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Australian Beer Special

Thus, Let Us Drink Beer! Part 2

The people behind Kaiju! Beer love their hops.

As in, they like to wade in it knee deep and max it out when it comes to brewing their beers.

As the name “Kaiju” suggests, they also harbour a weak spot for Japanese popular culture, i.e. movies, and, if you would like to consult the accompanying picture gallery depicting the designs of their bottles and cans, monsters.

Their beers have amassed accolades from International Beer and other Craft Beer Awards, first still under the banner of Monster Mash before an energy drink company put its foot down and demanded their moniker to change.

The aforementioned designs stem from New York based artist Mikey Burton, who takes Kaiju brewers’ concepts and translates them into appealing and intricate artwork, thematically heavily inspired by Japanese movies and with monsters, with detailed features and intricate allusions, being the main protagonists and an underlying bigger, ever evolving narrative.

East 9th Brewing is another brewery you want to check out if you are remotely interested in quality brews and related products.

Their lager Doss Blockos has its focus laser-like aimed at the essentials: Pale malt and cascade hops. Natural in character and with well-calibrated bitterness – the result is that with its crispness, it goes down quite easily.

Lick Pier is East 9th Brewing dry alcoholic Ginger Beer.

Yup, alcoholic Ginger Beer, you’ve read that right -- it was a first for me as well.

With 4.0% ABV, it is at the lower end of the alcoholic spectrum and meant to be as it was designed to be a warm-weather drink.

Fog City is East 9th Brewing’s cider, a bittersweet yet fruity and cloudy one at that mixing apples and pears with 6.0% ABV.

Fog City clean Red Sangria has a distinctive vigor and is made from the ripest of red wine grapes and blended with natural citrus fruit flavours.

Future Memoirs Of A Root Beer is an exercise in employing of casting the gaze forward to reminisce the present and past. Another alcoholic root beer, this time incorporating more exotic flavour notes like sassafras, vanilla and cinnamon. Not an uninteresting alternative to regular beers.

Enter Dainton Brewing:

Family owned, awards decorated and a living and breathing ode to passionate beer brewing.

Dainton Brewing’s limited emissions are liquid things of beauty, starting with the intricately designed, quirky and often sinister artwork that adorns the cans, which are based on close collaborations with local artists, via the names to their at times daringly exotic brews.

Let’s have a look at some of the ones we sampled:

The American Pale Ale is their take on the classic APA. 5.2% alcohol with a hoppy, full of flavour with great citrus notes dominating nuances of bitterness and malt.

The insane Uncle IPA is as interesting as it sounds: The underpinning idea is that the aroma is meant to be reminiscent of the pungent smell the creepy behaviour of your uncle emits. It is quite something…copper in colour, ABV of 6.0% with citrus flavours prominent amidst a dank stank.

A personal favourite is their pilsner, the Classic Draught, which is something that would be welcomed with open arms in German Bierzelten with subtle flavours of malt an extremely drinkable brew.

The Saffron in My Rye Belgian IPA is a play on a spicy Belgian strain of yeast, notes of pepper derived from the rye component and a hint of gloves and bubblegum as well as coriander seeds that enter a nice mélange with hoppy citrus notes.

Fluorescent in colour, this one is as exciting as the description of the flavour notes suggest.

The whopper of Dainton’s brews that have been sampled is the Rum-Soaked Belgian Quad. As the name hints at, it is a quadruple style Belgian ale with a whopping 11.2% ABV.

This one is something you can spend a good portion of an evening with as indulging in the prominent dark fruit and caramel notes that are flanked by the complexity of raisins that have been soaked in rum.

Sounds exquisite? You have no idea...

Rebellion Brewing

Making a virtue out of a necessity: After founder John O’Brien of the operation discovered he had coeliac disease in 1998, which would have put an abrupt end to his relationship with beer, and his quest for a gluten-free variety not being crowned with success, he started brewing his own all-natural gluten free beer, with no colourings or preservatives.

Fast forward to 2005 after a stint of trials and errors, along with finding an investor, and O’Brien Beer, a gluten free beer is born and an Australian first at that. The operation morphed two years later into Rebellion Brewing – a nod to its Ballarat roots.

