When planning your next brewery tour, don't forget to consider the Sunshine State. As Beer & Brewer editor Matt Kirkegaard recently discovered, cane toads aren't all that Queensland's good for.

For a long time it had seemed that Australia's craft beer wave was going to bypass South-east Queensland. With so much craft brewing activity in Victoria and Western Australia and hot spots in Tasmania, South Australia and New South Wales, Queensland remained a veritable craft beer desert. Local beer lovers have been forced to rely on interstate beer shipments from the larger craft breweries rather than having access to their own home-grown flavour.

Thankfully, a nascent microbrewing industry has started to emerge, encompassing the Gold Coast and hinterland and stretching down to Byron Bay and even west to the Granite Belt in Queensland's wine country.

On a weekend away in the region, Burleigh Brewing on the southern end of the Gold Coast is a great first stop. (If you're planning a weekend of brewery tours you could also stop at Foster's giant Yatala plant - see Brewery Tour, issue 3 - on your way down the Pacific Motorway).

Just over an hour south of Brisbane and south of the Gold Coast glitter strip, Burleigh Brewing is home to the Duke range of beers. Established by Brennan Fielding, formerly of Brisbane's Oxford 152, Burleigh has established a limited distribution model, staking its claim over the region between Coffs Harbour and Hervey Bay, definitely not bent on national beer domination.

Although primarily a production facility, Burleigh Brewing Company also boasts a comfortable brewery lounge, right in the shadow of its shiny new stainless-steel brewhouse. With freshness his mantra, Brennan makes a mission of educating the beer-drinking public about the importance of drinking fresh and properly looking after beer. His unpasteurised beers live in a climate controlled world; from Burleigh's cool room post bottling to bottleshop fridges no more than two hours away and then - Brennan urges - straight to your fridge.

The Burleigh lounge makes a perfect classroom for the school of Drink Local. Enjoy a brew or two around the German drinking table, participate in a tour of the brewery, stand on the brewer's platform and peer into the tanks and learn how traditional beer is made. You can join a class to learn how to judge beer like the pros, or don a blindfold for Brennan's flavour profiling course to see if your nose can identify the aromas that make up beer.

Visitors are welcome at Burleigh Brewing from 10am to 4pm weekdays, with the bar open until 6pm on Fridays and Saturdays 2pm until 6pm.
On weekends the Tanks, Tales and Tastings takes place. Visitors spend 45 minutes with the brewmaster touring the facility and learning about beer and brewing. Enjoy a glass of each of Brennan's three current beers - a mid strength lager, Premium lager and American-style pale ale (with a new brown ale due for release soon) and take your branded tasting glass home with you. Check the website for sessions and other regular activities.

From the coastal plain at Burleigh you can make your way up the hinterland range to Mt Tamborine, sitting up high on the basalt range that that once flowed from the ancient volcano that is now Mount Warning. Here you will find the region's newest brewery, MT Brewery. Owned by businessman Andre Morris, the brewery's visitor areas are still under construction but the beer is already brewing. Under the guiding hand of head brewer (and Beer & Brewer contributing editor) Ian Watson, MT Brewing is planning an eclectic mix of beers designed to excite beer lovers.

Watson, recently of Sunshine Coast Brewery, was enticed down to Tamborine with the promise of food; not just for him but also for his beers. Andre's other current business interest is in the Witches Chase Cheese Company, which makes a range of sensational boutique cheeses. Currently located a couple of kilometres from the brewery, the current extensions to the brewery site will enable the cheese factory to relocate there. With Ian's background as Australia's first professional beer sommelier - and beer and cheese providing one of the food world's great matches - it's a prospect that excites him.

MT Brewing's newly installed 24-hectolitre plant is the original Bluetongue equipment and Ian plans to brew a rotating line of 6-12 beers, with occasional surprises. One of his initial brews is a first for Australia, a hopfer-weisse, or a hefeweizen with high aroma hop additions. Ian says that he only knows of a couple of similar brews in the world, including the legendary Gumballhead American Wheat Beer from Three Floyds in the US.

If you visit the mountain before the cheese factory and shop move in July you will find that it currently sits just next door to Tamborine Mountain Distillery. Australia's smallest pot-still distillery, and one of the few in private hands, it has developed an international reputation since opening in 1998. While producing a range of exotic spirits, the distillery really gained international attention when its Absinthe won Gold at the World Spirits Awards in Austria last year. Five-times distilled from the finest grapes, and made with elderflower, gentian, fennelseed, hyssop and wormwood, the anise-flavoured spirit is undergoing a popular revival. Even for the beer lover it is well worth the stop to discuss spirits with larger-than-life co-owner, Michael Ward.

If you're travelling with your significant other, a great way to score some major brownie points is to stop at the multi award-winning restaurant Songbirds in the Forest. This top-notch noshery recently won the Queensland Restaurant of the Year Award, Queensland's Best Informal Restaurant and Best Modern Australian Cuisine Awards. While primarily focusing on a superb selection of small run wines, Songbirds' young sommelier Mick Armstrong also puts considerable thought into his beers. You can dine on tempura-cooked soft-shell crab on green papaya and mango salad matched to an excellent New Zealand Riesling, or to a Redoak Organic Hefeweizen, which was much more to my liking. Unusually for a serious wine guy Mick also listens when you talk beer and considers what he serves rather than merely stocking a thoughtless selection of Euro-lagers.

