Infusions, Day 14

I have finally bottled all 6 infusions that I started with. The lime infused Havana Club had to be thrown out in the end, as it actually tasted worse after being bottled. Photos of the finished products will go up later

The first infusion that got checked was the pineapple Malibu. I was amazed at how well this has turned out. There is a clear taste of pineapple, with an obvious, but not substantial, flavour of coconut still there. There is a slight yellow colour to it, but not urine yellow. I tried this with a friend the day after I bottled it and we both agreed it had worked to a tee. I also decided to save the fruit from this one, on the grounds that it could be good for a frozen pina colada or some other sort of pineapple based drink.

Next one that was tried was the plum vodka. This one has taken a substantial amount of the colour of the plum with it, providing a deep purple colour to it. There is a subtle scent of plum to it and the vodka has absorbed the taste substantially, with very little vodka kick to it. I'm not sure what I can use it for, but I'll cross that bridge when I come to it. The infused plums have been kept, as I'm sure there could be really delicious later on.

Thirdly, the cherry vodka. This has also given a good dark colour, and has a distinct cherry nose to it. Interestingly, there is a slight bitterness on the back of the tongue on this one and I'm not sure where it comes from. I've decided to keep the cherries for this as well, but no more frozen infused fruit will be available until later on.

Next came the apricot vodka. I'm not entirely happy with this. While the flavour has been absorbed into the vodka, there is not as much to it as I would have liked. The smell of the apricot is clearly there, as is the colour, but I'm not quite happy with it. I may re-jar it for a further infusion or perhaps add some sugar to it.

The white flesh nectarine vodka was next. This is one that I am also considering putting back into a jar for some further infusion. This may need a little bit of sugar to enhance the flavour although doing that runs the risk of tipping the result the other way.

Finally, the apple and rhubarb Bundaberg rum has been bottled. This one definitely needs to go back into the jar, because while there is not much Bundy flavour left, I can't tell what the new flavour is. I'm thinking about introducing dried apple and some stewed rhubarb when I re-jar it.

All is not lost though, as I have commenced 5 new infusions. Specific details of each one will be revealed in due course, but I can say that I have started

• pineapple and vanilla infused Jose Cuervo (gold)
• honey, lemon and ginger Bacardi
• lime and palm sugar Skyy
• mengel date Jack Daniels
• coconut Bundaberg Rum

More information as it comes to hand, but next time, a review on the bottled St Arnou Pilsner

Infusions, Day 9

On Day 7, I opted to remove and replace all the fruit in my infusions, with a view to possibly bottling some of them. However, none of the remaining 5 infusions at the time were ready to be bottled, so all the fruit was replaced.

In the case of the apple and rhubarb Bundaberg Rum, I slightly cooked the rhubarb with some palm sugar. I have subsequently learnt that this is not the way to cook rhubarb, however I opted to put the slightly cooked rhubarb and the palm sugar in the rum anyway. I have also put in a stick of cinnamon. I expect to pull that out sooner rather than later.

Finally, I begun another infusion, pineapple in Malibu. Several sources have indicated that the combination of pineapple and coconut would work well, and since rum works well with both, I figured I would give it a shot. A whole pineapple was cut into slices and put into the infusing jar, before having about 500mL of Malibu added to the jar. That has now been sealed and put in a dark cupboard.

More information to follow.

Infusions, Day 5

Last night after consuming 3 Little Creatures Bright Ale stubbies (that review will take place later), I decided it was high time to see how my infusions were going.

None of the vodka infusions were even close to being ready. The plum one is close, but everything else still tastes too much like vodka.

The apple and rhubarb Bundy has lost much of its Bundy harshness, but still has a little on the back of the tongue. I couldn't quite pick the flavour (possibly because after 3 beers and 4 half shots I wasn't in the best frame of mind, so I'm leaving that in there at the moment. A work colleague suggested throwing in a toffee or a caramel to dissolve in there, to give it a more pie/crumble flavour to it, which is something I'm not prepared to discard at this point.

Unfortunately, it appears that the lime Havana Club can be classed a fail. It has developed an oily flavour to it, probably because I left the pith of the lime in the mix. Infusion experts would have told me to take the pith out, but this was my first time and I didn't know any better. I have bottled it anyway, listing it as a possible fail. It may be good for mixing with something sweet in a cocktail, but I may have to simply chuck it.

More updates to come.

