Been thinking a while, and there are some similarities between my 2 hobbies, beer and surfing. When i brew beer, i brew by the “all grain”, or “full mash” method, briefly, making beer from malted barley, fresh ( real ) hops, professional brewers yeast, and water. I follow the same basic method as the mass producing breweries, just on a smaller scale and budget. Although, because i brew on a smaller scale, i can use fresh, high quality ingredients. If a mega brewery tried to brew one of my beers, they’d go broke. Its good not to have to worry about mass production in some ways.
It’s funny though that a lot of beer drinkers ( like surfers also ) get sucked into the marketing of the mega corporations. In australia, we have a beer called “Crown lager”. It is marketed ( and priced ) as a premium lager. Its one of the most popular “high end” beers here. BUT, as a beer, it is shit. Watery, and bland. That doesnt stop people drinking this beer like its gold, and even using it as a status thing. I have seen people at the local german club drinking this crap, when there are some seriously great beers available.
Funny how much influence marketing and hype can have.
Oh well, gunna go have a pint of my latest porter, yum.
In this small country (population 10,000,000) we have +/- 1500 different beers.
A normal pub here has at least 15 different sorts of beer.
You probably know “stella artois”? Many foreighner find it an excellent beer. When I drink export stella (outside of Belgium) it tastes bad. And even the non-export stella (wich is better than the stella you can probably buy in your country) is just an avarage beer in belgium.
You surely have to come to visit belgium one day! The surf here is crappy (unless you are lucky), but the beer is great.
By the way, we only pay 1.20euros (=1.8USD / 2AUD) for a beer in an average pub, at our students-pub it is 90cents (=1.4USD / 1.5AUD)!
Hmmm. Lets get another surfing beer link. Had 3 pints of Newcastle with a buddy yesterday then surfed fun chest high surf for close to 3 hours. My 50 year old body is tired and sore in the most pleasant way. Belgium seems a fine place for a surf adventure. Mike
Not only in your local german club do the germans buy the shitty beers… Of course there are some great local beers here, organic beers, small breweries that don’t even bottle their beer but only pull draught beer. Then there’s the “Reinheitsgebot”, a purity law from the 16th century, that says only hops, malt and water is to be used for brewing beer. Still people buy lemon flavored beers or beer mixed with coke.
A friend of mine brews his own beer and it tastes fantastic. have fun!
KM
P.S. thanks for posting dims of your minimal, i will update my thread soon…
Ha stella artois!!. Some of my brew club friends are into saison’s, sour ales and la chueffe ( sp ). My fave belgian is hoegaarden, mmmm yum. Yeah, i need to go to belgium.
Rooster, you;re keen surfing after a few beers, i wouldnt be game, maybe only in knee to waist high summer surf i guess.
Karl, so its not just people here?? haha. I actually have a dampfbier on tap, if that rings a bell mate?. Except for some of my english ales which have some sugar, my beers comply with the Reinheitsgebot.
Let me elaborate. I sipped 3 pints over 2 1/2 hours while watching sports and talking sports with a friend. I did not hammer down 3 pints and hit the water. Only amateurs and drunks guzzle good beer. The surf was waste to chest high summer stuff,too. Mike
I ran into Shane Herring (IMO probably one of the most naturally talented surfers of all time) outside the newsagent in Lennox yesterday morning. He had a bag with three tallies of VB in it and was slurping on a stubby of VB. The surf was pumping.
Hey mike, wasn’t trying to imply anything mate, hope you didn;t think that. Sounds like a nice summer afternoon!. You’re dead right about amateurs and drunks!!
Yeah, too many people just waste their lives with alcohol steve.