To really score points, you can stay overnight in one of the six villas hidden in the rainforest. The accommodation isn't exactly cheap, but it is world class. What's more, Songbirds is a spa retreat so you can book your partner in for an in-room deluxe massage while you head down to sample the region's beers at the soon-to-open Fox & Hound pub.

Awaiting it's licence when B&B visited, the Fox & Hound plans to serve on tap beers only from local breweries includingMT Brewing, Duke and Guinness (yes, Guinness is a local beer in these parts, brewed under licence at the Yatala plant down the mountain!)

Depending on how long you have, once you've sampled the delights of the Gold Coast hinterland you can head another hour-and-a-half south and into northern New South Wales to Byron Bay and another burgeoning brewing hotspot. Alstonville, just south of Byron Bay, is home to Northern Rivers Brewing Co., a multi-award winning brewery turning out some great beers and well worth a visit. They do cellar door sales Monday to Saturday and brewery tours Saturday afternoons.

Byron Bay will soon have another quality brewery with news that Brad Rogers, formerly of Matilda Bay, has signed a lease on a former cordial factory with plans to turn it into the Stone and Wood Brewing Company. Watch this space for details.

While it is still early yet, Queensland's brewing scene is heading in the right direction. So, whether you're a local looking for a weekend getway with a good beer thrown in, or from interstate holidaying on the Gold Coast this is the place to come.

Where to go:

Burleigh Brewing Company
www.burleighbrewing.com
17A Ern Harley Drive, Burleigh Heads
(07) 5593 6000

MT Brewing
Long Road, Eagle Heights
(07) 5545 2032

Tamborine Mountain  Distillery
www.tamborinemountaindistillery.com
87-91 Beacon Road, North Tamborine
(07) 5545 3452

Songbirds in the Forest
www.songbirds.com.au
Tamborine Mountain Road, North Tamborine
(07) 5545 2563

Northern Rivers Brewing Co.
www.nrbrewing.com.au
57 Northcott Crescent, Russellton Industrial Area, Alstonville
(02) 6628 8737

Check out the map online:
snipurl.com/weekendawayseq

The Campaign for Real Ale - better known these days as CAMRA - is one of the world's most active and successful consumer advocacy groups. Graham Reeks looks at the beer lovers who started it all...

If with water you fill up your glasses,
You'll never write anything wise,
For ale is the horse of Parnassus
Which hurries a bard to the skies.
(Thomas Moore)

Once upon a time all beer was local. As a perishable product with a short shelf life, historically beer didn't travel too far from its brewery. In the UK beer was traditionally ale, conditioned in the cask from which it was served.

In 1933 however, a brewing company called Watney introduced a new method of storing and dispensing beer to the UK market. By filtering, pasteurising, adding carbon dioxide and chilling the beer before sealing it in kegs the beer lasted longer and was easier to dispense. It was great for brewers and pub landlords, but many felt that the character of English ales suffered for the convenience. Still, over thirty years this style grew to dominate. Traditional cask beer, neither filtered, pasteurised nor chilled, continued to be brewed in the meantime with breweries often producing both types of beer.  

Easily portable kegs lent themselves perfectly to being sold nationally and large national breweries began to flourish, absorbing many of the small regional breweries in the process. The number of breweries halved between 1940 and 1960 and by the mid-1960s six conglomerates produced most of the beer and owned the majority of the pubs in Britain. Known as the ‘nationals' these huge companies had the economic clout and logistical ability to market keg beer throughout Britain.

By the 1970s much British beer was about as appealing as Adelaide water; the strength was declining, and with it the concept of regional variety and distinctive tastes. But the 1970s were also the decade of mass movements and consumer protest. Enter a bunch of savvy young whippersnappers to kick up a hell of a fuss about the state of their beer!

In 1971 four young men from the north-west of England formed the Campaign for Real Ales - or CAMRA - to protect and preserve their favourite drink.

One of the founders, Michael Hardman, says they were just four men of 25 and under, who knew very little about traditional British beer except that some tasted wonderful and some tasted awful.

"We established the campaign rather jokingly with a wish that every pub should have at least one traditional draught beer available, and blow what else it sold, that's none of our business," he said.

"Out of the woodwork came hundreds of people who had been thinking along our lines for years and knew the answers to a lot of our questions."

The organisation stuttered at first but then grew rapidly. CAMRA was active in recruiting members and campaigning via a central headquarters and regional branches. By its second AGM, in 1973, CAMRA boasted a membership of over 1,000 people. They adopted the term ‘real ale' to describe "traditionally brewed and properly served draught beer."

CAMRA aimed to fend off the standardisation of beer and the monopolisation of the market by large centralised brewing companies. They did this by celebrating, promoting and encouraging decentralisation, specialisation and regional diversity in the brewing industry. Their methods were ingenious, and sometimes downright cheeky.

In the spirit of the era there were lots of marches, such as the protest against the closure of Joules brewery (founded in the 12th century, but owned then by Bass Charrington, one of the big six conglomerates). Over 600 members turned out to drink, protest and attend a meeting held in the local cinema. The event was well covered by radio and the BBC's prime-time Nationwide television program. It was a popular way for members from around the country to meet (and drink) whilst simultaneously spreading the real ale message to a wider audience, and frustrating the big six brewing companies.

