Big Country, Big State, Big Beer Week?

“Now, nobody likes a good beer more than I do…” – Monty Python, circa 1971.

Okay, that’s a misquote, it should be “a good laugh”. In the famous comedy sketch, the stiff lipped sergeant major was trying to claim he enjoyed a good laugh, when he didn’t really.

Me, I claim to enjoy a good beer and I do. I don’t mind a good laugh either. Anyway, now for something completely different, it’s…

Queensland Beer Week

Queensland, remember, is about seven times the size of the UK, so it’s BIG! Aussies are BIG beer drinkers. So Queensland Beer Week must surely be VERY BIG!!

But, unfortunately, it isn’t really.

I was looking for somewhere to go to celebrate the occasion, and honed in on the events available on Friday and Saturday nights.

My choices?

Seven events in all; there was a beer dinner at a brewery, free beer tasting at another. Five pubs had some guest beers on their taps, a couple of them were laying on food and entertainment. I could have got to 3 of those pubs within about an hour, but I had to discount two of them as an option.

One would have been an hour and a half, the other 17 hours drive.

There you go, those were my choices.

Saturday was just as quiet, only a handful of pubs laying on special events. There were a few brewery tours available too.

Other than that, my favourite homebrew shop, Brewers Choice, were holding free homebrew demonstrations in six of their stores, including a world record attempt for the most people brewing beer at one time in the same place.

Hat tip here to Tony, who runs the Chapel Hill branch, he taught me everything I know about homebrew beer here in Australia. Thanks Tony!

Anyway, that was it. That was Queensland Beer Week. Good idea everyone, but let’s make it BIGGER next year.

So I decided not to go out, I’ll be drinking beer indoors tonight. And this weekend, I’ll be making some more of my own homebrew in my own garage.

I’m afraid Queensland Beer Week, hasn’t turned out to be that BIG. So instead I bring you a BIG beer ad, the biggest beer ad in Australia, as you will see.

Cheers!