Advent Calendar Window One - Commemorative Ale

So this Advent Calendar didn't get off to the greatest of starts. I meant to follow up the introduction with a part 2 yesterday, but due to having a gay old time in wonderful Macclesfield I didn't get round to it. It was a post about a beer tasting of some of the beers I'd bought for this Advent calendar that were ousted by others. I'll maybe post it after Christmas.

Anyway, Window and Beer one in this calendar is Kiuchi Brewery Hitachino Nest Commemorative Ale 8%. I bought this beer much earlier in the year so I'm assuming it's the 2012 edition, but this is not stated on any part of the bottle I can find. It's actually brewed as A New Year celebration beer, but falls into the Christmas theme just for being generally festive.

"You'd see that today holds something special

Something Holy not superficial

So here's to the birthday boy who saved our lives...."

Commemorative Ale sits in the glass a thick, hazy orange and instantly hits you with it's spicy nose. There's lots of ginger, marjoram, tarragon and orange. It's a spice sensation you feel glow in your cheeks immediately. The taste retains a ginger dominating, but not in the fiery sense a Ginger beer might produce. It's mellowed by the juicy oranges, coriander stalks, vanilla and a touch of lemongrass. The finish produces a rice wine spice that is familiar in Hitachino Nest beers. More Akemashite Omedetogozaimasu than Auld Lang Syne but that would be the expectancy. It's a near perfect festive beer and winning start to this Calendar. Like many festive favourites, more than one would be trying, but one is more than enough.

Purchased from Beers of Europe, May 2013.

Drunk aside two Advent Calendar chocolates, both in the shape of Father Christmas.

Comments

"They Had Their Issues, So..."

There’s a set of garages to rent as storage units near my workplace. One of them is taken by a local florist that uses it to store flower arrangements for various events, that are more often than not funerals. As such, at least once a week at 8am I will pass a car being loaded up with flowers arranged into heart shaped patterns or the letters M U M. It is a grounding reminder that, as I mentally grumble my way through the upcoming arbitrary grievances of my ordinary working day, a group of family and friends locally is going through the hardest time. It provides much needed perspective on days when I could do with being reminded of all that I have to be thankful for. These little moments explain to me why it is possible for us to share a communal loss when a celebrity passes away. Grief is often a personal and lonely experience, shared between a minority of people in your life. When a co-worker loses a relative or friend, it has little affect on me, bar signing of

The Ten Pubs That Made Me - Part 3: Dr Okell's / My Foley's Tap House and Leeds

A pint in Mr Foley's Tap House from December 2022 This is Part 3 (the fourth post) of an ongoing project. Please see the beginning of Part 0 for details. Come the end of this journey, there may be a lesson in procrastination that I am unlikely to heed. These posts stem from a list that I made three years ago and a series that I embarked on 18 months ago. We’ve only now reached a 30% completion rate and with this post we are back to fail for the second time. This odyssey began with a trip to Mr Foley’s Tap House in February 2022 – named Dr Okell’s bar on my first visits in 2005 – only to discover that it was closed. It did reopen by the time that the post was coming out and I managed a brief visit in December 2022. However, my July 1 st 2023 trip to Leeds, on which this post is based, is met with this sign at the door of the bar: A quick check of social media shows an Instagram post from the day before (June 30 th ) announcing the closure of the

LIVERPOOL - the City that Craft Beer Forgot Part II (and found...)

After visiting Liverpool, one of my favourite cities, in February this year, and not impressing people with my rather hasty but honest verdict on the city’s lack of craft beer, I jumped at the chance to return last week and hoped to come out with a more attractive judgement. A couple of friends and I visited on a day out, with neither of them having been drinking in the city before. It was left to me – or rather, I volunteered – to plan the day’s itinerary and places to visit. I had a couple of new or unvisited places in mind myself, but knew it would be unfair to miss out on some of the city’s famous gems. With around 10-12 hours in which to fit in an entire city, I opted to concentrate on the famous Georgian Quarter and see if we had time for the Dale Street end later on. We planned to arrive in the city for around 11a.m. just in time to walk up Mount Pleasant to the new-on-me, though I believe it has been opened three years, Clove Hitch on Hope Street for breakfast.

Beer Compurgation

Search This Blog