Other approaches got right into the big breweries' nerve centres. The monthly newsletter What's Brewing organised CAMRA members to team up to buy shares in large brewing companies so they could vote against the closures of small breweries at shareholders' meetings, and ask tricky questions.

Chris Holmes was President of CAMRA in 1975 and has since gone on to run a chain of pubs in the East Midlands. Chris said that one of his favourite campaigns involved Mansfield brewery, an independent brewery but one that didn't produce any real ale.

"We organised a survey in the streets of Mansfield. We asked Mansfield Bitter drinkers whether they thought the beer was better, worse or the same as it was two years ago when Mansfield Bitter was real ale," Chris said. "The vast majority said it was worse."

"We gave these results to the press and we got loads of coverage. Mansfield Brewery were livid. Livid!"

Chris later asked questions related to this exercise at the breweries AGM. Success was not immediate, but within two years Mansfield had begun to brew ‘real ale' again.    

Literature was another important driver of the real ale movement. What's Brewing arrived on the scene in June 1972 and CAMRA's indispensable annual Good Beer Guide came out in 1974 with a county by county, pub by pub breakdown of where to find the best beer.

But other beer writers were also on the case independently of CAMRA.

To write 1973's The Beer Drinker's Companion author Frank Baillie must have had a wonderful time. He visited every brewery in the country to find out what the difference really was between keg beer and cask beer.

His book provided a detailed explanation of brewing processes, methods of dispensing beer, appropriate temperatures for serving, the flavours and strength, and changes and trends in the brewing industry. He also later presented a gazetteer of all the breweries in Britain, differentiating between "The Regional (Independent) Brewers" and "The National Brewers".

The Companion was written and presented in an unpretentious style; with little of the wine-snob prose we endure today. The entry for George Bateman & Sons Ltd shows how Baillie used simple language for his depictions. "Bitter. Malty-flavoured with above-average hopping rate." Still, he held back from being too critical of the breweries and beers he
didn't like for fear of legal action.

On the other hand Chris Hutt's The Death of the English Pub, also published in 1973, reads more like a call to arms for the beer-drinking Briton. Hutt pushed, pulled and pleaded with beer drinkers using his skills of rhetoric to persuade them by interspersing the facts with his own opinionated narrative. His book was artfully presented with a symbolic front cover and moody black and white photography.

The Death openly sought to expose how the "objectives of the big brewers are to banish quality", and the individual is overlooked in deference to company profits. The targets of his polemical arrows were clear and names were not withheld.

Hutt provided economic justification for his judgement that the alcoholic content of many beers had declined in recent years. He explained how some beers were weak enough to have been sold in the United States prohibition era. The gradual decline in strength was associated with the increasing profits of brewers. Hutt estimated the saving made in duty and raw materials between 1964 and 1970 at £11M. A price "paid by the beer drinker, because the brewers do not tell us when they weaken their products, and they do not lower their prices accordingly."

A journalist by the name of Richard Boston cottoned on to the groundswell of discontented drinkers and wrote a regular column - Boston on Beer - that ran in the Saturday Guardian from 1973 to 1975. He says that it arose because he'd been abroad for some time.

"I came back and I was horrified by what they were doing to the pubs and friends said, ‘they've fucked up the beer as well, not just the architecture'."

In 1976 Boston published a compilation of his column entitled Beer & Skittles. The book blended the characteristics of both Baillie and Hutt's work, but came further from the left and developed its own quite different arguments. It overflows with references far and wide, including Hardy, Hogarth, Dickens, Sassoon, Orwell and Graham Greene and economists such as J K Galbraith and E F Schumacher.

Boston injected an added element of wit that had been lacking, intermingling fact and opinion with amusing anecdotes. He recounted the story of a German civil servant who shot 13 of his barbeque guests when they complained that the beer he had served was warm. On home brewing he said, "This will fill your house with a delicious aroma. If your spouse dislikes it, change your spouse."

But, according to Michael Hardman, the most significant single contribution to the publicity of CAMRA was an article by a prestigious architectural writer. Ian Nairn's journalism was noted for its criticism of public agencies' design, planning and works and its effects on the urban environment of England, but he also commented on the architecture and interior design of English pubs.

In a 1974 article in the Weekly Review of the Sunday Times Nairn confessed his membership to CAMRA and summed up their concerns. He did not refer to design or architecture, but rather to breweries and beer, using wine as a frame of reference to help explain his argument.

"True draught bitter in Britain is in its way as good as the best of claret or hock - without the snobbery or the expense. And unlike good wine, it doesn't exist anywhere else," he wrote.

Nairn combined the arguments from The Companion and The Death, which he believed "dovetailed beautifully", and he reinforced this with a discussion of his favourite brewers, their beers, and the pubs he knew that served the beers he recommended. He saw two points as standing out. "One is keg versus draught beer; the second is the arbitrary extinction of local flavours in favour of a ‘national brew'."

Baillie wrote his book unaware of CAMRA. After it was published he read about the organisation in his local paper and joined up. In contrast, by the time The Death was published Hutt had become its second chairman.

Richard Boston maintained a surprising distance from the organisation. Before his death he told me that when he was writing his column he found CAMRA a "bit boring", although his writing led some people to believe that he had founded CAMRA. Although his book made many points sympathetic to the organisation's stance, he also criticised them for their inflexibility.

