Beer - Christmas Beer Cheer & Beer Bargains at Biero

I am currently in the final week of a dry month...for the sake of regaining my peak health and fitness in the lead up to Summer...so my beery-ness has been non-existent for the last 3 weeks.

Nonetheless, I have been keeping a close eye on the many many goings-on around Australia's craft beer scene, which is close to overflowing (relatively...for Australia) with exciting new developments in breweries and products. Next year will be thrilling for all beer lovers!

For the more immediate future, my wife and I have been planning our Christmas Day, which will revolve around beer and food. All the food will be cooked with beer and then matched with a drinking beer. We are calling it "A Very Beery Christmas".

Over the last year my wife has really embraced cooking with beer. She even had her Belgian dubbel braised chicken recipe published recently on The Crafty Pint website (see Beer & Food: Double Trouble Chicken).

And now, using what she has learned from her beer cooking experimentation at home, she has created a 3-course Christmas Lunch that will use beer in every element, as well as starting the day with beer pancakes!

The centre piece of the day will be a bogan-rrific "beer-can-chicken", where a whole chicken is roasted with an open can of beer inside it.

Unfortunately, there are currently no Australian craft beers available in 375ml cans, so we will be capitalising on the Aussie bbq bogan-ness of a beer can chicken concept by using the iconic-but-I-will-not-drink-these-days-by-choice VB.

However, if you do know of a better canned beer choice, which is readily available in the Melbourne area, please let me know!

(I'll detail the full menu and the results in a review post after Christmas.)

My job for the day is to find and supply beers that will match each course. Currently, I'm leaning towards using the Red Hill Bohemian Pilsner, the Bridge Road Galaxy Single Hop IPA and the Red Hill Christmas Ale (for dessert).


In other awesome news that demands shouting about...Melbourne's Biero Bar has announced a brilliant Wednesday night deal of $5 Pints for all of their tap beers! HELLO!!

After successfully trialling the concept this week, the Biero team have decided to make it a permanent Wednesday night feature.

A pint of beer for $5 is a super bargain ANYWHERE. However, a pint of the high quality, small batch, craft beers that you find on tap at Biero Bar is an incredible deal!

This is brilliant news for the craft beer scene, as it makes some incredible, innovative and inspiring brews very affordable and attractive to everyone. Hopefully it will go a long way to creating many new craft beer converts, as the deal entices macro-lager drinkers to try something different.

I also hope that it will help demonstrate the separation between the unhealthy and antisocial issues of binging on commercial-driven macro lagers and bland beers from the appreciation and enjoyment of flavoursome craft beers which, in my experience, do not evoke the drunken excess and misbehaviour that had given beer drinking a bad reputation (or maybe that's to do with the quality of people drinking the beers...?).

Yes, I encourage/recommend all to drop into Biero Bar on Wednesdays for a hump day beer. I plan to take advantage of this bargain for the first time next Wednesday, on the day I break my dry patch and following the U2 concert, which is happening just down the road at Etihad Stadium. rock.

Learn more at "Five Dollar Pints at Biero" on The Crafty Pint or follow the Biero Bar Twitter.