Over the last few months I’ve noticed a trend on a few of the social media sites I use and read. Generally the sites are polite, they are all about beer and sharing what’s good and what you can taste against what others taste. Yes I know that sounds all nerdy, but some people look at car or AFL websites, I look at beer and wine. The trend that has me confused is the sledging of the Yenda beer rang...
I love it when a sample turns up and it ends up being much better than I thought it was going to be. A few weeks ago I followed up the Coca Cola Amatil (CCA) rep to lay my hands on some samples of their Yenda beers. Yes, you did read that right. Coca-Cola Amatil and beer. It doesn’t seem to fit as well as “Holden and Bathurst”, “Queensland and Origin winners” or “Sail & Anchor and a word that ...
The really big boys of brewing, the multinationals for example, spend a lot on market research and marketing, in some cases more than the GDP of a small country, working out when to release a beer, how to market it, what to make it look like. The aim is to create a brand that has a very distinctive image in terms of packaging and is easily marketed, leveraging off other arms of company (if there ...
The Glow of a Golden Crown… sounds like a bad movie title really… I dislike writing about drinks that aren’t great. For a start no-one wants to read about what’s bad, they want to read about what’s good in the booze world. Which drinks should be at the top of your list when you’re wandering through the aisle of your local, which vintages to look for on a certain wine? But every now and...
You know it’s funny, when I go to a wine tasting I always try to take someone along with me. I want to see what the average person on the street thinks of a wine. I might think they are fantastic wines, but I’m a cork dork, while my mate might say they are average at best and that the $10bottle we had last night was better. I think it’s about ageing, they think it’s about drink now and so on, it’...
Ahh ‘tis the New Year and I’m busy marking off all the long weekends with camping and fishing. And with that in mind I thought I’d share my top Four FOR Camping. These are just something a little different from taking the usual Bundy or Bourbon or UDL. Things that just help to make more room; are lighter or just make things go easier while the kids are fighting, the boat won’t start and the sand f...
Some things just go well together: Axel and Slash; John, Paul, George and Ringo; Jake, Elroy and their “Mission from God”; Magnum PI and Ferrari’s; “Evel” Knievel and broken bones. But nothing rarely goes together better than the footy and cold beer. And over the weekend while watching not nearly enough hours of my teams winning in the NRL, AFL and Super 14’s, I washed down the sweet ...