"It has been said that some of their members would drink castor oil if it came from a hand pump, and would reject nectar if it had no more than looked at carbon dioxide," he wrote.

Regardless of any allegiance with the campaign, all of these writers did a great service to the British beer drinker and to the industry. Together CAMRA and the beer writers fuelled a remarkable consumer-led resistance to standardised beer. Ordinary small breweries with low status and restricted local markets have been reincarnated (sometimes literally) as specialist artisan breweries. This provided a superb example to beer drinkers the world over. People began to take beer - and beer drinkers - seriously and craft brewing and microbreweries followed on.

Despite their success, the brewing industry is a constant battle between the craft of the brewer and the realities imposed by business. CAMRA is a monument to how consumers banding together can ensure that the celebration of the craft is good business.

It's hard to believe but some Australians are more interested in what's on the outside of the can rather than the inside, as Ian Kingham discovers... 

For the essence of Australia look no further. No academic document can better reflect the framework of Australian social infrastructure than the humble beer can.

To really get a feel for the events that shaped the recent past visit a beer can collector and let them take you through
their collection. They will share with you cans that highlight times of turmoil, times of jubilation and times of plain bewilderment. One thing for sure is that the collection will give you a view of unwavering times and capture the honest, earthly values of Australia that only a beer can can. Of all the recorded packaging used to store beer from open-topped, earthenware pots to pewter jugs, wooden barrels to aluminium stubbies, the beer can has captured consumers imagination more than any other.

I was recently asked while attending the Hobart Beer Festival whether or not I thought the beer can was an endangered species. While it is true that there is a new wave of consumers who prefer to drink premium beers with quirky labels and abstract names, there is still an army of 500ml cans just waiting to let loose, not to mention the trend in Europe and the United States toward five-litre can consumption.

Strengthening my confidence in the survival of the beer can is a dedicated subculture creating a demand all of their own by trawling the shelves of retailers across Australia in the quest for just one more new can. I refer of course to the "beer can collector", our modern day social anthropologists who have more insight into Australia's cultural history than any other body of people. 

Did you know in Australia today there are over 800 registered beer can collectors? It is also estimated that for every registered can collector, there are 100 others who continue to hoard beer cans above their bars, on bedroom shelves and on every available surface in their garages. Why? It's because an eclectic collection of good times, great people and fond memories has replaced the space in the can where the beer used to be. To throw the can away would be to risk having to live a life of far less pleasure.

Having spoken to beer can collectors from Europe, the America's, New Zealand, and Australia, there seems to be two key reasons for collecting beer cans: nostalgia and art. It is true when you walk along a displayed collection of cans you get a great sense of social history and vibrant colour, a true insight into Australia and its beer drinking culture.

As a museum captures changes in time, a good beer can collection similarly evolves and bends through localised events. So if you have a few cans at home, congratulations, in my opinion you have something far more valuable than a McCubbin or a Pro Hart - you have a piece of real Australian identity. And who knows, you may have a significant piece
of history as well?

Beer is the foundation stone of Australian social culture and the beer can is the iconic symbol we rally behind when we look for those deep Australian values, the larrikin, the good bloke, the mate, and the belief in a fair go. The Aussie beer can represents our fathers, standing in the back yard as the world's worst dressed men. It highlights our growing concern for the environment with its great recyclable qualities (even if the plastic that holds it together lets us down a little). It reminds us of a time where we could throw things in the crowd at the cricket and know that the more we drank the less damage it would do!  
The beer can has the added benefits of being able to float in our sinking fishing boats and can be crushed and stored in our utes and saved for the 60 cents a kilo refund at specially constructed "Cash-a-Can" centres across the nation.  

Maybe you have the odd can you've collected, or maybe you can remember humbly drinking one with a friend that
still acts as a touchstone to what makes you who you are today. To give you some insight into what I'm talking about, below is a range of cans that showcase some key Aussie events and remind us of a bygone era.

Aviation 

Tooth KB celebrated Dick Smith's inaugural flight to Antarctica and the launch of the TAA airbus, Tooth LA celebrated Qantas' first direct flight to Los Angeles (LA) in 1982 and Foster's celebrated 50 years of Ansett in 1986.

Music

Commemorative Courage Crest cans were at the Sunbury music festival of 1975.

Cooper's Draught and Toohey's Extra Dry have been introducing us to bands through the Big Day Out rock concerts since the festival's inception.

Sport

Cooper's Grand Prix Lager of 1985 - 1992 reminds us that once upon a time Adelaide had a Grand Prix; Foster's commemorative Grand Prix cans remind us every year that people from overseas still have an interest in our forgotten iconic brand. Swan Export Lager takes us back to America's Cup 1983, when Alan Bond was a national hero. The Tooheys Draught St Kilda premiership can (produced and recalled in 1997) highlights just how much of an upset that Adelaide vs. St Kilda AFL grand final really was.

The XXXX Bitter Commonwealth Games can of 1982 still depicts a controversial Australian map that forgot to attach a little island called Tasmania to the bottom. A can of Tooheys Pilsener from the late 70s depicts a cricket test match between Australia and England with no crowd, and then later reproduced with a crowd! Australia even boasts the longest running collector series of cans in the world, (30 years 1977 - 2007), where every year a can of Cascade is produced, showing the winner of the Sydney to Hobart Yacht race.

