Good News

Just a quick post today with some news. I would like to announce that I only have one month left as a resident of the United Kingdom before I jet back to Australia. It's been a while coming but after three and a half years of shit weather and shit food with only travel and beer to compensate, something had to give.

How does this effect the blog? Not a great deal really! The content will shift a little towards my brewing exploits and buying a house, getting a dog, setting up my bar and maybe having kids - but overall still keep a similar format. Obviously the watering holes will change as will the types of beers I talk about but this should prove interesting for UK based readers. Anyhow I have a lot of tasks to squeeze into a very short time frame before I start my new job. First task is that bottle of 1999 Fullers Vintage.........

Back in the Groove

Last Friday night I managed to get back to the pub. Yes, someone give me some tickets to put on the wall - its exciting news. The Parr's Head had Summer Lightning on as its guest beer. It tasted like DMS and had traces of acetaldehyde as well. I don't think I have ever had this beer and enjoyed it. It's rubbish and overrated. My yellow curry from their Thai kitchen was nice though and more than excused the lacklustre pint. In future I will remember just to stick to the Pride!

On Saturday afternoon I met up with my mate Rich who has moved down to sarf-London. We hit up the Alma and the Ship which are both Young's pubs in Wandsworth. Both pubs were really busy with crowds spilling over onto the streets, and the Young's Ordinary was in fine condition (@ both venues). I even had one pint served in a dimpled mug which is pretty rare in London. I obviously didn't look like I was going to bop someone over the head with it!

Anyhow I broke the drought and hit up a couple of pubs. It was fun, although I didn't have a bender. One of those is on the horizon though.

On other beer related news there is a CAMRA beer festival creeping up that I might go to. The Ealing beer 'fest is the only one of these soul less nerdfests that I actually go to. It's held outside and there is plenty of room to get away from the hardcore beer nerds and CAMRA degenerates. Not sure which day I will go to yet, but I will forewarn everyone which day I am going. If only so CAMRA types can avoid me! A full report of the piss up will follow in due course.

Beer Savers

These simple items (pictured left) are designed to stop cask beer spoiling, going off and turning to vinegar. For performing such a task they should be hailed as heros, but instead CAMRA have branded them as effectively "evil" as they were not used in the middle ages (where I presume all beer tasted like shit). CAMRA enforce their medieval beliefs on landlords by omitting them from their pub guide (confusingly called "The Good Beer Guide" which is edited by aging bolshevik Roger Protz) if they use them. For the publican in a remote area where trade is passing, or via advertising provided by this publication, not being listed is committing business suicide. These devices have unlimited potential, and their acceptance and use could see drinkers being offered the choice of many different ales available rather than the usual one or two bland choices which one normally comes across. The device on the left is a check valve and is sanctioned. It is used when an electric pump or gas is used top push the beer to the hand pump. It acts by stopping the beer being pushed any further, so the beer has to be pulled out of the hand pump - this stops the hand pump from leaking. The device on the right is a cask aspirator which allows a blanket of gas to enter the cask, but not under any pressure. It also contains a release valve which stops pressure building up with the cask - overall a nice bit of kit. The blanket of gas replaces air (air is roughly 78% Nitrogen, 21% oxygen and 1% of other gases) with an inert gas to eliminate oxygen. Oxygen is bad for beer and makes it go stale, although CAMRA would like you to believe otherwise.

From a technical point of view they can be used and still meet CAMRA's definition of real ale;

"Beer brewed from traditional ingredients, matured by secondary fermentation in the container from which it us dispensed and served without the use of extraneous carbon dioxide"

So basically if you use a cask aspirator with nitrogen as a blanketing gas, you can still call your beer 'real ale' as only carbon dioxide is a no-no. So why do pubs not use them? Well they have a stigma in the industry and its not worth the trouble of being delisted from CAMRA publications. Also pubs renown for their real ale have the turnover and rarely see a cask go bad. But if other pubs which only have a marginal ale turnover used these devices we could realize the utopian world where every pub had 10 casks of well kept ale on. We the consumer are being denied this by the backward mentality of the self appointed guardian of beer - CAMRA. As a member of this organization I feel embarressed about such backward policies.

I sourced these from Barley Bottom Home Brewing Products after having a spot of trouble with another vendor. Much better service from these guys and I was happy to do business with them, they were also significantly cheaper as well!

What is everyone else's opinions on these devices? I certainly see no harm and I am all for seeing beer served in good condition everywhere.

The Doctor MIA? No busy dealing with Twats

The busy stretch seems to have come to an end and fingers crossed I can get back to business as usual. I apologize again for being MIA and for my blog being a bit shithouse lately as well.

Firstly I have not stepped foot in a pub since I reported on the steak sandwich I had at The Queens Head a few weeks ago. I did make it to the beer garden of The Brook Green Hotel on one of the warmers days before the weather turned crap - but I opted for a couple of bottles of 'OIrish' style cider instead. I think this is excusable in warmer weather as is drinking copious amounts of lager. Oh and I have not been to the Gunmakers in over a month - it's a sad state of affairs (actually I might sneak out for a quick one this afternoon).

My fridge has played host to numerous bottles of Anchor Steam, SNPA and Punk IPA over the last couple of weeks and I spent £93 in Tesco sourcing a trolley full of these bottles. Basically I have been too lazy to stroll down to the pub for a pint and have been opting to drink in the flat with the Missus. Some CAMRA retards might think this is antisocial, but I think it shows common sense in these tough economic times, plus there is no barman to ever cut me off if I have one too many!

