Beer production in Australia

I didn't find it fair to talk about Marijuana in Australia without pointing out Australia's "Beer Culture". So I did something I've wanted to do personally for awhile now, determine exactly how much beer is produced in Australia. So I turned to Wikipedia...

The 'Breweries in Australia' Wikipedia article divides breweries into 3 categories.'Major Breweries', 'Microbreweries' and 'Brewpubs'.

'Major Breweries' currently consists of 9 breweries consisting of nationally recognizable beer brands.

'Microbreweries' are distinguished by adding that "The maximum amount of beer a brewery can produce and still be classed as a microbrewery varies by region and by authority, though is usually around 15,000 barrels (18,000 hectolitres/ 475,000 US gallons) a year."

There are a total of 114 Microbreweries listed in the article. I did note that one microbrewery was closed, so I am unsure how many are still active in the complete list (sorry, no. I won't be crecking them all individually :P)

Brewpubs; restaurants or pubs that have breweries attached to them...34 of them make the Wikipedia list.

157 recognised breweries in total...now for some figures.


Carlton & United Breweries

Producers of Victoria Bitter (VB), Carlton Draught, Melbourne Bitter, Carlton Cold, Carlton Midstrength, Carlton Black, Crown Lager...although I could only produce figures for how much Victoria Bitter (VB) that they produce.

"VB is Australia's only billion dollar retail beer brand and sells the equivalent of one slab (24x375ml cans/bottles (9 Litres) every second"  

9L X 60secs X 60mins X 24hrs X 365days = 283,824,000 Litres per year
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victoria_Bitter)

Cascade Brewery

36 million litres (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cascade_Brewery)

Coopers Brewery


"Production during 2010-11 reached a record 62.9 million litres"
http://www.coopers.com.au/about-us/news - "Coopers continues Record Production" 21/12/2011

Boag's Brewery


J. Boag and Son currently (2010) employes over 150 people and produces over 76,000,000 litres of beer annually.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Boag_%26_Sons

Tooheys Brewery


Production output: 300 million litres
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tooheys - Citation provided

Providing these figures are true, between these 4 breweries and the most successful beer of just one other major brewery, a total of 758,724,000 litres are brewed! If Australia's population were to be 23 million (it's less) there would be enough beer produced to give everyone over 32 litres.

Thanks for reading :) To wrap things up here's a picture that illustrates what Australian's today think of our collective alcohol consumption...

Making Ghetto Wine on the cheap

Hi all,

Just documenting and sharing something I've spent very little of my time on lately.

After seeing a product advertised online that allows you to make ordinary juice alcoholic in just a few days for $10 a piece (without the juice to do it with), I figured I could do the same thing only cheaper.

What I did was buy some grape juice (the supermarket sold X2 2.4L bottles of assorted sorts of juice for $6), and some blu-tack...I already had an airlock from a home brew kit I purchased years ago.

What I did then was poured out some juice to allow some head space (during fermentation CO2 is released and it bubbles/froths up) and added whatever sugar I still had left around the place (around 1 cup I suppose), activated some ordinary bakers yeast buy adding a little lukewarm tap water and putting it into the grape juice and shaking the bottle to mix it together well. I then cut a small hole into the lid with a knife, just big enough for the bottom stem of the airlock to fit through and screwed this back onto the bottle. I then sealed this up air tight with a bit of blu-tack...and that's it!

After 4 days it was still bubbling away, I got toey and decided to check the alcohol content (with an alcometer I also had from the brew kit) and it registered around 5.5% alcohol content! Wow, impressive. Considering it was still bubbling away I decided to keep it going until it slows down significantly. I am not a big drinker, I just wanted to go through with the concept. After fermentation has completed I plan on putting the batch into the freezer to make the water freeze and pour off the alcohol. I'm hoping for an end product that is about 14-16% alcohol/vol. Then I guess I'll clean the kitchen sink with it, or give it to an alcoholic friend that doesn't mind how it tastes...

Feel free to share :D

Here's a picture for you of the grape juice on it's journey to becoming some cheap, ghetto wine :)