Arts

In cultural circles we have beer cans commemorating everything from the Glendi Greek Festival, to festivals of Bougainvilleas and Jacaranda trees.

Anniversaries

The humble can commemorated the anniversaries of 75 years of the harbour bridge, 10 years of the Geelong Beer & Beef Club, 125 years of Perth, 50 years service of Noel Eastment and 50 years since the campaigns of our military forces in the Guadalcanal.

Icons

Phar Lap, Roy Cazaly, Qantas and David Boon have not escaped the attention of the can, nor has Bert Newton, Ian Healy, Wally Lewis or even David Hookes.

Events

Birdsville Races, Kalgoorlie Cup, Broome Cup and Australian Beach Cricket all have a place on a can.

Industry

Santos mines, Australian National Shipping and the Tasman Ferry all get a mention on a can.

Entertainment

From the movie "Patriot Games" with Harrison Ford to Michael Douglas in "The Game", the list goes on, including the famous Duff cans from the TV show "The Simpsons", (while only worth about five dollars a can, Duff can still be found on
eBay for $2,500 per can).

There are even cans whose artwork explains how to open the very can itself.

Careers have been wrecked by the beer can, including the marketing manager of Tooths KB (market leading beer in NSW 1978) who changed the well publicised and acclaimed "Cold Gold" can to a white one.

Then there was the brand manager of Carlton Premium Dry who produced Australia's first slim line can believing that it would appeal to the female market, even though 80 per cent of can drinkers are men.

The brilliant James Breheny, Carlton Draught's brand manager in the late eighties, still shares with me his bewilderment at how one pack change to a can helped throw in jeopardy three years of his tireless work. James had built a campaign called "Brewery Fresh" designed to bring customers back into hotel bars on the notion that the best way to enjoy a Carlton Draught was fresh on tap. After spending thousands of hours and dollars before finally watching his strategy working, one bright marketeer chose to label the Carlton Draught can as being as fresh as any beer from the brewery.

Careers have also been made by beer cans, including the marketeer in the UK who decided to put images of women on Tennent's cans in the 60s, and the genius from Guinness who invented the widget.

So much history and now the beer can enters the global market and computer age. An entire industry has been formed dedicated to collecting cans and beer memorabilia. Personalised eBay accounts, web site addresses and foreign contacts are now part and parcel of the can collector's network to achieve the impossible... collect every can of beer ever made!

All of this passion, all of this tension, all of this wonderful framework of Australian social history spun into cylinders and filled with beer. So I tell you, next time you are in a bottle shop, support the industry that has supported years of archived Australian history: buy just one can, consume it and place on your shelf.

In signing off I would like to make special mention of a great mate, Mr. Gary McNair (Victorian Division of the Australian Beer Can Collector's Association), for all his passion and support of collectors in Australia and abroad.

Should you wish to join one of Australia's most passionate beer clubs, the Australian Beer Can Collector's Association have a committee in every state of Australia. Join one, you know you can.

The Temple of Can

Neal Cameron stumbles upon a collection of 16,000 beer cans in Echuca, Northern Victoria, with a shed to match.

hob·by - noun: an activity or interest pursued for pleasure or relaxation and not as a main occupation.

ob·ses·sion - noun: the domination of one's thoughts or feelings by a persistent idea, image, desire, etc.

Beer. It's a pretty easy subject to get obsessed about, but you can't get away from the fact that there is more to the hold that beer has over us than simply alcohol. Our willingness to shell out ever-larger sums of money for specialist beers and the fact that Michael Jackson sold millions of books of what was essentially beer porn settles this without question.
Bearing all this in mind, entering the Great Aussie beer shed in Eucha, a pretty river port in north western Victoria, seems less like entering an obsessive's world. Instead, it allows you to simply marvel at the fact that another beer lover has allowed a hobby to grow unchecked and has consummated his love affair by building a shed, sorry, a Great Shed, to house his objects of desire.

No amount of pre-amble prepares you for walking into a 5,000 sq foot shed, and seeing 16,000 cans of beer lining the wall. It's overwhelming but the collection rewards a careful look with some of the earliest cans made dating back to 1934.
The rarest can, one of only six left in the world, is a can made to commemorate King George VI's coronation. You can rush up to date with a 1972 series of cans depicting AFL stars and enjoy the penguin shaped can made in Japan so as not to appeal to children. All drinkers with a little drinking history under their downward pointing belts will find a pang of nostalgia for some of the cans on show, no matter what their nationality.

Neil Thompson who has amassed this collection over the course of 30 years is a man at the top of his game when it comes to beer cans. He is the national president of those persons who collect beer cans, of which it would appear there are many. He has the wherewithal and energy to build an environment that showcases his collection well. For those with a broader interest in Australian history, there is no shortage of breweriana and Australiana on show as well. But it is the beer cans that make the journey worthwhile.

Neil will answer all your questions with the enthusiasm of someone that has not been asked the very same question a thousand times before. Yes, the cans are all empty, and no, he did not drink them all. One suspects, however, that a man with this much character must get his inspiration from somewhere?

Great Aussie Beer Shed
377 Mary Ann Road, Echuca
www.greataussiebeershed.com.au
(03) 5480 6904

Not Just Cans

Sometimes a can collector's fair isn't the place to secure the good stuff. Rabbie Dudgeon got out and got his hands dirty to find this prize.