My first steps into the world of infusing alcohol

Now, I'm sure we've all seen the bars around town that serve their own infused vodkas. The Llama Bar in Subiaco, for example, have long had a number of infused spirits like their wasabi vodka. The Universal Bar in Northbridge is well known for its cocktail enthusiasts behind the bar, with infusions such as Vanilla infused tequila and white rum, chilli tequila, orange rum and chocolate vodka.

I figured I'd give it a shot for a couple of reasons.

1. It would mean that I'd have people over for drinks at my place rather than actually going out and spending $150+... therefore a cheaper and possibly more enjoyable experience
2. I've always wanted to give it a go.

So with my 3 Vintage Cellars Cellar Shares, I purchased 3 bottles of Skyy Vodka and a bottle of Bundaberg Rum. I also had a bottle of Havana Club Blanco Rum in my liquor cabinet to play with.

After buying the spirits, I had to work out what I was going to infuse them with. Consequently, I went to some nearby markets and purchased

• 500g of dark cherries
• 500g of plums (the really nice ones with the dark skin and the yellow flesh)
• 500g of white flesh nectarines
• 500g of apricots (not the really juicy ones, these were harder)

This was followed by a trip to the supermarket where I purchased

• 3 sticks of rhubarb
• 4 Pink Lady apples
• 2 Coconuts
• 6 Limes

I also bought six 1 litre jars to put everything in.

When I got home, I unpacked all the jars and cleaned them out. I then got to cutting up the various fruits I had purchased.

The first stumbling block was the coconuts. Living in an inner city apartment does not lend itself to needing to own a cleaver and I was not particularly willing to throw the coconuts on the floor to get the flesh out, so I put those aside.

The coconuts were to infuse with the Bundaberg rum, however the purchase of the apples and rhubarb gave me an idea of infusing these with the Bundy.

I chopped the three sticks of rhubarb into small pieces and likewise the 2 apples. I then put them in the jar, trying to ensure that there was a roughly even distribution of apple and rhubarb throughout the jar. I then poured about 600mL of the Bundy into the jar and sealed it up.

So that was one jar down, 5 to go. I then reached for the cherries. I threw all the stalks away and then commenced pulling the cherries apart to remove the pits. I figured that I needed the vodka to get to the flesh of the cherries and the pits would not add to the flavour, possibly removing from it. Half a kilo of cherries is a lot and soon I had a lovely pool of cherry juice on the chopping board along with about a half a jar of opened cherries in a jar. I used about 500 mL of Skyy vodka, and the jar was promptly sealed.

I looked at the limes and decided that this was the time for the Havana Club to enter the equation. I chopped all the limes in half, and then sliced them into fairly substantial chunks. The whole lot went into the jar and I used close to 650 mL of Havana Club over the top before it was sealed.

The apricots were easy to separate. They could be pulled apart easily and then chopped up into chunks. I finished off the first bottle of Skyy and poured about a third of the second bottle in to finish covering the apricots and sealing up the jar.

The plums were probably the most challenging to chop up. You can't cut them in half and separate them like you would an apricot, and the flesh sticks to the pit very easily. After about 10 minutes I had defeated the 5 plums and then poured the rest of the second bottle of Skyy over the plums and a little bit of the third (final bottle).

The white flesh nectarines were easy to cut. By this stage I had worked out that I could simply cut around the pit and then make small slices in and around the pit to maximise the amount of fruit that went into the jar. The last of the Skyy vodka was polished off and sealed.

All 6 bottles have been in a dark cupboard above the main cupboard. I intend on opening them all on Saturday to see how they are progressing.

Future infusions are being considered, like a pineapple and vanilla tequila, a rambutan and yuzu vodka and a date Jack Daniels. Any other opinions are welcome.

See you later :)

James Boag's Classic Blonde

Tasting notes according to the bottle: A full bodied blonde style lager. 4.5% alcohol. Classic Blonde has less than a third of the carbohydrates of standard beers. With signature Boag's flavour, this full strength blonde lager is full bodied with a crisp clean finish.

My own opinion: It's not as bitter as James Boags Premium, which I always like. It smells kind of fruity but nothing particularly special. There's certainly not a lot of grunt to it, and while it is described as having a crisp clean finish, I think that means that the average mug punter can drink it without having too much to complain about. It's got a normal sort of beer colour, definitely consistent with pilsners and traditional lagers.

My rating: A few pints... certainly not something I would drink all night unless it was cheap.

