Good Beer Week 2014 Review: GBW Presents Mega Dega II

June 8, 2014, by Crafty Pint

Good Beer Week 2014 Review: GBW Presents Mega Dega II

At the 2013 festival, Good Beer Week introduced the Mega Dega as the headline event in its Foodie stream. The idea was to bring together chefs from a number of Melbourne’s top restaurants and pair them with a different Aussie or international brewer to create one course each. The event was a sellout success – which you can relive here – and was followed up by Mega Dega II at this year’s festival, with top bloke and beer-loving chef Matt Wilkinson picking a dream team of chefs, Good Beer Week picking the brewers, then squeezing 112 guests into Brunswick East venue, Pope Joan.

Event: Mega Dega II
Venue: Pope Joan
Date: May 24
Good Beer Week Stream: Foodie

The Event:
Two-thirds of the way through this year’s Mega Dega, I stood up to introduce another clutch of chefs and brewers to the room. Returning to my seat after they’d all held the venue in mirth and rapture – not least when one of them described in detail the lengths he’d gone to to shoot enough rabbits “in the head” to feed 112 people, then invited them to smear themselves in chipotle sauce – my wife said: “You’re giddy, aren’t you?”

It was true.

“Shall we just invite all the same chefs and brewers back next year?,” I replied. “They’re all awesome!”

As a way to (almost) close out the week – and coming six days after the spectacular Brew vs Cru – it was turning into something special. Which is just as well: if there was one event at this year’s Good Beer Week that more people than any other regretted missing out on it was the second Mega Dega.

This time around, the event that was conceived as a means of showcasing beer’s worthiness at the finest of tables, as well as its versatility across multiple cuisines, had moved from the CBD to Pope Joan in Brunswick East. And, even with a marquee and heaters erected at the back of the venue and tables and chairs squeezed into every nook and cranny, it was sold out six weeks in advance and would probably have filled out a second night.

Having shown the concept had legs in 2013, this time around the Good Beer Week team approached Matt Wilkinson, a chef who was raised in a Yorkshire pub, loves a beer or three and has held events at the previous festivals, and asked if he would help pull together an epic lineup of chefs. In the time it took to knock back a piccolo out the back of his nearby deli, Hams & Bacon, late last year, not only had he agreed but the event was planned and costed and a shortlist of potential chefs was in hand.

Over the coming months, little changed from those pencil scribbles on the back of an envelope, meaning that come the closing Saturday of the festival 112 guests rocked up to indulge in a six course, five chef, six brewer feast. Matt and his finely drilled team of chefs and front of house staff were joined by Joseph Abboud (Rumi, Moor’s Head), Rob Kaboord (Merricote) and Rohan Anderson (Whole Larder Love) with Darren Purchese (Burch & Purchese) having to offer last minute apologies for his absence but sending a rather amazing dessert in his place. The Good Beer Week team lined up Boatrocker (Vic), 961 Beer (Lebanon), Weihenstephan (Germany), Renaissance (NZ), Murray’s (NSW) and Mornington Peninsula Brewery as the breweries. Brewers from all bar 961 were in attendance, with Mazen Hajjar having to return to Lebanon due to family issues.

The evening opened with Boatrocker’s Berliner Weisse Mitte paired with welcome canapés, took in Rumi’s Lebanese cuisine with the Lebanese spiced Pale Ale from 961, hay custard, the richest of rabbit dishes, a dessert that looked like a psychedelic planetary landscape, cheese and beers that also included a special weizenbock brewed with Aussie hops and a Bordeaux yeast, Renaissance’s award-winning Scotch ale Stonecutter, Murray’s Grand Cru and the Imperial Stout from Mornington Peninsula Brewery.

Throughout the evening, brewers and chefs were invited to take to the mic and explain who they were, what they did and why the pairings were as they were. Fears that breaking up the evening for so much chat might be too much proved unfounded, with nothing other than silence interspersed with applause, laughter and cheers welcoming each of the guests. Just as the chefs rose to the occasion, so did everyone invited to speak, while Marek and his team of staff handled a rather larger crowd than they’re used to with imperceptible ease.

The question now is: where to for Mega Dega III: The Devastation?

GBW_Menu_MegaDega

Killer beers:
Or in this case, more appropriately, killer pairings. Word around the tables was that this could well have been the beer dinner for most at which all or the majority of pairings worked well. There were pairings that were fairly traditional, such as the Scotch ale with the hearty-as-hell main or the imperial stout with blue cheese. But perhaps it was the less traditional that stood out.

The Kreuz des Sudens from Weihenstephan, a full-bodied, creamy and reasonably sweet strong wheat beer, would never have come across hay custard, let alone hay custard adorned with mussels, fruit, puff potato and more before, but would no doubt enjoy making its acquaintance again. Meanwhile Shawn Sherlock, head brewer at Murray’s, declared the pairing of his Grand Cru, a strong golden Belgian ale, with the multi-layered dessert of Orange, malt, caramel, honey & chocolate that just kept on giving the best pairing in nine years of dinners featuring Murray’s beers.

Highlights:
Watching one of Australia’s youngest breweries (Boatrocker) followed by the Middle East’s first craft brewery (961) and the head brewer from the world’s oldest brewery (Weihenstephan) on the microphone. If that doesn’t encapsulate just how exciting the beer world is today – and the camaraderie that exists within it – what does?

Rohan Anderson’s colourful speech that took in crawling through the mists of the Grampians with a loaded gun, an ironic dig at hipsterism, images of his body dripping in hot sauce and enough ammunition for vegetarians to start a campaign against him and all associated with him.

Andrew “AG” Gow from Mornington Peninsula Brewery getting up to talk about his beer but instead bringing his dessert (OK, his second dessert) and instead waxing lyrical about just how wonderful it was and how he daren’t leave it on the table in case anyone else tried to pilfer it. The beer was a mere afterthought.

Describe the event in three words:
Mega Mega Dine-thing

Thanks to Bradley Hill for the photos.

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