Melbourne, Apr 8 : Men are usually reluctant to take their girlfriends along on a boozy night out, but thanks to Matt Kirkegaard's Good Beer Lunches, a large number of female drinkers have become beer connoisseurs and are a hit with beaus in bottleshop.

With Good Beer Lunches (www. goodbeers. com. au), Kirkegaard holds regular beer education classes, matching food and beer.

And the classes are a great way to expand one's knowledge of the diversity of beer and it also proves to be a social lubricant.

While these events-which usually involve a leisurely three-hour lunch, four courses of tip-top food and beers to match-traditionally boasts of male attendance, many blokes do bring their ladies along.

And after observing their reactions to what they were hearing and tasting, Kirkegaard decided to put on classes only meant for women.

"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."

He also said that since a long time, beer makers have been trying to tap the huge market by women, but don''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 mindless consumption.

"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. (ANI)