'Good Beer Lunches' Makes Beer A Treat For The Women

By Staff

Wednesday, April 22, 2009, 10:06

Upset that your beau didn't take you out for the party he has gone? Is he worried that you might just be too sloshed to be brought back home? Well, it's time for you say 'cheers'. All you need to do is give him the certification from Matt Kirkegaard's Good Beer Lunches.

With Good Beer Lunches (www.goodbeers.com.au), Kirkegaard holds regular beer education classes, matching food and beer. The classes were initially meant both for men and women, and it was mainly conducted to expand one's knowledge of the diversity of beer, but later Kirkegaard decided to conduct classes only for the fairer sex. The classes discussed everything about that had its proximity with beers. "The beer appreciation for women classes developed from the regular Good Beer lunches," The Courier Mail quoted Kirkegaard, as saying. He added: "We had a lot of ladies coming along with their husbands and partners who at first claimed to not really like beer. During the course of the lunch they suddenly discovered that there was a lot more to beer and a far wider range of flavours than they realised, and they liked them, especially when matched with food."

True, beer and the right kind of food with it can do wonders. Just that, one had to find out the right combo. This is one of the things that the class also aims at. Kirkegaard, also said that since a long time, beer makers have been trying to tap the huge market by women, but didn't know how to tackle it. And in his opinion, his job is working towards changing perceptions that beer isn't just a drink for . "The beer classes for women have shown that if you present beers with flavour, that pair well with a whole range of foods, and you make the experience slightly more elegant by serving the beer in a wine glass, champagne flute or anything other than the large glasses that men customarily drink from, women will take to it with enthusiasm," he said.

Kirkegaard's regular lunches for ladies cover a huge range of beers, targeting a much wider range of styles and flavours including Belgian abbey ales, fruit lambics, chocolate stouts and beers made using the same techniques as champagnes. "We show beers that are made to satisfy the palate rather than a thirst. The beers are also matched with foods such as seafood, cheese, chocolate, cake, ice cream and coffee to help show the flavours in the beers as well as introduce beer-and-food matching," he said.

And Kirkegaard reckons the emails he gets from appreciative husbands and boyfriends thanking him give him a stab of pride.

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