The Perth International Beer Festival = Epic Fail

To those of you that went to the Perth International Beer Festival over the weekend of the 10th and 11th of January, you would have realised that it was shit!!! This is a letter I emailed to the organisers of the event on Monday 12 January

To Alek and Lisa,

I must start by saying that I went to the International Beer Festival on Saturday afternoon and was most disappointed with what I saw.

If the Belgian Beer Cafe, Bobby Dazzlers, the Lucky Shag and the Brass Monkey were all full by 6pm on a Saturday afternoon, full of people who had LEFT the festival, then this is a poor indication of the ability of the festival to operate. Even the Paddington Ale House had a larger Saturday night trade than usual, because people wanted to be able to drink a quality beer that they hadn’t tried before. I spoke to about 50 people after leaving the festival and I did not hear a single positive thing about it.

I’m going to raise a number of issues in this email, detailing what was wrong with the festival and how to improve it in the future.

1. The location – Langley Park was a bad spot to have the festival to start with. If you had held it in the Supreme Court Gardens or the Esplanade, it would have been much easier for people to get to AND it would not have been anywhere as easy to dissuade people from going on the walk back to the public transport.
2. The Lines to get in – If you are expecting thousands of people to turn up to a festival such as this, it would have been a lot easier for you to separate out the 6 entry points from the line to purchase your tickets. I waited in the line for 30 minutes just to get in the door
3. Range of beers – An International Beer Festival needs to feature beers from all over the world. Mauritius, Germany and the United Kingdom does not make an International Beer Festival, it makes an outdoor pub. Further to that, I did not see any Jarrah Jacks at any of the stalls on Saturday. Where were all the other Western Australian microbreweries? There was no Little Creatures, no Gage Roads, no Nail, no Matso’s, no Duckstein, no Elmars; the list goes on and on. It is clear that the Brewers Association was not brought into the loop until much too late and whatever deal that was offered to them by you was not good enough to get the breweries on board.
4. The amount of beer/supplies – There is absolutely no excuse for running out of beer at a beer festival. While this did not happen to me, I have friends of mine who I met later that evening who waited for a warm beer in a plastic cup topped up with ice. This is an absolute disgrace.
5. The Lines to get a drink – There was no way people should be waiting up to 90 minutes for a beer that they could get at the pub. For a beer festival to operate properly there should be enough tents or alcohol outlets to ensure that people can actually get a beer and walk away.
6. The tastings – What happened to the advertised “drink tasting tickets starting at $1”? I certainly didn’t see any of these and no-one I spoke to found them either.
7. The rides – What was the purpose of having the rides there? I know this was supposed to be a family event, but for goodness sakes, it felt more like a school fete than a beer festival. When there are more stalls for generic fete-like products than beer stalls, then you can’t call it a beer festival.
8. The entertainment – This should have been a no-brainer. If you are going to put on girls in bikinis as part of a fashion show, you don’t put them on first, and you certainly don’t put 13 and 14 year old girls on stage at a beer festival. Why do you think all the men that flocked to the stage for the swimsuit section moved away as quickly as possible once the girls that opened the Christmas pageant got on stage? This was a very poor choice of entertainment. A number of modelling agencies and fashion outlets could have been called upon for this portion of the festival and would have provided much better entertainment.
9. The “family event” – I don’t care what you say, a beer festival is not for children. If you had not approached it as a family event and instead tried to pitch it in the same vein as a wine festival or Spring in the Valley, then you may have had more beer tents.

The lesson that you need to learn from this is that if you are going to run an international beer festival, you need to be consulting with the Brewers Association right from the beginning, rather than bringing them in after you have most things organised.

The Fremantle Beer Festival held in 2006 was an enormous success featuring a large number of breweries, a big range of beers, good quality bands and entertainment, places to sit, a good range of food. I have heard rumours of the return of the Fremantle Beer Festival and if that is the case, I sincerely hope that people’s experiences from the weekend do not detract from the possibility of an actually good beer festival in the future.

Let me know what you think of it. I've already posted this on a number of websites and my own personal Facebook account

Sorry about the long wait, to all our fan (fans?).

Essentially, not long after I proposed this blog to my fellow judges, we all went our separate ways... myself out of hospitality, two others to other positions within the industry and the last one went to London.

Which essentially leaves me as the sole arbiter of this beer review site.

Never fear, because I am going to resume that important post BUT I will not just be discussing beer. I will talk about all things alcohol, so one post may be about a particular bourbon I tried, or some infusions I'm experimenting with, or that crappy beer festival last weekend.

Anyhow, I'm still here and will still be writing when I get the time.

Thanks all