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| Tuesday, June 30th, 2009 | | 8:34 pm |
Another Belgian Beer Update
Right, time for another quick round-up before I get too far behind on these. Except I think I already am. (Not to mention that I wrote this last week and never got around to posting it.) ( blah blah blah... )For a change of "scenery" from all this Belgian stuff it's The White Horse, Parson's Green's American beer festival this weekend. Lot's of stuff from Stone, Sierra Nevada, Goose Island, Great Divide and more. There's links, including a provisional beer list, on their website. Hopefully I'll get to try some Dogfish Head. Oh, and I spent the weekend with ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) darth_tigger . I now ache all over and she has laryngitis. I'm sure that can sound much dodgier than it was. | | Friday, June 19th, 2009 | | 9:46 am |
Another convert
Warren Ellis has discovered BrewDog Punk IPA.
"Oh my fucking god. You need to order this by the crate." Of course I'm still perfectly prepared for them to randomly send me boxes of their beer. Oh well. Probably a good bit of marketing there. And that's Warren Ellis, not to be confused with the other Warren Ellis. Obviously. | | Sunday, June 7th, 2009 | | 12:18 am |
100 Belgian Beers To Try Before You Die: An Update
I've been rather remiss on my Belgian beer drinking project recently. Partly as I've been meaning to blog them properly and then not getting around to it and then not wanting to get too far behind which means I've not been drinking many and now it's June and it's not going well. Punctuation not going well either. So, with minimal notes, here's Part One of a catch up. ( Blah blah blah... ) | | Friday, June 5th, 2009 | | 3:15 pm |
...so little time
The Bull in the arse-end of nowhere Horton Kirby, Kent, is a mighty fine pub with great beer, a top-notch landlord, decent grub and all that sort of thing. They've been doing monthly brewery showcases for a while and occasional beer festivals, most of which I miss, though I did make it to their BrewDog weekend unsurprisingly. This weekend I think they may have excelled themselves. I'll save you my enthusing about beer I haven't even drunk yet; though it's safe to say it's rare I'm so keen to drink a 2.7% beer. But I won't be sticking to the weak stuff. I fear I shall be a little drunk later. Well, about 6'2" but... | | 11:00 am |
Let Bribery Commence
Yesterday, between work and Ton, and after hassling the good people at Utobeer for a week I got my hands on some BrewDog Zephyr. This is the very rare and expensive beer I recently wrote about. They only got three bottles of the stuff and I bought the last two (though pingopark has custody of one; I'm hoping to get it for my birthday). Two bottles of beer, fifty quid. That's something you don't do every day. So now I've got to figure out when and where you drink such a thing. A decadent evening with a selection of women in deshabille sounds appropriate but unlikely (though I can think of a few who'd at least appreciate the beer). I'm pondering if a convention would be a good place to open one so a few of you can get to try it. fringefaan, are you planning a visit at any point? Seems only fair to offer some to suaveswede after all the interesting stuff I've tried of his. And there's a few more of you I think should get to try it. Or I could just be gloriously selfish and rather drunk. Anyway, feel free to suggest what I should do with it (drink it!). If you're at all interested there's more about the beer here and some rather enthusiastic tasting notes over here. Of course if I'd bought a couple of bottles of champagne for that price it'd be no big deal really. Odd that it feels so different being beer. I'm also pretty sure I'm going to enjoy it more. | | Wednesday, May 27th, 2009 | | 2:42 pm |
Or you could have innumerable cans of Stella
As some of you know I'm a bit of a fan of beer from BrewDog, which an increasing number of you seem to be too, rather gratifyingly. There's been the occasional mention on their website for some time of an upcoming beer called Zephyr, with some interesting sounding hints. 12.5% IPA... aged for 21 months in a 1965 whisky cask... with 30kg of strawberries... champagne bottle with hand printed label... enthusiastic pre-release tastings... Obviously this wasn't going to be a cheap beer when it finally appeared. Towards the end of last week it did. ( How much?! ) | | Tuesday, May 19th, 2009 | | 9:58 pm |
Coraline and other Lost Girls
I went to see the 3D version of Coraline the other day. It's a stop-motion animation film directed by Henry Selick (Nightmare Before Christmas) based on the book by Neil Gaiman (some of you may have heard of him) and it's really rather good. ( Spoilery ramblings within... ) | | Friday, May 15th, 2009 | | 12:25 pm |
Dash it!
