When did beer become
pretentious?
Could you have
imagined the Trappist’s heading down to the cave to pick up a slab on a Friday
arvo. “Hey, Brother-man.... Make sure you grab something fruity, smokey, wheety
and it MUST have a floral finish with a creamy mouthfeel”!
First let me say this.
I’m not for one second opposed to great tasting beers. I’d have to be a mental
patient to feel that I’d rather drink a VB than a
Micro-brewed-hipster-moustachioed-skinnyjeans-wearing Pale Fu#kin’ Ale that tastes like sunshine and
happiness. I LOVE TASTY BEER! I’m merely pointing out the fact that I cannot
understand the fashion associated with what was once a simple, humble
refreshment. **As a side note, I love
chicks that drink beer. Especially from a schooner or a pint-glass. HOT! F$#k Eddie and the Vodka Cruisers!
The term CRAFT BEER is
enough to send me into a tail-spin. I mean, what the hell are they doing?
Making beer or a Papier Mache lampshade? There is nothing crafty about it. You
don’t need scissors, Perkin’s Paste, sticky tape or macaroni elbows. You are
not in primary school pressing the reverse-side of a sheet of copper into the
shape of a flower to give to Nanna. You are MAKING BEER!!
Hops. Malt. Yeast.
Sugar. Water. That is it!
Sure, feel free to
play around with the variations on this basic theme, by all means. Make it
taste the best you can, but please cut the shit when it comes to calling
yourself an Artisan and any other buzz-words of the social-networking age. Don’t
over-sell yourself. A spade is a spade.
I recently had the
experience in which a mate and I created a beer (well, created is a broad term)
at a place that provides you with a menu ten-times longer than the average
Chinese restaurant’s, and you taste and taste and taste until you find one you
like, then you ‘make’ your beer. Really, you just weigh out some grains, sugar,
yeast etc, and then they weigh out the appropriate malt extract for you and
cook it up. Don’t dare call it homebrew though. Because, Homebrew is ‘shit’.
Haha. All they’re doing is a partial
extract (so, if you want to be REAL snobby, this could be considered somewhat
of a shortcut). The beer we got from these guys tasted great and definitely
worth doing, but really it IS just fancy homebrew. In fact, as long as you arm
yourself with a bit of knowledge around temperatures, yeasts and ingredients, you
can do the exact same procedure at home with kits ‘n bits and get the same
results.
I guess what I’m
trying to get at is that regardless of how you go about the process, if the end
result is that you are drinking beer, then all you are doing is in fact, making
beer. You are not changing the world.
In coming weeks we’ll
delve into some of our favourites. Maybe we should go around the world via Dan
Murphy’s (or one of the smaller, more hipster bottlos) and write some reviews
pretending we are wine merchants. But one thing is for sure and certain; our
other halves will love us a little less each week.
Fu@k. Just realised I
was about to drink a pilsener out of a pint glass!! My Bad!
Whitey.
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| Beer of the night |
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| SCG Bar |
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| Heaven on earth |
By looking at coffee in Australia as it is today I think it's best to briefly
look at where coffee has come from.
Contemporary coffee in Australia is a relatively new concept. The café’s and
Coffee Houses Europe has had, in some cases for centuries, we've only had for a
few decades at a push. The first espresso machine in Australia was in Melbourne
in the early 1960's and only a scant number of people would've known what it
was let alone how to use it. We can thank the European immigrants who were
after a taste of their homeland for the birth of our coffee culture and giving
coffee the attention it deserved.
Fast forward to the 1990's and where coffee starts to find its feet more
broadly across our society. We begin to graduate from the Nescafe Blend 43 that
was pushed to the back of our pantries; freeze dried and entombed in its
resealable tin. Coffee before this time wasn’t considered exotic or anything to
snob over. It was a drink that grown-ups offered each other when they had
guests. Instant coffee consumed at home was slowing being traded in for a more
communal experience of a 'flat white' made at a cafe by a 'barista'. It had
started to turn into a drink that people went out for and in turn, people started
to make money from it.
