full list here, but I'll give you the highlights:

Boon Oude Geuze and Oude Kriek
N'Ice Chouffe and Chouffe Bok
Oerbier and Arabier from de Dolle Brouwers
Guldenberg and XX Bitter from de Ranke (XX Bitter is amazing, not sure how it'll travel though)
Andechser Doppelbock Dunkel, Bergbock Hell, Hefe-weisse and Dunkel-weisse
Gouden Carolus Hopsinjoor (just released in Europe!)
Bink Bloesem (an odd choice as the only beer from this amazing brewery)
Flying Dog Doggie-style, Horn Dog, Double Dog, Road Dog and Gonzo Imperial Porter
St Feuillien Tripel
St Bernardus beers in both 330mL and 750mL formats
The Brouwerij 't Ij range
Kapittel Prior (five stars in Tim Webb's book)
Poperings Hommelbier

And way way way more. In store in November apparently.

All of a sudden it's a very good time to be into imported beers in Australia (food miles and plummeting dollar be damned). Who'da thunk it?

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Brunswicky Desitka RIP

I needed to empty a keg so I could fill it with my Altfränkisches Dunkles (no idea if that's grammatically correct - actually I'm certain it isn't) so I went all out to drink my Czech-style 10° in as quick a time as I could.

Impressed as I am with my ability to single-handedly demolish a keg of beer, I'm now in a state of remorse. I miss that beer. Best beer I brewed this year by quite a margin.

(Yep, this is a pretty half-arsed blog entry. Sorry. It's not gonna get any better, I'm afraid. I'm helping organise this beer conference thing, and it's taking up a lot of my time.)

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Local Taphouse Oktoberfest SpecTAPular

The Local Taphouse's second SpecTAPular is on this Saturday, with an Oktoberfest theme.

See my blog about the last SpecTAPular here. It was a really great event last time and by the sounds of things they're planning on really outdoing it this time.

They're gonna have ten German beers and ten German-style Australian beers on tap. When a keg runs out, that's it. So get in early.

Click through for the beer list.

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