Australian drinks - Australian beer, wine, liqueurs, and spirits

Why do Aussies drink so much beer?
Maybe because Australia is the world's driest continent and water is a precious commodity.
And also water is dangerous stuff, have you ever considered how dangerous water is;

- When it gets on your car too frequently it will make your car rust and reduce it to a worthless pile of crap.
- When it gets in to your house the timber will rot and make you homeless if you don't keep on fixing the damage.
- When it gets in to any electrical appliance it will destroy it.
- And if you hold the appliance while this happens you will die from electrocution too!
- When you stick your head in water you will die within four minutes.
- Fall in to cold water and within hours you can die from hypothermia
- Accidentally spill hot water on your body and you will suffer extreme pain and burns.
- When it falls out of the sky it can wash away houses, roads, cars and kill numerous people.
- Every year millions of damage is caused by flooding, where water damages houses, carpets, furniture, infrastructure, etc.
- In Sydney frozen water fell from the sky in the form of huge hailstones that damaged thousands of cars and destroyed thousands of roofs, it took years to rebuild all the roofs as there were not enough tiles and installers in the country!
- The UN estimates that more people on this planet die from dirty water that produces waterborne diseases than from all violence and wars together.

Beer also has many health benefits; this is how it works:
A mob of kangaroos can only move as fast as the slowest kangaroo. And when the mob is hunted, it is the slowest and weakest ones at the back that are killed first. This natural selection is good for the mob as a whole, because the average speed and health of the whole mob keeps improving by the elimination of the weakest members.
In exactly the same way, the human brain can only operate as fast as the slowest brain cells. Now, as we all know, intake of alcohol kills your brain cells. But naturally, it attacks your slowest and weakest brain cells first. In this way, regular consumption of beer eliminates the weaker brain cells, making your brain a faster and more efficient machine.
And that is why you always feel much smarter after a coupla beers !

Beer drinking has been in a bit of a decline since the 1970s when Australians listed proudly as number three in the world in beer consumption, now they are not even in the top ten anymore.
In 2010 the Australian Bureau of Statistics reported that annual beer consumption was not at its lowest in 60 years, per capita beer consumption was now down to only 4.5 litres per year, the lowest since 1950!
A pretty embarrassing score compared to 1979 when beer consumption peaked at 6.4 litre per capita.
This makes you wonder about the need for an Institute of Beer; at the 1976 Olympics Aussie athletes were that pathetic winning only one silver medal and no gold what so ever that the government started an Institute of Sport to better prepare our athletes for this sort of event and it worked as the Aussies dragged twelve medals away from the next 1984 Olympics. An Institute of Beer might be able to get us back in the beer drinking top five again. In 2004 Australians consumed only 90 litres of beer per capita, well down from 125 litres in the 1980s, and Australia is now ranked ninth behind countries such as Luxembourg and Belgium, with the Czech Republic on number one with 162 litres per capita.

For some people beer drinking is a life time career, as demonstrated by this grave in Coober Pedy and the car below.

Aussie Beer Drinkers Club T-Shirt
Buy it online here

The most popular beer nowadays is Victoria Bitter with a 30% market share while Fosters, despite its image as the Aussie beer due to overseas marketing, is usually only drunk by tourists. If you see anyone order or drink Fosters ask him where he's from, if he's an Aussie I'd like to hear about it, personally I have never seen an Aussie touch the stuff.

Coopers Brewery Microbrewery Kit - $ 69.99
Don't be fooled by cheap imitations! The Coopers Brewery Microbrewery Kit is the world's best selling beer making kit for good reason. It is designed to give you everything you need to brew 5 gallons your own high quality, completely natural, great tasting beer every time.

Aussies are getting more fussy in their drinking habits and are drinking more for quality and not quantity, the share of that the premium beer market, those people who would never order a VB or XXXX, has climbed from 2% to 10% in recent years.
Since drinking for quality means they’re not really drinking too much, assessments for drinking problems are probably out of the question for many Aussies.

Brewery tours

If you are in to beer and sports (and which bloke isn't?) then this tour around Melbourne sports places and the Foster's brewery might be just your thing...

Victoria offers many unique beers produced by independent microbreweries. Unfortunately these beers can be difficult to source and the microbreweries themselves are open irregular hours if open to the public at all!

Scruffy Bunch gives you a VIP pass into the wonderful world of Victorian microbreweries and access to tasting many award winning craft beers and meeting the people who brew them!

Some of the Microbreweries visited include: 3 Ravens, Buckley's Beer, Hargreaves Hill and Coldstream Brewery.

Scruffy Bunch Microbrewery Tours include tastings with red nosed master brewers, a big lunch, private minibus transport and a knowledgeable guide for the day!

Scruffy Bunch Microbrewery Tours run every Saturday and leave Melbourne between 9:30 and 10 AM and return by approx 5 PM. Pick up and drop off can be arranged from the CBD. More info and reservations....

Liqueurs

mount uncle liqueurs

Established by Mt. Uncle Grazing Co. at the turn of the 21st Century, the distillery has slowly & surely built an impeccable & incomparable reputation for crafting fine, award winning liqueurs.
Mt. Uncle Distillery prides itself on producing 100% natural, pure and preservative free liqueurs that capture the true essence and life of the fruit… just as nature intended. Standing high and above in a synthetically dominated world, the only distillery in FNQ uses a natural, tried & proven method of traditional distilling. Eliminating competitors, Mt. Uncle Distillery continually maintains the brands promise to provide pure products, free from commercial chemicals & additives. See their website mtuncle.com for more info.

