I hate to think what sparging is, actually.

how does one balance the intense pleasure of quantities of extremely fine home brewed beer available for the drinking at one’s pleasure with the many – MANY – accompanying hours of discussion on matters such as sparging, yeast harvesting and the colonisation of the small boy’s wardrobe for beer conditioning?

When aussies hear that such and such is “European Country X’s favourite beer” they forget that European Country X is probably just as full of pissheads with no class as any other place.

My thing lately has been buying the only beer I can find from countries whose beer I’ve never tried. The theory being that if some tiny struggling piss-poor nation gets it together to export something, it might be close to their best.

Latest success – Bedele from Ethiopia. Sort of pils-y, honey-ey, yummy-y.

A marvel of marketing it came to be seen here by some as a premium drink. Fosters too – who the hell drinks blue cans these days even at a tradies BBQ? Shit Mountain Goat fridays at the factory is mainly tradies.

In the Mesopotamian epic, Gilgamesh, Enkidu is introduced to us as naked and wild. He is ‘tamed’ through a combination of beer and the erotic arts of a temple priestess. My questions are these, is being tamed an unavoidable consequence of drinking beer or are the attentions of a highly trained priest or priestess also necessary for the taming process? will i avoid being tamed by sticking to wine and spirituous liquors? and finally, does the elevation of filthy lucre to godhead status mean that accountants are the new priest and priestesses, and should i let my children date one?