The brewery is specially fitted with customised equipment, some expertly designed externally to enable the seamless production of quality gluten free brews:

My favourite of the range is the full-bodied, naturally craft-brewed, premium lager with its nice aroma that is accentuated by floral notes, not lacking the bitterness that transitions to a clean crisp finish.

O’Brien’s Pale Ale offers an abundance of citrus flavours, fruit notes of the tropical kind on a basis of not overwhelming sweetness.

O’Brien’s Brown Ale established itself in the tradition of a European dark ale with hints of chocolate and caramel kept in check with opposing spicey roasty flavours.

Australian Brewery

A telling name, the Hunter Valley based microbrewery has its priorities firmly established: Purity, freshness and Australian ingredients.

Australian Brewery’s New World Pilsener is a with an ABV of 4.8% is a brew in the tradition of the pilsners of Germany with their crispiness yet comes with the added twist that the spicy hops from New Zealand and the citrus aroma of American hops add to the mix.

Seis Hermanos Lager is a refreshing lager in the Mexican tradition brewed with liberty hops and maize, which gives it a clean, light palate that is rounded out with lemony and citrusy notes.

AB’s Australian Pale Ale with an ABV of 4.8% is inspired by the Australian pacific pale ale style enriched with aromas of citrus and passionfruit derived from galaxy hops.

The All Star Session IPA is on the light side in terms of alcohol content yet an over-the-top exhibition of American hops in a beer that is borderline imposing, yet sessionable in the extreme.

Australian Brewery also does cider: Their Fresh Press Cider with an ABV of 4.7% could have been brewed in England’s West Country, with its fine balance of sweet apple and crisp dryness, the locally sourced Australian apples being fermented just hours after pressing, providing a fresh and aromatic flavour experience.

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Read Part 1 of Thus, Let Us Drink Beer! -- Belgian special here

The Daily Grind

What's Sumatra With You? -- Part 2

Hello from where the cold things are, i.e. the neither regions of arctic Norway.

I quite like hiking as it is the ultimate way to explore the countryside of new territory and immerse yourself in the local culture.

It is cold up here, as in -10 Celsius and steaming, caffeine-fortified black gold has become a source of life, with the brewing process having become a daily ritual.

There is something that comes with nature that adds to the pleasures of sipping coffee.

Now, I am camping, not glamping, i.e. I packed light. While I tend to go minimalist while hiking, instant coffee is not an option as it just doesn’t feel / taste right and hardly constitutes the “ritual” I described earlier.

Neither is tossing the coffee ground into a pot nor creating a toilet paper coffee filter and hoping for the best.

I bring my Killer Coffee gear: An AeroPress that is reminiscent of a big syringe and allows for a quick brew using ground coffee:

Heat it up, add coffee, stir and press for about thirty seconds.

Yup, you guessed it – it tastes a bit more like espresso as you apply pressure. Fast, convenience and brewing the grounds with full immersion with the emission being grit-free.

Now, I also like to mix it up, which is when the cold drip coffee maker makes its appearance: Light in weight, all you need is a filter, coffee grounds and H2O and boom – you got a good ole cuppa going.

With the way Killer Coffee treats its Arabica while beans, they somehow manage to create a balance that is smooth and enjoyable yet kicking your butt and never missing to give an appropriate jolt in the caffeine department – be it with their regular or their new, more intense Darkerside blend.

An aromatic source of energy that kicks like an energy drink on steroids.

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Check out installment one of this feature here.

The Moulin Rouge experience

Féerie!

Paris, France

March 24, 2018

(Photo by Francis TheBlueRoom)

Well, well – even if you are not familiar with the real thing, chances are that even your mother is familiar with Baz Luhrmann’s musical romantic comedy Moulin Rouge from 2001, which is based on the French institution set against the Montmarte quarter of Paris, France, the large hill (before it was Gallicized, the name was derived from Lain “Mons Martis”, i.e. “the mount of mars”) in Paris’ eighteenth arrondisement.

Once in Montmarte, you can see the red windmill of the spiritual birthplace of the can-can dance, i.e. high kicks. Cartwheels and splits galore, from far off.

Féerie! Is the current show at Moulin Rouge and one that proves difficult to see as every single show sells out and that is for a good reason as the components that go into each performance are quite something:

Féerie! is comprised of a troupe of eight artists, including sixty dancers, i.e. the graceful Doriss Girls recruited from around the globe with them sporting over one thousand traditional sumptuous revealing costumes of feathers, rhinestones and sequins, created in Parisian workshops serenaded by a soundtrack that was recorded by eighty musicians and sixty chorus singers and set against formidable fin de siècle stage sets that are informed by the cultural exuberance of the belle épogue.

