Beer and sausages

Here in Australia, for some crazy reason, if you look for sausages you can easily find something containing a dead cow. No, my dears, those are beef sausages. Sausages have to contain pork.

That is something this bloke clearly understood.

On arriving from South Africa in 1970, O’Hagan fell in love with British beer but was appalled by the sausages, which since the Second World War had been filled with rusk and meat scraps to keep down costs. “They are the bin-end of the meat industry”, a butcher admitted to him. O’Hagan began making sausages in his garage as a hobby, and selling them to colleagues while working on the paper’s late night desk. But as his fame grew in the pubs of Fleet Street and then Docklands, he smelt further opportunities. Applying the rule “No artificial anything”, he used good quality meat with a minimum of salt and often flavoured with beer, inventing varieties he called Drunken Duck, Tipsy Turkey and Gussy Goose.

On arriving from South Africa in 1970, O’Hagan fell in love with British beer but was appalled by the sausages, which since the Second World War had been filled with rusk and meat scraps to keep down costs. “They are the bin-end of the meat industry”, a butcher admitted to him. O’Hagan began making sausages in his garage as a hobby, and selling them to colleagues while working on the paper’s late night desk. But as his fame grew in the pubs of Fleet Street and then Docklands, he smelt further opportunities. Applying the rule “No artificial anything”, he used good quality meat with a minimum of salt and often flavoured with beer, inventing varieties he called Drunken Duck, Tipsy Turkey and Gussy Goose.

Rest in peace.

A reason to go to Canberra

Further to the story from two weeks ago last year about a beer from a massive international brewery (named after the state of Victoria) winning a prize at the Royal Queensland Food and Wine Show the small brewers are striking back with the Small Brewer's Beer Festival.

"People have no idea how extremely competitive and ruthless the beer business can be, it really is war. And the big breweries don't take any prisoners. So instead of competing with them directly at other beer festivals we thought we would hold our own and just not invite them."

It's on 9th March. So plenty of notice then.

A winner for teetotallers

Late last year*  the William Bull Brewery of New South Wales won the Grand Champion trophy at the Royal Queensland Food and Wine Show with its India Pale Ale. It is described as a "limited release". So limited you can't buy it anywhere.

Mind you:

… Victoria Bitter caused a massive upset by winning the Crermalt Australia Champion Queensland Beer of Show. Mr Chant said it was eligible for the award because it was brewed in Queensland.

So the upset was because something named after the state of Victoria won an award for Queensland beers. Nothing to do with the fact that it tastes like another yellow liquid chilled practically to zero.

*(I know, I know. Shocking delay, I'm catching up on this backlog, only eight more to go after this one).