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...