(Photo by S.Bertrand)

Moulin Rouge in 2018 is the epitome of French musical, cabaret and dance tradition which has effortlessly survived multiple tests of time with carefully calibrated and executed entertainment on a big scale, making use of every inch of the stage and beyond. A tableau of colourful costumes, beautiful dancers and exotic stage sets with attention to detail unfolds as you sit back and enjoy the proceedings with a bottle of champagne.

Now, I mentioned that use is made of every inch of the theatre and I was not exaggerating: We are talking the stage transforming itself into a pool with huge, live snakes, dwarf ponies parading the stage, elaborate acrobatics, comedy and aerial acts, some of which are reminiscent and would not be out of place within the confines of more elaborate Cirque du Soleil performances.

While there might be the notion that Moulin Rouge is a tacky dance show, it could not be further from the truth: The acts are tantalizing yet classy and there is nothing sleazy about them.

There is equal gender opportunity when it comes to the performances, with both male and female dancers putting on performances for everyone to enjoy and the enjoyment the constituents are radiating translating seamlessly to the audience.

A visually impressive, tasteful and entertaining celebration of life that despite its grand scale caliber does not feel fabricated and should be experienced at least once a lifetime!

(Photo by S.Bertrand)

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Photos provided

Casper David Friedrich

Johannes Grave

Prestel

One would not be far off the mark by claiming that Casper David Friedrich’s oeuvre encapsulates the DNA of German romanticism. While his paintings are inextricably hardwired to the German psyche and books on CDF are manifold, Johannes Grave’s tackles the theme from an interesting new angle as he connects the artistic emissions with Friedrich’s biography and thereby skillfully contextualizes the works of one of the most prominent representatives of pre-modernism.

With his background as the Associate Director at the Centre Allemand d’Histoire de l’Art in Paris, Grave’s insightful approach offers a different view and substantiates his expositions with facts and not falling prey to the notion that he would be able to decipher the enigmas and mysticism that lay buried at their core.

As Friedrich’s work got progressively darker and apocalyptic, Grave outlines it as a haunting omen – Friedrich seems to have become acutely aware of the gloom and doom he was to encounter and the fact that he rarely left the confines of his studio and mainly painted by relying on his imagination and memory adds another dimension to the weight of his paintings and elevates his unique status even further.

The tome is opulently, impressively and comprehensively illustrated, with many reproductions that are not part of previous monographs on Friedrich, an artist who perfectioned the art of making transcendent illusions feel like reality and vice versa.

If your library cannot do without a book on an otherwordly artist this is the one to get.

Wim Wenders

Instant Stories

Thames & Hudson Publishing

Neues deutsches Kino on the world stage has more or less become synonymous with the filmmaker Wim Wenders, who is also a prolific photographer whose exhibitions have graced galleries the world over, from Paris to New York, Shanghai to Sydney.

If you are a friend of Wenders’ photography and familiar with his oeuvre, you might want to adjust your expectation a tad as Instant Stories is focused on his personal Polaroid collection he presented at London’s Photographer’s Gallery.

The collection covers the last five decades and depicts his comrades, mentors, celebrities, everymen, odd and not so odd objects, situations, places, et cetera from Wim Wenders’ personal life.

A documentary of sorts devoid of themes and accompanied merely by short essays or haikus.

The book is mainly for the die-hard Wim Wenders aficionado who is interested in the genesis of his hero, his development and evolution.

Wenders would probably be the first to admit that it is deliberately pedestrian and “alltäglich” and not necessarily created with an overly artistic approach – in other words: There are none of Wenders’ opulently orchestrated grandiose and beautiful photographs of vernacular architecture.

Now, it can be argued if Polaroid photographs bear any merit at all or if it is more of a note-taking device.

Apparently Wenders discovered the depicted Polaroids in an old wooden cigar box, which explains the deterioration of some of the photos and one at times cannot help but wonder what motivated Wenders to publish them.

What does make the book interesting are the accompanying texts and Wenders’ thoughtful, narrative voice.

Not essential but certainly a nice addition for any Wim Wenders’ enthusiast and completist.