Rabbie has been collecting old beer bottles on and off for 20 years and his collection currently stands at about 1,200, about 60 per cent of which are old Victorian "King Browns"  (1910 to 1950). He says they're a great long necked bottle, perfect for pouring. Some of his bottles even date back to the 1880s but he still uses them all for his home brewing.

Rabbie and a friend were in the Shepparton area and were directed to an old sawmill about 3 kilometres off the Shepparton - Euroa Road.

"We found the mill and after a while we found the sawdust pit where any empty bottles would have been chucked," he said.

"I used a steel probe about 1.5 metres long to push into the sawdust and see what could be found, after about 2 hours of probing and digging I had found 6 or 7 king browns.

"I was having a probe in another part of the pit when I found this bottle which to my amazement was full with the label intact.

Since I found it in about 1992 it has been in my brew shed and over the last couple of years I have tried to trace the brewery in England to get some idea of how it got to Australia and ended up where I found it."

Rabbie has so far been unsuccessful in his quest.

Hard To Put A Label On

by Tim Baker
When scanning a bottleshop's shelves to decide on a new beer to try there is no doubt that an eye catching label goes a long way. But for enthusiasts such as Rob Greenaway labels go much further than that.

Rob has been an employee of Carlton & United for over 40 years and has been president of the Victorian Beer Label Collectors Society for more than a decade.

Meeting once every two months the society boasts around 200 members, 60 per cent of those come from across Australia.

"There can be a whole range of reasons why you'd collect labels," says Rob. "But in my particular case I enjoy beer, I enjoy the different styles and I'm interested in brewing history."

Rob is predominantly attracted to Australian brewers, the history behind them and the development of the industry. For others pre-metric, international or specific microbrewery labels are highly sought after.

"Some will only collect labels from beer they've consumed," explains Rob. "There's some that only collect microbrewery labels and are interested in the emergence of the different breweries."

Rob maintains a vast collection of labels reaching into the thousands and keeps most in mint-condition. To do so, Rob says you must heat the bottle internally with boiling water thereby softening the label and making it easy to peel off.

As with anything collectible some labels have been known to become quite valuable over years especially those dating back almost 100 years.

"Some of them are quite expensive, particularly pre-war labels but it goes on rarity," Rob says. "They can be of some value ranging from one dollar to a couple of hundred dollars."

The society also receives support from the brewing industry by issuing new labels to members and in turn develops catalogues and provides historical facts that may have been previously overlooked.

"We can link into bottle collectors or label collectors and provide them with historical information that may be important to label design or legal type issues," adds Rob.

The Victorian society also runs a Label of the Year competition as voted by members of the society. Each year one major and one microbrewery is awarded, receiving a certificate with the winning label attached.
So, what characteristics does a label need to become Label of the Year?

"Artistic design, the novel approach by the brewer but that's more the micro side of things. In the major side the closer to an incoagulable design the better."

"Jamieson Brewery in North East Victoria make some magnificent labels. The other one is Beechworth Brewers with its Ned Kelly label that comes up very, very well. Boag's have done very well with their Honey Porter and Strong Arm over the years too."

Membership to the VBLCS is $20 a year with a $5 joining fee. Newsletters with 30-40 current labels from the main Australian breweries, Australian micros and a few overseas labels are distributed every two months between meetings.

For more information or to join check out www.vblcs.com . 

It can be tough putting your life on the line to find the best beer experiences in the world, but Wayne Dart braves the crowds of Carnaval to experience the best that Brazil has to offer...

Ah yes... Brazil.

Passionate, cheering hordes partying and dancing through the night; exotically spiced meats and incredibly tasty seafood served plentifully on huge platters; a multitude of stunning, curvaceous bronze skinned Latino ladies dancing upon yellow beaches in their skimpies... And then... beer! Yes beer!

The history of beer production in the region dates back around 4,000 years when the local folks began knocking up their brew from sweet potatoes. In the 1500s the Portuguese began drifting ashore bringing with them more refined brewing methods and more recently a large influx of German, Belgian, Dutch and French immigrants have set up camp, particularly after WWII, thus creating a market for European beers - in particular lighter German-style pilsners.

Brazil is the world's fourth largest beer producer with some 80 million barrels a year and it's a massive consumer due to the deeply entrenched festive and social lifestyle of its 186 million people. In the Brazilian Carnival period in particular, consumption skyrockets. It has been said that in those four days more beer is consumed than the total for the rest of the year! In November with the approach of summer, the manufacture and investment in marketing triples.

It's often hard when traveling abroad to find beer that is kept really cold - particularly in warmer countries like Indonesia, Mexico or in most of the Pacific Isles. But in visiting the shores of Brazil one of the most satisfying aspects of the beer drinking culture is that they will only lubricate their throats with close to sub zero amber fluid. It is for this reason their consumption customs are quite different to our own.

Where we drink from bottles, cans or larger draught beer-filled glasses, in Brazil the normal procedure is for everyone at the table to drink out of smallish 177ml (6oz) glasses - bit smaller than a middy - from the same long neck, which is delivered in a large Styrofoam cooler. This is done for two reasons: first, so that all the beer in the long neck can be savoured while it is ice cold; and second, so the sharing aspect can lend itself to more social interaction. When the long neck is empty the process is repeated with a new bottle coming straight from the fridge - time and time again. The bottles are called ‘longnecks' just like our own, although they pronounce it with a Portuguese twist: ‘long-i-neck-eh'.

