At the start of the week I bottled my latest home brew, a clone of Stone & Wood’s Pacific Ale. In about two weeks time it should be ready to drink and judged by the home brew club again. I got a good few bottles this time thanks to it not pissing all over the floor… I also made burgers.
Tuesday I cycled down the creek and along to the Palace hotel pub in South Melbourne to use one of my vouchers, buy one pint get another free. I ended up getting a free pot too as the tap had run out, bonus. I wasn’t down here just for the pub though (honest) but for tight arse Tuesday at Crown cinema (where I also got free popcorn, which would have been good if it wasn’t for the crappy salty sh*te you get here). I watched Tom Cruise’s latest sci-fi flick Edge of Tomorrow where he constantly dies, over and over again. Aliens, guns, robot suits, explosions and lots of CGI meant it was never going to be an epic in my book but feeling merry thanks to the beers it was enjoyable enough to watch. After that it was the pub again but up at the Great Northern. Met my Irish recruitment agent John and Sam here for a chat, steaks and beer.
BEER
Next day I had to go out to Clayton and literally turn something off then back on again. Living the IT Crowd stereotype there. Nat’s dad Alex was looking to get some RAM for Robyn’s laptop so I roped him into giving me a lift then we’d pop past a computer shop. We also had lunch at St Kilda beach which was really nice along with the weather, 18C that day!
Up early on Thursday for a 3 hour road trip with Nat and Alana to Mt Buller. I was quite excited about this as I’d get to hike up a big ass mountain covered in snow! 😀 The girls would be boarding but I hiked to save some pennies. The trip there was fecking foggy but thankfully once we arrived at the mountain it cleared into beautiful sunny skies. I’ve got to be honest here but before coming to Oz I assumed snow was very much a foreign thing so it was a bit of a shocker considering how much bloody snow there was on this hill. I got a map at the tourist office and headed to the summit. I appeared to be the only edjit walking about, it did feel strange navigating the slopes in the wrong direction with skiers & boarders whizzing past me. There wasn’t much indication of a path so I navigated to the summit the best I could. It was pretty sketchy at the top as it was a very narrow path up with death looming on either side, the views up here were completely worth it though. I couldn’t believe it when a skier sauntered up the path and told me he was going down from here. Nutter. After the summit I met the girls at the pub then went wandering again whilst they threw themselves down the hill. It was a bloody great day that, the hills reminded me a wee bit of home. 🙂
On Friday I went down to Nat’s house and helped with weeding silicon prints for a whole bunch of tee’s she’s selling for Rose St market that weekend. One print of Flinders St (a very cool print so it is) took me at least an hour to do. WTF. Afterwards I met up with Robyn, Kath and Alana for round 2 of Ethiopian food, this time in Moonee Ponds. Food was probably better here than the restaurant in Footscray, we still ate with our hands and I left feeling like a pregnant whale.
Weeding like a pro
Saturday morning I cycled down to Rose St market to see how the stall was doing whilst chilling out before meeting Luke (home brew mate) at Moon Dog Brewery. It’s located in Abbotsford literally in the lions den of Carlton United Breweries, they make Carlton Draught (think Tennents) and export Fosters, nuff said. Housed in a small warehouse with a few sofa’s sprawled about the place and a few long tables, the second hand dairy equipment brewery is in the back behind the bar. Me and Luke went on the brewery tour which is fairly short and sweet much like the brewery, Mattias (one of the brewers) showed me the bottling line and some of the chiraz barrels they have. Anyway, we had a good few drinks here then I left to hangout with Rose and Jezza at her house.
I got a message from Nat the next morning that I’d made her business partner (Rose) turn up late to the market and she’d setup the stall herself. Oops! I wasn’t feeling too fly myself so got my bake on and made a peach & almond tart. Brought it down to Nat’s folks house where it got a big thumbs up. Nat popped by and we all stuffed our faces at a local Chinese restaurant. The Bombers also won their game yesterday against Port Adelaide so pretty good Sunday all in all.
Such a tart
ADVENTURE DAN! 