Women in Beer

With ‘Good Beer Week’ now in full swing, what better time to highlight the women of craft beer and their amazing contribution to Australia’s blossoming craft beer industry.

So what is ‘Good Beer Week’ and what is craft beer I hear you ask?  Good questions.

Firstly I’ll start with craft beer.  Essentially craft beer is quality, handcrafted beer made with the four primary ingredients – water, malt, yeast and hops.  That’s right – it’s beer free of additives and preservatives.  Behind every beer, there is a story or two. Who made it, why, what influenced them, where the ingredients are sourced from – the list is endless.  The breweries are usually very small, independent operations and stick to traditional practices.

‘Good Beer Week’ is a not-for-profit festival in Melbourne and parts of Victoria that celebrates craft beer from around the world.  Born from an idea over a few beers (naturally) by like-minded beer lovers, it has experienced rapid growth with 150+ events planned for May 18-26.  The events during ‘Good Beer Week’ are vast and varied catering for the beer novice through to the hard-core beer geek.  You can learn how to make beer, what to eat with beer and more than likely work out the best way to drink beer. 

Ok, so why am I talking about this?  A few months ago I was invited to join the Bendigo Beer committee.  Before you jump to any conclusion, no it’s not a club where we sit around drinking beer all the time.

Bendigo Beer’s purpose is to promote craft beer through events and festivals as well as educating and consulting venues about craft beer.  It is also the conduit between brewers and venues.  A concept unique to the Australian craft beer industry, Bendigo Beer does this around Bendigo and central Victoria and has recently branched out into other regions with Ballarat Beer, Geelong Beer and Border Beer.

I am one of two females amongst the committee of nine very innovative, progressive and talented people with a passion for promoting craft beer.  It’s a fascinating group to be a part of.  Check out the upcoming Bendigo Beer events here

Prior to becoming part of Bendigo Beer I was a sporadic beer drinker.  Many females drink mainstream beer during university because it’s cheap and many enjoy a cold beer on a hot day.  I guess I was one of those types.  However, being on this committee has opened my eyes to a whole new world of drinking beer for the taste and that wine is not the only beverage that compliments food.

Breaking the stereotype that beer is only for the man’s world, there are some very knowledgeable and talented women amongst the Australian craft beer industry.  Stamping her mark in all things beer is Kirrily Waldhorn aka ‘Beer Diva’.  Kirrily is a Sydney based beer dynamo with 12 years experience in beer as a presenter, educator, consultant, writer and judge.  Learn more about ‘Beer Diva’ here

Then there is the tale of the two women behind the label ‘Two Birds’. A couple of years ago friends Jayne Lewis and Danielle Allen created two brews, a sunset ale and a golden ale. I love their product, their passion and their tagline ‘why settle for one?’.  Their two beers are respected and gaining a big following. Check them out here

I hope you have enjoyed this little taste, there are many more stories about women making an impact in the craft beer industry that will be shared, including ‘Beer Diva’ and ‘Two Birds’ in this year’s ‘Good Beer Week’ program – check it out here

Guest post - dejustation

This weeks post is a guest post by my mate Justin McPhail.  Justin is a man of many layers.  He co founded and is President of Bendigo Beer - an incorporated body that promotes craft beer.  He started and runs dejustation, co-ordinates many food events, loves to cook and is an all round nice guy.  AND he does all of this in his spare time!

Enjoy this weeks guest post.  You can catch Justin over at www.justinrhys.wordpress.com and www.dejustation.com and follow him on twitter @justinrhys

"The thrill in recipe development and the reasons why I created dejustation".

I’ve always enjoyed the moments in life where people go “ah-ha!” and look around for people to share the moment with. I’ve had more than a few of these moments during my time with Bendigo Beer with our beer and food matching dinners, whole beast feasts (with whole pigs heads in the centre of a table for people to nibble on), beer vs wine pairings (rating one vs the other with the only constant element being the food as a comparative), etcetera.

For me, to do something in life is to seek out this experience, a combination of this emotion of surprise, searching for flavours, the conversation. What I seek to create is the perfect storm of food, company, beverage and place.

I created dejustation to share this experience.

Experiential dining is something that first piqued my interest seeing Heston Blumenthal on one of the first series of Master Chef. Sitting on a couch in Adelaide (where I was living at the time), I immediately searched for more info, and within 15 minutes had purchased the Fat Duck cookbook. I read his story with reverence. Here was a man who hadn’t trained as a chef, taught himself, and created his own mark on the culinary world. I saw great parallels with myself. Interested in learning all culinary styles, ingredients, matches to beverage, I began a period of complete and utter devotion to reading and tasting anything and everything.

The culmination of this is a way of thinking outside the norm, using blueberries with star anise to create a sauce to match to a beer, making a lamb based dessert styled from the classic Aussie lamington, ‘lambington’, creating a sweet and savoury dirt for my last event ‘dig it’. It’s all in drawing from influences learned the past few years and ones I continue to learn. 

I hope to amaze, excite, wow, and hopefully, awe, my guests. From things as small as how the light shines, the music playing, the (hopefully unnoticeable) service, smells, sight and taste.

I have included below a taste of things to come for the next event. I’m working on recreating the classic Australian Milk Bar with dishes that include elements of paperbark, redskins, Big M’s, chiko rolls…the list goes on. For this test, I pictured a rich and sticky sweet beef sauce that draws on the unique sweetness of redskins with the stickiness of a classic beef rib. The results are great, but not something that will amaze people, so the testing continues… stay tuned.