Melbourne and the Great Australian Beer Spectapuar

So when I asked Mere if she wanted to go  to Melbourne the last week in May for a beer festival, she shockingly turned me down. Not to be deterred, I was joined by a buddy from work. We had volunteered to help at the Great Australian Beer Spectapular - a craft beer festival with 92 specially brewed beers from breweries all over Australia, New Zealand, as well as some from the UK, US, and Japan. We flew in Friday night to attend a session as consumers, volunteered the Saturday afternoon session, went to the Saturday night session for free, and volunteered the Sunday afternoon session. Needless to say, that's a lot of beer. Between my buddy and I, I think we probably tasted 80 something of the 92 beers (not sure if we should be proud of that?)

Melbourne is only a 1.5 hr flight south of Sydney in Victoria. Melbourne is known as a much hipper Sydney - with a booming bar/club and restaurant/cafe scene. I absolutely loved what I saw of the city.

Flinders Street Station across from our hotel

Degraves - one of many alleys in the city with restaurants/cafes on both sides and outdoor seating

The above ground trollies reminded me of Boston. Never thought I would ever say I miss riding the Green Line. (Ok, maybe 'miss' is a strong word)

Many of the alleys are also covered in ever-changing grafitti

The festival was held in the Royal Exhibition Center - a beautiful large building built in 1880, about a 20 minute walk through the city from our hotel.

A picture of the beerhall setup

We had to get RSA (Responsible Service of Alcohol) certified in order to help out -  which wasn't hard (half the people in our class could barely speak English and still passed) but ate up an entire Saturday. The bright spot is that I can always fall back on a new career if I need to:

We actually sampled more beers while volunteering - which made the late flight back on Sunday a little more bearable, at least for us. Probably not to those sitting around us as we smelled like a brewery (when the kegs kicked while we were pouring, it would basically explode all over us).

The festival was a great time and we met a lot of cool people also volunteering, and got to talk to a bunch of the brewers.

My 3 favorite beers:

Barrique O Kama by Feral Brewing in Perth: A Citra hopped Black Ale fermented in french oak barrels. This was delicious - a variation of their beer from last year's festival - Karma Citra, which is also very good.

Death from Above by Garage Project in Wellington, NZ: an Indochine Pale Ale brewed with mangos, Vietnamese mint, and chiles - my vote for best beer of the festival, they've actually bottled this to sell.

Acid Freaks by Brew Cult in Victoria: a Baltic Porter infused with craft balsamic vinegar (made by the brewer's brother). This was surprisingly good, although they said the end of the keg just tasted like salad dressing.

Overall, it was a fantastic trip. I'll definitely try to get back to Melbourne to see more of the city as most of our time was occupied by the festival.