PISS BEER

Aussies have been on the piss, getting pissed, drinking piss, drinking more piss and, most definitely, taking the piss for the past two hundred years. The amazing thing is none of us thought to bottle it earlier. (Too busy getting pissed, probably.)

Piss first came to life in 1998 as the house beer at popular Melbourne watering hole, the Great Britain Hotel. Like big volume Aussie brews such as Fosters and XXXX, Piss is a simple lager style beer. Unlike the mass market brews, our Piss is preservative free and made with all natural ingredients. - Piss shot to national prominence in mid 1999 when a couple of freelance admen, Greg Wilmott and Giovanni Lovisetto, mocked up a series of TV ads for a show reel they were putting together and, in the great aussie tradition of taking the piss, pitched it to the major dailies as a full blown launch.

Upon its "launch", Piss received praise and scorn in almost equal measure. The nations most respected talkback radio host referred to it as "part of our moral decline" just one month before being exposed in a "cash for comments" deal he had going with the major banks. Our trading name, the Pi55 Beer Co, came about because the regulators would not have us lowering the tone by registering Piss as a company name. (Sure, they can use names like Enron, One Tel and HIH for that!) And to date, the major distributors have refused to carry the brand but surely not, as one state manager suggested, because they "wouldn't want to jeopardise their relationship with the major breweries"…

Despite these early setbacks, public support for Piss has been unwavering. A joke started doing the rounds about a year after our first release that we were going to bring out a light beer called Piss Weak. In no time a number of our regular stockists began calling with orders they needed filled. After three or four months it became clear that if we didn't come up with the goods someone else would. So our second label literally materialised around us. Such is the Australian appetite for a beer and a good laugh!