September has been declared Australian Beer Month here at the offices of Beer Is Your Friend. I don’t have some punny name for it, one which ties in with the name of the month itself – like Dry July, say. Because there isn’t one that lends itself to September and it seemed really dumb to wait another six months for FeBREWary, or eight months for All Aussie August.

And I hate events that use month-related puns in their names anyway.

The idea came from a chat I had with Nick from The Crafty Pint. He’d said he tended to drink Australian beers and it made me think that I would often forsake the homegrown beers for some shiny new offering from the United States or Europe. And these days there’s ALWAYS some shiny new offering from over the oceans.

What? You don’t drink Australian beer ALL THE TIME? I am shocked.

It wasn’t as though I totally ignored the Australian-made stuff, rather, I pushed them to the side with the thought ‘‘Ahh, that beer is always around. I can drink it any time. But that Stone beer is new!’’.

So I decided to drink only Australian beers this month but, if one of those shiny beers from elsewhere came into view, I could buy it and not drink it until October. That sounded like a good idea, for about five minutes.

Because really, what’s the point of doing this if I’m not putting my money where my mouth is? If I’m not actually throwing some of my hard-earned in the direction of an Australian brewery? So, I’m only buying and drinking Australian beer this month.

Soon thereafter, I realised there was the question of ‘‘what constitutes an Australian brewery?’’ For instance, is CUB Australian, even though it’s owned by a foreign company? Damn, this idea for the month was getting harder to bring into fruition.

To make it simple here’s what counts for this month – if it was brewed in Australia it counts. Even though the profits from Little Creatures and Matilda Bay go OS, they still employ Australians to make the beer.

“That’s not Australian beer.”
“Is too.”
“Is not”
“Okay, it’s go time.”

And if some foreign brewer comes here to make a collaboration beer, that counts as Australian too.

What about an Australian brewer who goes OS to make a collab beer? Nope, doesn’t count. Not made in Australia so it doesn’t count. Yeah, it’s an arbitrary definition but the line has to be drawn somewhere. And it’s not like every brewer in the country is shooting off overseas to brew something.

Something else I’m hoping will happen this month is that I’ll reconnect with Australian beers I haven’t had in years. I might find them not as impressive as when I last had them; I might find I still like them and consider myself crazy for leaving them behind for so long.

It could even be something I do every September. Which would give me 12 months to come up with a snazzy name for it.