Good Beer Week 2013: Hair Of The Dog Breakfast with BeerMenTV

How did we get to Friday morning already? Good Beer Week only just started!

In fact, I actually wrote this on Sunday so we're a good 48 hours closer to the bitter end of this great week.

But going back to Friday, there is really only one way to properly kick off the day and that's with the Hair Of The Dog Breakfast hosted by BeerMenTV.

It was cold outside waiting for the doors to open. Some would say it was the low temperatures combined with the persistent gusts of wind, others would say it was the inevitable crumbling of one's immune system after six days of valiant battle.

Sitting down there was an immediate moment of realisation of what we were up against. The beer list for the breakfast was displayed in each set place on the table. This is what we were dealing with;

• BrewCult - Hop Zone IPA
• Boneyard Brewing - Grapefruit IPA
• Murray's Brewing - Punch and Judy's Ale
• Bridge Road Brewing - Chevalier Dunkel Weizen
• Doctors Orders Brewing - Morning After Pill
• Moon Dog Brewing - Love Tap
• Feral Brewing - Raging Flem
• Riverside Brewing - Ring of Friar
• The Old Brewery - Memorial Ale
• Yeastie Boys - His Majesty's 2012
• Mountain Goat - IPA

That's a pretty serious list of beers to contemplate at 10am on a Friday.

Chris Franklin, doing his thang. 

So what's a good way to assist with the mental process of working through these breakfast courses?

I imagine that you have all answered the same way in unison. With a rendition of the hit single 'Bloke' from the year 2000 performed by the surprising entertainment juggernaut that is Chris Franklin.

You'll be pleased to know that he seamlessly substituted 'VB' for 'craft beer' in that timeless verse.

Anyway, that's more than enough characters assigned to that particular section of proceedings.

The food prepared by the chef's at Beer Deluxe was first rate and created some pretty interesting matches with that ridiculous list of beers provided.

I already mentioned Raging Flem, right? Man that's good.

Where was I? Lost my train of thought.

You know how good that lineup of beer is, and you'll have to take my word on how good the food was, but what makes these events so enjoyable is the hosting duties of the gentlemen from BeerMenTV providing entertaining commentary to proceedings and fun games for the punters and brewers alike.

Ponytail-less Todd

The first promise made to us was that the perpetually ponytailed Todd would shed the hair tie and unleash the beast for all to admire and enjoy.

To make him feel more comfortable, wigs were provided to some punters to wear as a sign of solidarity and support. Hendo was one who donned the wig, and I must say that it's quite a striking look for him.

Hendo rocking the follicles

The result was fairly terrible and all was well when the hair tie was returned to it's natural position.


Food highlights were the cheese kransky wrapped in puff pastry served with house made chutney, which was outstanding with the Love Tap and the Raging Flem, but the clear winner of the day was the smoked trout with avocado mayonnaise, sumac, asparagus and garlic croutons.

This dish was brought out heaped on a serving dish and it looked like an obscene amount of food, but it was so damned delicious that we made extremely light work of it.

The next game on the agenda was for a group of punters to mix a clamato style beer cocktail for Todd to taste. The catch was that they were instructed to make them as vile and offensive as possible. The winner would be the one that concocted the most awful atrocity for Todd to sample.

One such punter was Matt Boustead from 7 Cent Brewery who seemed pretty happy with himself after he tasted his handy work, so surely his wouldn't be the worst of the lot.

Cheese kranksy. Hello. 

His was the worst. By far, judging from Todd's grief stricken face as he begrudgingly took a swig of that grey poison.

There were laughs all around though, so I don't know if that's reward enough for the suffering.

Special mention ought to go to Doc and and Riverside Brewing who created a beer specifically for this event. Doc produced an easy drinking spiced gruit style which went down magnificently well.  

The Riverside Ring of Friar was a chipotle brown ale that had a good whack of warming chilli, but the fact that these beers were created just for the breakfast was a wonderful gesture.

Again this is one of the highlight events of Good Beer Week and we hope to see the BeerMenTV boys return again for Good Beer Week 2014.

Cheers lads!

Extra large photo of some delicious smoked trout.