Australia, at the end of 2012, I firmly believe, is at the forefront of
contemporary coffee culture worldwide and that’s staggering given the short
history of our time spent at it. But only a handful of coffee shops, Baristas
and coffee roasters can claim to be at the pinnacle of this as the rise of
coffee has come at a cost. There are more 'café’s' serving shit coffee made by
people who should know better. I see café’s with loyal clients serving mass
produced 'homogenised' big name coffee that is only a step above the Nescafe I
mentioned before. This isn't good enough! We should strive to have better as
consumers if nothing else. We should be demanding better from our café’s,
baristas and indeed of coffee roasters and the big name coffee companies conning
us and taking us for fools.
Take this example, and I know it makes perfect commercial sense for the owners
of café’s to want all of this but at what price? Your Soul?
For those of you who don't know, In 90% of the café’s and coffee shops you go to
for your latte, flat white, cappuccino etc. the cafe owner will NOT OWN THE
COFFEE MACHINE. Or the grinder for that matter. Or even the cups from which you
drink.
So cafe owner 'A' is setting up shop and large coffee company 'X' comes along
and persuades said cafe owner to come across and use their coffee. $22 per kg
and we'll give you a machine, a grinder, sugar sticks, signage barriers,
umbrellas and even the coffee cups and saucers.. A pretty hefty outlay that
could quickly add up to $20k or more, an outlay the cafe owner doesn't have to
make. Hmmm. Makes sense right?? Wrong! What you're getting from your $3.50
latte from the $22/kg mass produced coffee from our lovely new Cafe 'A' is
S.H.I.T. F#CKING SHIT actually. Like I said, I understand the commerce of it
all but I also understand that if you go into business selling coffee as large
part of your daily trade, hell, even have 'coffee' in the business name, you
should at least have some respect for your customers tastes and pallets and not
take them for saps. Hang your heads in shame, cafe owners. Even more so the
large coffee companies that perpetuate this shallow trade in crap coffee and
the massive con perpetrated on us, the consumer. WE SHOULD DEMAND BETTER!
So, what’s the solution? Hmmm? Vote with your feet. If you see a Piazza D'Oro
sign, a Bellaroma sign, Segafredo, Lavazza, Vittoria, Illy, Grinders, the list
goes on. You'll know the places I'm talking about before you set foot in them.
Avoid them and if you're entrenched in the place as a regular customer, tell
the proprietor what you think. What you really think.
Further to that, try somewhere different. Educate yourselves on what good
coffee is. It isn't a snobby thing to do, it's just a hot drink but a drink
that costs you. Do the sums. Even at one cup per day at $3.50, 6 times a week. That’s
over $1000 a year! So go try the place without the lush signage, without
any umbrellas out the front and without the paid for everything. Try the place
lurking in the back streets, the place with graffiti on the outside walls and
with place with the customers that know what a good coffee is. The people
working there are passionate about what they're doing. They take it seriously
and are committed to making espresso which is stronger, sweeter, richer,
denser, thicker and generally just tastier. These are coffee professionals that
are genuinely concerned with how your taste buds perceive coffee. They are knowledgeable
on the product they’re selling and will be informed as to how to get the best
out of it. The best case scenario is that the coffee is roasted on site by the
person behind the espresso machine. These shops are rare in N.S.W but there is
a shift towards this thankfully. Slowly anyway. At the very least the barista
or shop owner should know the coffee roaster and has hopefully had a hand in its
blending and development. It isn't hard to get this. There are shops out there
doing just this and the economic model is a profitable one. Turn your back on
the coffee shop that wants your money and is happy to provide a shit product in
return. You deserve better than this. Go and find your local coffee roaster,
your local espresso bar and make yourself known to them.
| Once you've tasted a good coffee it's hard to go back. It's up to you to go and find it. It is out there. |
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Melbourne's Brother Baba Budan
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| Nice latte |
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| My Isomac tea |
This week's song is Mr Hev, by Newcastle band, Kaboose. blast from the past!
