Turning beers on their heads

There are times in life when bad things are great. If a plane crashes, that's undoubtedly a bad thing. But in my line of work, it will give us a front page lead for the next day and follow-up stories for the week to come. Likewise, good things can be bad. Things like being offered a free beer when you're sober driving, or being given a footrub, which makes you realise you're ticklish.

Photo: beeradvocate.com

This was always something that just sat at the back of my mind until I went for a month-long sojourn to South Africa earlier this year. A bit of research shows that the beer scene there is as-good-as totally dominated by South African Breweries (SAB). Mainly focused on brewing generic fizzy lagers, I knew it was going to be a long trip.

However, I did manage to find myself a bottle of Duvel hidden in the back of the chiller in a random liquor store somewhere in the depths of Durban.

And it was the worst beer I had during my time in South Africa. Something about that Belgian yeast that just wasn't right when I was lounging around in shorts (a rare thing in my case) with the temperature gauge reading 30ish degrees Celsius.

And just as brilliant beer can be - well - crap, so-called "rubbish" beer can actually be awesome in the right situation. I know plenty of people who wouldn't touch Bushmans with a ten-foot pole, but were more than happy to drink copious quantities of it in the space of 12 hours when taking part in a Crate Day.

The same thinking applied when I watched some of the Rugby World Cup games at the FanZone on Wellington's waterfront. While I now have an intense hatred for Heineken (thank you, you bastards, for ruining any piece of suave James Bond had left), there was nothing better than skipping class, sitting on the warm concrete, watching rugby on one of those oh-so-rare good Wellington days, while sipping away on a few cold plastic cups of beer.

If you're lucky enough to have had a Flying Dog Gonzo, you will see one of my favourite quotes from Hunter S. Thompson adorning the label: "Good people drink good beer."

But there is also another saying I quite enjoy: "All beer is good beer, but some beer is better".