Nope. I didn’t think you were implying anything. My post made it sound like I got drunk and went surfing. I don’t do that. We have many good microbreweries in the US. At least I think they are good and don’t really know how they compare to the European beers. The only beer I’ve tried from Australia is Fosters. I don’t really care for it although it’s better than no beer. I’ve been told the stuff we get in the US from Europe is not the same quality as what people drink in Europe. I just tried a Longboard Island Lager yesterday from Kona Brewing Co. Pretty good. Taste a lot like Red Hook from Mendocino, CA. I have a beginners brew kit and have made a couple of batches with it. Summer is here. Time to make another. Mike
I’ve never been there , but corona sells for 25cents a bottle or near (apparently) in mexico but is $60 a carton in oz. and it isn’t that nice.
I love beer, eally enjoy a few of an after noon.But I have to stop all activities. Some freinds say they can work around the house do projects have a few ales. not me finish the work get cleaned up kick back mmmmmmmmmmbeeeer.
Yeah it sure sounds like it. Our brew club guys drool over some of the US microbrewed beers. Very hard to get here, but are rated highly. Personally i love american hops, such a great flavour. I have an american amber on tap now also.
Pandanus, my fave time to drink beer is either when brewing, or cooking dinner ( im a keen chef in my own mind ha ). I think its part of the male DNA, but i cannot cook a BBQ without a beer, seems…wrong!.
When I was in Indo several years ago I had more than a few Bintang’s. I have to say that it is probably the worst beer ever, but after a full day of surfing it goes down pretty well. When I got back, I looked it up on the Internet and discovered that it is one of the few beers in the world that adds formaldehyde. Yuck!!
Here in SD I am partial to the beers from the Carl Strauss micro brewery.
My favorite Mexican beer is Bohemia. I like Negro Modelo, too. Drank lots of Corona, Pacifico’s , and Tecate on Baja trips. Tecate is the worst in my opinion of that group. Carta Blanca ranks up there as shit beer, too. Corona was quite a ‘fad beer’ in California. They still have some pretty slick marketing here. I like the Pilsner Urquell from the Czech Republic and buy it whenever it is on sale. I was told that Coors is the only beer that will actually hydrate you. I don’t know if that’s true, but I like it on a hot day working around the yard or after a hard workout. I think of it as a ‘Sports Drink.’ Taste better than Gatorade. I gotta have a coldie(Ausie term?) when working the BBQ, too! Mike
Researchers at Granada University in Spain dicovered that drinking beer postworkout rehydrates the body better than water. 25 test subjects ran till exhaustion in temperatures exceeding 100 degrees F. Afterward one group was given water and the other was given 2 half pints of beer. Turns out the “rehydration effects” in the beer group where far greater than the group given plain water. The scientists believe the sugars, salts and bubbles in the beer hydrate people more quickly than water.
Here in New Jersey we can get alot of great micro brews, Treogs and Loose Cannon to name a few, one of the best I found is called Samiclaus, brewed by Swiss monks every December and it ferments for over a year, 24 % alcohol by volume I think it’s the 3rd strongest beer in the world but it still taste like beer not like a port wine like Samual Adams Tripple Bock, if you can find it it is well worth it, first sip will take your breath away.
my first drunk experience when i was 12 at scorpion bay.
Needless to say, i didn’t make dawn patrol the next morning.
I just recently started getting into IPAs…i don’t know much about beer, but i think it’s all the hops that give it that crisp aromatic bite that i can’t get enough of.
I just tried Firestone IPA the other day…gooooood stuff…and local.
Beerfan…how much cash does a batch cost you to do yourself, how much time? (with a USD conversion thrown it as well if you wouldn’t mind, although i’m sure the prices are a bit different on the otherside of the world)
Hey bizgravy, its about $20 ( a bit less, our dollar gets around 90US cents at the moment ) bucks to fill an 18 litre keg. That’s exactly 2 cases of beer. Standard beer here is around 35-40 bucks a case. A batch of beer takes around 3-4 hours for 36 litres. The US has a very strong homebrewing community. I’d be surprised if someone near you wasn’t brewing this way. Tastybrew.com is a good place to go, as well as Northernbrewer.com. Be careful though, once you get the hang of it, you’ll find you can make excellent beer, and then ( like boards ) it becomes a serious addiction!!!