I've just realised that the steampunk convention later in the year, which I really fancied going to, is on the same weekend as my annual "pretend to be fit" day, aka the Nottingham half-marathon. As I've done that for the last two years (and watched the one before) darth_tigger tells me that it's now traditional, and "something I do". Though I could get out of a whole summer doing "training" if I decided to dress like a ponce, grow a stupid moustache (again), and slob around drinking beer and absinthe. That's got to be better hasn't it? Somehow I don't think I'm going to be let out of this one. Then again, Lincoln and Nottingham are quite close. I could always do the run tired, hungover and wearing a frock coat. While I'm here: I can highly recommend Coraline, especially in 3D. I shall try to wibble more about that soon but I'm pretty rubbish at posting stuff. Interestingly though, while still pondering that, I got an email alerting me to the imminent release of the most disturbing children's tv series from my childhood. Hopefully more on that later too. | | Wednesday, May 6th, 2009 | | 5:06 pm |
| | Sunday, May 3rd, 2009 | | 11:59 pm |
| | Sunday, April 26th, 2009 | | 12:33 am |
| | Saturday, April 25th, 2009 | | 11:11 pm |
| | Sunday, April 5th, 2009 | | 5:29 pm |
Eastercon Beer Tasting
I'm not going to post up my Eastercon schedule like many people are doing; I can't imagine there are (m)any of you out there that keen to see me on panels unless you'd be going to them for the subject anyway. I thought I'd mention one thing I'm doing which is a bit different though and that's a beer tasting on the Saturday night, at 9 o'clock. So if you'd like to try half a dozen really fine beers from around the world, with styles ranging from a porter to a geuze, then come along. You'll have to put up with me wittering on about various stuff but there'll be drink to take your mind off it. And hopefully suaveswede will also be along to be more knowledgeable than me. There'll be a sign up sheet somewhere as numbers are limited but this is free as in beer, not as in speech. It'll be like going to a programme item and being in the bar combined. In other beer news; I braved darkest Kent on Friday night to go to a rather decent pub (The Bull, Horton Kirby) that was having a BrewDog weekend. I managed to get through the Trashy Blonde, Chaos Theory, Riptide, Paradox Arran and Zeitgeist, all of which were superb. There was also Punk IPA on but I think that would have pushed me over the edge and made finding the train station rather difficult. The landlord's favourite breweries seem to be Dark Star, Thornbridge and BrewDog; and I really can't argue with that. I think I may have to visit again at some time; it's a shame their Belgian beer festival is going to be on over Easter. | | Saturday, March 28th, 2009 | | 11:42 pm |
| | 11:18 pm |
| | Friday, March 27th, 2009 | | 11:28 am |
Tactical Nuclear Penguin
"This is the coolest beer name on the planet" Well, not yet it's not. But you can go here and vote and it might well happen. Go on, go on, go on. It is officially Year Of The Penguin after all. (BrewDog, eveyone's favourite new brewery, have been getting visitors to their website to vote on the style and ingredients of a new beer. It's going to be a 6.5% black IPA (???) brewed with US hops and featuring blueberries and oak chips. Now they just need a name. In a month or two I really want to be able to order a crate of Tactical Nuclear Penguin.) Oh, and guess what I was doing last week. There's a clue in the icon. | | Friday, March 6th, 2009 | | 3:19 pm |
Time is an illusion...
Lunchtime good. Lunchtime with beer plusgood. Lunchtime with Nethergate Old Growler doubleplusgood. | | Friday, February 27th, 2009 | | 12:07 pm |
| | Saturday, February 21st, 2009 | | 11:45 pm |
| | Tuesday, February 17th, 2009 | | 9:24 pm |
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