The third annual Canberra Beer Week was on this week, with about 50 events across the city. One of the standout events will be the Beer Day Out this weekend at the old Kingston bus depot, which will showcase more than 30 Australian and international craft breweries – more than enough to satisfy both the casual stubbie drinker and the full-blown craft beer and microbrew enthusiast.
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My own tastes seem to be able to accommodate most varieties apart from pale ales, but in recent times I've found myself returning to old favourites like Reschs and Toohey's Old which might put me at odds with the trend setters, but I'm well used to that.
I enjoy the beer menu at BentSpoke but sometimes it is good to order a beer without having to think too much about it. This is how it worked in the old days when you would rock up to the ANU Bar to check out a gig and take comfort in the fact that the Carlton Draught tap would be running cold just as it did the day before and the day before that.
I have spent many local gigs standing patiently in beer queues, only wincing if the band on stage launched into a favourite song while I was stuck staring at the back of someone's head. I would occasionally purchase two beers to keep me going but found the plastic cups more difficult to manoeuvre through tightly packed people than the glass variety and more than once the contents of a cup would end up on somebody's T-shirt – not good if it happened to be vintage.
I've also stood in beer queues at gigs around the country and there must be something quite special about that amber fluid to keep me coming back. I've drunk beer at flashy nightclubs whose generic electronic music was so horrible I had to keep drinking to cope with it. I've consumed tasty beverages from some dude standing behind a milk crate that functioned as a bar top while a local punk band played on a suburban oval, and I've stood in a kilometre long line at the Sydney Big Day Out in the full summer sun while missing the hottest moments from the likes of Sonic Youth and the Smashing Pumpkins.
The best beer queue experience was at the fantastic All Tomorrow's Parties music festival, on Cockatoo Island in 2009, simply because there was no queue, and the most intriguing was at a Pavement concert at the Enmore Theatre, in Newtown, when, in virtual darkness, I somehow managed to navigate through a sea of people to the bar and back without spilling a drop. Let's hope Canberra Beer Week is just as fulfilling.