Last week I said I would have some kind of news announcement, well basically I don't have anything worth indulging yet - but fingers crossed I will have something soon. Also worth noting is that I placed an order with an asshole who runs a store called beerclearstore.co.uk. This fool refused to process my order due to some issue he has with PayPal and he was claiming he couldn't get the money I paid him. What a tool! Basically I ordered a few things through his website, chose to use his online checkout (which is with PayPal) and the order went smoothly. He gives me a call saying that he has received my order and it will be with me in 3-4 days. A week later and I haven't received anything so I give him a call;

"Oh, I am having some problems getting the money from PayPal. I'll look into it and call you back." I'm thinking fair enough - but he doesn't call me back. I call again and this tool is still claiming that PayPal are withholding funds. I tell him that his relationship with PayPal has nothing to do with me and to hurry up and process my order. He refuses to process my order - I've promoted this bloke from tool to twat at this stage. I then ring up PayPal and they indirectly tell me that this bloke twat can't access his funds because he has been stooging other customers. So I email the twat and ask for a refund which he claims that he can't provide. I then send him some emails telling him he has no idea about how to run a business and deal with customers etc. I received the expected email back saying that he not going to correspond with me any further. I then lodge a dispute with PayPal which is automatically escalated to a claim and I have my money refunded in a record 11 minutes! Basically PayPal asked this guy to respond to my complaint and he said that he can't do anything as PayPal have my money not him. Whatever.... But the moral of the story is DO NOT buy any thing from beerclearstore.co.uk as it's not worth the effort and you are not going to get the level of customer service which every consumer deserves. I should have picked up on this as he used two different surnames during the process of me trying to sort this stuff out. Anyhow I have reordered my items with another online vendor and should have them early next week. I will describe my purchases in an upcoming post, the items will almost certainly piss some people off. Let the good times roll.......

Busy Bee

I have been pretty busy of late and have no time for blogging. This also means that I have had no time for drinking either! Today marks a significant unloading of projects for me which should hopefully see me back on track again next week. I also have an important announcement which (fingers crossed) I should be able to make some time next week. (I'll give you a hint, it's exciting and will change the shape of this blog, well the content anyway!)

I would also like to add that my local Tesco now stocks Anchor Steam. Yesterday I made the most of my stuck at home/tube strike situation and picked up a few bottles of Punk IPA, SNPA and Anchor Steam. I plan to drink these tonight.

Triple A

Not anti aircraft artillery, but the beer style. I am not limiting myself to Belgians either. Over the last couple of weeks I have been drinking an unusual number of Tripel's and Triples. I am not really a big fan of the beer style as I don't really like the coriander and funky fusal alcohol tastes which define the style. Some people describe these flavours as complex, but they aren't really and are more artifacts of sloppy brewing techniques and warm fermentation's. Anyway Here is a list of the beers that I had;

- Westmalle Trappist Tripel 9.5%

- Brakspear Triple 7.2%

- La Trappe Tripel 8%

- Kasteel Triple 11%

OK the Brakspear beer has nothing to do with the Belgian offerings and had a really nice almost sultana style sweetness and chocolate nuttiness that was really nice. I actually ate some Cadbury's Fruit and Nut with this one - it was a good match for all you food and beer pairer's.

Actually the Brakspears Triple was remarkable similar to two Belgian Bruin ales I had;

- Trappist Achel Bruin 9.5%

- Gordon Finest Scotch Highland Ale 8.6% (this is actually Belgian!)

So there we have it, a bit of a consolidated ticker post. To summarize - Belgian Tripel's were pretty shit, most of the Kasteel one went down the sink. The Brakspears Triple and the Belgian Bruins were nice - even though they had rather extreme abv's. I should note that I had a few BrewDog punk IPA's last week and appreciated the weakness and sessionability of it's 'modest' 6% abv.

A Nice Friday Afternoon

Last Thursday saw me back in Wuppertal, Germany on a client visit. This involved a 4.15am start and didn't see me back in the UK until well after the sun had set (OK it was about 10.15pm). The upside of this is that I enjoyed several Altbiers on the companies dime, but I had to travel to Wuppertal (the ass end of the universe) for the pleasure. Understandably I was dog tired on Friday morning and decided to work from home so I could have a lie in. Most people take the piss when they work from home, but for some reason I always end up being smashed with tasks flooding into my email inbox. Last Friday was no exception and I also had to deal with a solid back load of crap from Thursday as well. As I am a "work hard, play hard" kind of bloke I decided to knock off early and head down the pub for a beer and something to eat. My first choice is usually The Havelock for their excellent food and proper real keg from Meantime, but I missed their lunch service (which finishes at 2.30pm). In light of the stupid inconvenient food service hours at The Havelock, I opted to head down to Fuller's recent acquisition "The Queens Head" on Brook Green. This was a good move as they had the new Gales beer "Seafarers" on which is nice and hoppy and very drinkable at 3.6%. I decided not to get any food, but crumbled during my second pint and went for the steak baguette with horseradish mayo. If only all Friday's were this productive!

Prize Old Ale 2007

I had some good news last Wednesday - it's not widely advertised yet and is still sensitive here at work so I can't go into details but I was promoted and now have a 'Senior' in front of my title, so I deemed it appropriate to celebrate. To achieve this I cracked open a bottle of Gales Prize Old Ale 2007 Vintage (9% abv) to mark the occasion. I really shouldn't have bothered - It was vinegar. I was devastated and resorted to a bottle of Magner's Light which had been hovering around since someone left it behind at some stage. The Magner's was drinkable after I added some 7-Up to it, the Gales went down the sink.
Interestingly the fools who comment at BeerAdvocate couldn't tell that it was infected and wrote up tasting notes on it! A few of the 'raters' even comment on the vinegar 'notes' in it's flavour, like it is a deliberate feature. Don't believe everything you read online - OK, make an exception for me...