Sometimes 350ml (12oz) cans called ‘latas' are available, but aren't seen all too often. You can get them at ‘blocos' (block parties) or at the funky beach bars which sit right on the sand in front of the waves, but realistically you should avoid them as they warm way too fast.

So what of the taste of their fine bubbly concoctions? With the heavy influence from Europe the majority of beers are pleasantly easy to drink, with most of the major brands being slightly similar, mostly light and mildy fruity. For those after a particularly bitter beer the common mass-produced brands like Brahma and Skol may seem a little bland, but search around for some of the increasingly popular micro-brewery produce and you will be very pleasantly surprised.

Keep an eye out for the Eisenbahn range of beers - probably the biggest microbrewer in Brazil. My pick would be the Pale Ale, which is an amber Belgian-style pale ale with mid-range bitterness and like other Brazilian beers has that typical citrusy and clovey hint.

We were fortunate enough to have this tasty treat served at a Brazilian BBQ held in a TV exec's house in Florianopolis that resembled something like the Playboy Mansion. We plonked ourselves at the full wet bar sat on the edge of a curved pool with waterfalls and diving boards and kicked back while Brazilian babes were swimming and sunning themselves to their heart's content (the Brazilians are definitely unashamed to flaunt their attributes). Meanwhile we nibbled on heavily spiced and incredibly succulent barbecued lamb, pork and beef served up in bite sized pieces, typical Brazilian barbie style. Beer Utopia had been found!

Another to go digging for is the Baden-Baden label. Our fave was the Red Ale, which is a very potable rich and creamy English-style Barley wine with a whopping 7.5% alcohol content. They also create the Baden-Baden Cristal - a light, delicate, mildly citrusy Pils with a nice lingering herbal taste. Baden-Baden is actually now being sold throughout the UK and the US and we hope that it finds its way here soon!

In the world of beer travels, Brazil is definitely a must-stop destination.

Host Your Own Brazilian Barbecue

If you can't get to Carnaval but still want to drink beer and sashay your night away, here's B&B's guide to hosting a Brazilian Barbeque...

To get started all you need are some large slabs of beef, lamb, chicken and pork, some salt and a marinade of your choice, why not throw in a Waldorf salad to boot. Next you'll need some large skewers and an open fire with a rotisserie rack or a BBQ with a rack built in.

• The beef isn't typically marinated like poultry and lamb, which are spiced with a rich marinade the night before cooking. The standard formula for Brazilian style barbecue is to coat meats in coarse salt. The meat sits for about 30 minutes to absorb the salt and then is placed over the fire. When cooked the salt blackens and crisps and the meat is sliced and presented with a hard outside and moist inside.
• All meats are places on long skewers and preferably cooked over an open fire. On the menu you can try prime rib, linguica (a Portuguese sausage), lamb kebabs, chicken legs, fish and a whole host of other dishes.
• When cooking using racks placed vertically over the fire, fattier items are placed on top so that the juices drip down and flavor the other cuts. 
• When the meats are cooked, carry the skewers around and carve off pieces onto plates. In a different groove to Aussie barbecues where large slabs of steak are gorged in one go, the Brazilians prefer to nibble and graze over a long period of time so that the person doesn't become bloated and lethargic from over eating.

How Alan Bond went bust in beer

by Paul Barry 

ALAN BOND is one of the few people in history who has gone bust owning a successful brewery. And he did it in style, setting a series of records as he did so.

At the end of the 1980s, his Bond Corporation chalked up the then largest loss in Australian corporate history, with a deficit of more than $1 billion. Soon afterwards, it disappeared into a $5 billion black hole and smashed the record for Australia's biggest corporate collapse.

Not long after that, Alan himself scored the world's second-biggest bankruptcy, with personal debts of $600 million, on which creditors were eventually forced to settle for 1/6th of one cent in the dollar. And finally, at the end of the 1990s, he romped away with the title of Australia's top fraudster, pleading guilty to depriving the shareholders of Bell Resources of no less than $1.2 billion.

Bond's meteoric rise to fame began with his America's Cup victory in 1983, which gave him entry to almost every bank and boardroom in the world. Until then, Bond Corporation had not even been one of the top 100 companies in Australia. But from that moment on, his ship sailed full speed ahead, burning billions of dollars of Other People's Money as it went. In the next six years Bond's businesses grew 20 fold, and his debts multiplied to match. He bought gold mines, airships, a telephone company and property by the truckload. He paid Kerry Packer $1 billion for the Channel 9 TV network and lashed out millions on satellite broadcasting in the UK. He bought paintings, diamonds, yachts, farms, stately homes and even an English village. Indeed, just about anything that caught his fancy.

And, strangely enough, it was Australia's beer drinkers who were expected to foot the bill. The cash from the breweries that his companies bought in the 1980s was supposed to pay the interest on the $12 billion of bank loans and junk bonds that his companies raised to finance these deals.