Meat flavored water

Inventor Andrew Larkey started marketing meat and vegetable flavored bottled water to canine connoisseurs in december 2003. He says it's like a sports drink for dogs and has put his Dog Plus K-9 Water on sale across Australia in flavors ranging from bacon and beef to liver, chicken and corn. A 600ml bottle will set you back $2.95

Rum

Australia's most famous rum is produced in Bundaberg, a bit north of Brisbane in Queensland. Bundaberg rum, normally referred to as 'Bundy' by Aussies is now also available in ready mixed cans with Coke for those that don't want to buy a whole bottle. (To order in the bar; Hey, get us a Bundy'nCoke, mate!). Tours through the distillery in Bundaberg are available as far as I know but let me do some more research on this first. Bundaberg is not overly endowed with tourist attractions so let's hope they still run. One thing I personally liked about Bundaberg is that, not over run by tourists, you could go into the town centre and find shops with useful things to buy for people that live there. In many other Australian towns the shops in the town centres only sell didgeridoos, T-shirts, didgeridoos, Hong Kong made koalas and duty free.

Tea

daintree tea

In the 1970s Australians started growing tea and nowadays about 3% of the 30 000 tonnes of tea we drink each year is home grown. One such tea is the Daintree Tea, grown in a very scenic place surrounded by rainforest, where high rainfall of around 4 metres per annum and a temperature range of 25 to 35 degrees, along with granite alluvial red soils, all combine to make the perfect growing environment for a unique tasting tea, free from tannic acid and pesticides residues. Daintree Tea is also 100 per cent Australian owned, grown and processed. Make sure to buy some when you're holidaying in the Daintree area, or buy it online at Daintreetea.com

Vegemite

vegemite

Some people have been known to dissolve a teaspoon of Vegemite into a glass of hot water to make a drink!

Wine

Sometimes when I reflect back on all the wine I drink, I feel shame. Then I look into the glass and think about the workers in the vineyards and all of their hopes and dreams . If I didn't drink this wine, they might be out of work and their dreams would be shattered.
Then I say to myself, "It is better that I drink this wine and let their dreams come true than be selfish and worry about my liver."

~ Jack Handy

Australian wines have been produced here since 1816 though only really gained international recognition in the 1970s when they started pushing the French ones out of the way in international competitions. Australians now drink four times more wine per capita than in the 1960s, and often complain that our wines are cheaper overseas than at home; probably a combination of high alcohol duties in Australia and wine producers selling their products cheap trying to get the world hooked. In 2004 six out of ten brands of wine sold in the UK were Australian! Now they need little introduction, they are now well known and well liked all over the world, visit www.top100wines.com for some more info on the Aussie wines.
In 2009, 63 million litres of wine was available for consumption in Australia. "Wine consumption consistently increased from the 1930s to the mid-2000s, but has since shown signs of flattening out.

Wine tasting is a popular passtime in Australia and the 1,798 wineries in Australia, of which 78 per cent offer cellar door sales, are attracting 4.9 million tourists annually

South Australia - the Barossa valley just north of Adelaide is a very established wine growing region and a popular place to cruise around for a day sampling the wines. As it is nowadays illegal to drive around under the influence of alcohol many people book on one of the bus tours that take you around this area, besides picking out the good places for you they take the worry about getting home after too much sampling.

Northern Territory - In the Northern Territory it is too hot for grapes so they make wine out of mangoes.

Western Australia - The Margaret River area is the country's second most fashionable wine area and well worth a visit, you can also join a cruise up the Swan river to visit some wineries.

New South Wales - The Hunter Valley to the west of Sydney is also a good place to cruise around for a day and visit some wineries.

Victoria - In the north-east around the fruit growing area of Mildura they also produce some wines though we need to find some more info on this.

Queensland - Near Brisbane in the Stanthorpe area , also known as the Granite Belt there are around 40 wineries with 640 ha of vines and more are on the way.

The product of 5 years of research and planning, this premier winery opened its doors in July 2000 and has since gone on to win industry awards such as Best Queensland Tourist Restaurant, Best Winery Restaurant and Best New Tourist Development. Here, you will enjoy tasting various wines such as the, Chambourcin, Chardonnay, Cabernet Merlot and Shiraz varieties, in the tranquil surroundings of Mt Cotton. More info....

In North Queensland there's only a couple of wineries, one is the Golden Pride Winery in Bilwon, near Mareeba, west of Cairns, where they make wine out of mangoes.
Another one is the Shannonvale winery near Port Douglas, they make wines out of fig, mango, carambola (star fruit), lychee, parsley, passionfruit, grapefruit, rambutan, jakfruit, orange, purple star apple, water cherry, jaboticaba, baku, black sapote (chocolate pudding fruit), ginger, mulberry and lime. Most of these come in the various styles of Dry, Medium, Sweet or Fortified.

Tasmania - Even in chilly Tasmania they manage to grow some grapes but we do not yet have any info on the wine scene there.

Amazing Australian Drinks

Drink up on Australia Day !!

Beer

A historic photo in the Canberra museum

For some people beer drinking is a life time career, as demonstrated by this grave in Coober Pedy and the car below.

Brewery tours

Liqueurs

Meat flavored water

Rum

Tea

Vegemite

Wine

Sirromet Winery - Mt Cotton
© Sirromet Winery

Wine online

Amazing Australian Drinks

Drink up on Australia Day !!

Beer

A historic photo in the Canberra museum

For some people beer drinking is a life time career, as demonstrated by this grave in Coober Pedy and the car below.

Brewery tours

Liqueurs

Meat flavored water

Rum

Tea

Vegemite

Wine

Sirromet Winery - Mt Cotton © Sirromet Winery

Wine online

Sirromet Winery - Mt Cotton
© Sirromet Winery