Funny Drunks Did Somebody Say Barbeque and Beer
Drinking beer is a big part of Australian life.
In this article I explain the language of beer and drinking in Australia. You will learn some slang as well. I discuss wine in a later article which you can read here.
So grab a coldie, and enjoy this article. Cheers mate!
Australians love beer and having a drink with their mates or colleagues. It is quite common to go to a pub (public-house – a hotel which serves alcoholic beverages) for a beer on a weekday and enjoy a liquid lunch (drinking beer only) or with a pub lunch. On Friday afternoons it will be beer o'clock – time for a drink. "What's the time mate? It's beer o'clock!".
People can get together for a booze-up (a drinking session or party) at any time or place.
Grog is a general term for beer and spirits (but not wine). Australians enjoy having a few beers or a bevvie (short for beverage), a frostie, a coldie ora couple of cold ones. Beer is also known as liquid amber, amber nectar or liquid gold. A pig's ear is rhyming slang for beer but I've never heard anyone use that word.
So where do you buy beer? You can go to the pub or you can buy it a bottle-o (a bottle shop). But first of all you need to know which beer you should buy.
Brands of beer
Each state has a dominant brewery although beers from one state are usually available in other states. In Sydney, where I live, there are many Australian beers available from other states. Here are some of the beer brands from different states.
New South Wales Tooheys New ""New"), Tooheys Old ("Old")
Victoria Victoria Bitter (VB)
Queensland Castlemaine XXXX ("Fourex")
South Australia West End
Western Australia Swan
Tasmania James Boag, Cascade
There are many other beers and stouts available in pubs, including Guinness and various boutique beers.
Drinking at the pub
Pubs sell beer in different size glasses. They have the following names:
- A pony is 5 oz (140ml) but this size is old-fashioned or rare
- A seven is 7 oz (200ml) but rarely seen
- Amiddy is10 oz (285ml) but known as a pot in Melbourne.
- A schooner is 15 oz (425ml)
- Apint is 20 oz (570ml).
You can buy beer by the jug (2 pints – 40 oz – 1140ml) which is more economical for groups of drinkers. Just remember to get enough glasses!
When you go to the pub with a group of friends you usually take it in turns to buy the drinks. Ashout is when you buy a round of drinks. Someone buys the first round, and eventually it will be your shout to buy the next round. "Hey Jack, it's your shout!".
When the tide's gone out it means your glass is empty and it's time for another beer. If you are drinking your beer very slowly then you are sitting on your beer.
If you are drinking all by yourself then you are drinking with the flies.
When you finish your beer in a hurry or drinking a beer in one go, you skull the beer. Bob Hawke, a former Prime Minister of Australia is famous for his beer drinking achievements. Watch a video of him on YouTube at a cricket match in Sydney as he skulls a beer.
A popular social activity in the city is to go on a pub crawl (bar hopping) where a group of friends have a round of drinks in each bar they visit.
Many years ago when ladies went to the pub they would sit separately from the men and drink shandies (shandy – singular) which is a mixture of beer and lemonade.
What are some words for pub? watering-hole, The local, rubbidy (from the Rhyming Slang – rubbidy dub), the pisser and the boozer.
Experience drinking beer in outback Australia by listening to an old Australian song by Slim Dusty – The Pub with No Beer
Buying beer at the bottle shop
Most pubs have a bottle-o (bottle shop), also known as a grog shop, but the best prices can be found at large liquor stores like Dan Murphy's.
You can buy your beer in a slab (a carton of 24 bottles or cans), a six-pack (6 bottles in a cardboard carry box, or joined with plastic) or individual bottles or cans.
A can of beer is known as a tinnie, and a small glass bottle (375ml) is astubbie. The 750 ml bottles are known as a tall-neck or tallie. The Darwin Stubby holds 2 litres of beers, and was produced by Carlton United Brewery. Sadly it is no longer in production.
Beer at the barbecue
Tinnies and stubbies are popular at barbecues and to keep the beer cold on a hot day you can use a stubbie-holder – a polystyrene insulated holder for a stubby.
Store the beer in an esky – an insulated container where you keep the beer and lots of ice.
Drinking too much
If you drink too much you will get drunk and you will say that you are pissed, boozed, blotto,off your face, or you have a gutful or piss or you are shit-faced. The first stage of being drink is when you feel tipsy. Later you will most likely you will chunder (vomit) or have a liquid laugh or technicolour yawn. A more colourful expression is to throw a pizza on the pavement. The American slang for this is barf.
The next day at work you will want to tell your colleagues about the quantity of alcohol you consumed the night before or on the weekend. You can say you were rotten, or had a big night or a big weekend. You will have a hangover – the feeling of nausea and headache causes by too much alcohol and not enough sleep. You may need to drink ahair of the dog which is the alcoholic drink you have to ease the hangover.
A person who has a reputation for drinking a lot is a booze artist or piss artist. Such a person is drunk as a piss-ant or as drunk as a lord. Some of these people enjoy a regular morning heart-starter – an early morning alcoholic drinker. If you are away from home you may need to have this drink in an early-opener – a pub with early opening hours.
Some people get into the habit of being on the piss or on the turps – drinking vast quantities of alcohol. Going on a bender, a blinder or a binge is to go on a drinking spree. 'He's been on a bender since 5 o'clock Friday".
An alco (alcoholic) is someone with a drinking problem and a pisspot is a habitual drinker or drunkard.
Drinking a lot of beer over many years will give a man a beer gut or beer belly.
Don't drink and drive
It is illegal in Australia to drive with a blood alcohol level of over 0.05%. You need Provisional drivers are not allowed to drink any alcohol. Police set up random breath tasting (RBT) road blocks. A police vehicle set up for testing is a booze bus. Now the police have portable testing units. The older testing units required blowing into a bag, so blow in the bag means to have a breath test.
There has been a lot of advertising to educate people to plan their drinking and transport. Someone can be the designated driver to not drink alcohol so they can drive the friends. NSW Transport promotes the message of What is your Plan B? to use public transport instead of driving.
So let's finish this article by raising our beer glasses and saying Cheers!
Sources used:
Australian Phrasebook – Lonely Planet © 1998 – 2nd edition
Australian Slang – Penguin Books 2008
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beer_in_Australia#Beer_glasses
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_breweries_in_Australia
http://www.koalanet.com.au/australian-slang.html
aguilartaintimand.blogspot.com
Source: https://charuzu.wordpress.com/2018/05/06/australian-beer-and-drinking-language-slang/
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