Bond borrowed heavily to buy Western Australia's Swan Brewery in 1981, and made a success of it. But he didn't hit the big time in beer until 1985, when he captured Castlemaine Tooheys for $1.2 billion, in the biggest corporate takeover Australia had ever seen. The nerve of it was amazing: Castlemaine was four times the size of Bond Corporation, which was paying three times the market price for its shares. And Bond was doing it all on borrowed money, with a $1 billion bank loan from the Hong Kong Shanghai Bank. But it was a great deal, all the same. It gave Bond Brewing almost half the Australian beer market, with a near monopoly in both Queensland and WA and an iron grip on the drinkers of NSW.

From this position of strength there was really nothing that could go wrong, provided Bond looked after his customers and exercised a little patience in his plan to conquer the world. As any beer drinker knows, people keep drinking in good times and bad. There is no easier way to make money than to own a brewery.

But patience was never Bond's strong suit. Nor was restraint. So instead of reducing his mountain of debt, he set off on a huge spending spree. And instead of wooing his customers, he did just about everything he could to turn them away. He also managed to alienate the very people he relied on to sell his beer.

In Queensland, almost the first thing to be done was the removal of the iconic XXXX sign on the company's Milton brewery which was replaced with one saying ‘Bond Brewing'. Adding insult to injury, the XXXX label was redesigned so that ‘Bond Brewing' and ‘WA' appeared on the cans. Meanwhile, the brewery's loyal hoteliers were squeezed, having their free credit period reduced from 30 days to 7. And doing it just before Christmas when they needed the money most. "It nearly sent a lot of people to the wall," according to Bernie Power, who ran a string of Brisbane hotels. "We had done business with that company for fifty-odd years, and they did it without so much as a phone call or a letter."

The people who sold Bond's beer were understandably furious. And Power himself was so angry he set up his own brewery in competition. The banks laughed at him at first, but he got the media on his side and within a year had carved out a 10% share of the Queensland beer market. He then set about attacking NSW, where Bond's actions were doing even more damage to his Tooheys brand.

In an effort to extract $30 million more profit out of the business, Bond Brewing was trying to throw 130 Tooheys leaseholders out of their pubs without paying any compensation. The lease agreements suggested it had the legal right to do this, but Tooheys had always assured its hoteliers that the clause meant nothing. It had also encouraged them to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on buying the leases and improving their pubs, and had assured them they had security of tenure. Many of these leaseholders were now faced with losing their livelihood and their entire life savings. One tenant who had sunk a $400,000 payoff from the railways into his pub was told that his time was up and he had to leave. "You mean, you're telling me I'm wiped out?" he asked. "That is correct," came the reply, "you made a commercial decision and you take the consequences."

Reg and Joan Lynch, who owned the Pymble Hotel on Sydney's north shore, were typical of the people whom Bond Brewing was putting in the firing line. They had bought a run-down pub and spent a huge amount of money and time on renovations and building up the business. And although they weren't the first to be given notice to quit, the Lynches knew their number would soon come up.

In the weeks after the brewery made its move, Reg Lynch became more and more convinced they would lose everything, and more and more depressed. Then one evening he slipped out of the pub and didn't come home. The next day, the police asked whether he was the type who would take his own life. It hadn't even crossed their minds, his wife told them. He was a family man, it would be totally out of character. They found Reg later that day. He had checked into a local hotel, put a plastic bag over his head and drawn it tight, suffocating himself to death.

The lawyers agreed on a form of words for Joan to give the stream of reporters who soon came knocking on the door. She was not allowed to say that the battle over the pub had killed Reg Lynch, but it had been a "major contributory factor". The other Tooheys leaseholders, who had by now formed an action group and raised $2 million to battle for their leases in the courts, had no doubt that the pressure had driven him to suicide.

The courts didn't reach a decision on the Tooheys case until the end of 1987, 18 months after the first evictions were mooted, but it was worth the wait and worry. The brewery's right to terminate the leases was upheld, but it was ordered that the pub owners must be compensated at current market value. Joan Lynch and her children were there to hear the verdict and join in the tears.

Even then, Tooheys refused to give up the fight. Some of the ringleaders in the Tooheys Leaseholders Action Group then received notices to quit, on the basis that the Brewery wanted to manage their pubs. Several were offered only half what they reckoned their pubs were worth in compensation. And so began another long period of uncertainty and distress. But the leaseholders finally won the battle in 1989 when Bond's business empire ran out of cash and the notices were withdrawn.

As interest rates rose to 18 per cent, property prices dived and Bond's house of cards began to collapse, the breweries in Australia were about the only part of Bond Corporation still making money. But even they couldn't earn enough to keep the entire ship afloat, not least because they were in much worse shape than when he had acquired them.

When Bond Brewing was finally sold to Lion Nathan in September 1990 its share of the Australian beer market had dropped to 37%, from 45% five years earlier. In New South Wales, Tooheys had suffered an even worse fall in market share, from 60% to 40% in the short time that Bond had owned it.

In 1987, Bond had also bought himself a big brewery in the USA, an old Wisconsin firm started in the mid-1800s by Gottlieb Heilemann. This company lost market share too, and became so loaded up with debt that it had to file for bankruptcy protection in 1990. Eventually, it was sold to rival brewer Stroh for about a quarter of what Bond had paid for it.

A great dealmaker he may have been - when the market was rising - but Bond was never much cop at running the businesses he acquired. And surely no one can have gone bust running a brewery TWICE!

Beer, business and brewing in the 80s

by Matt Kirkegaard 

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