Beer Compurgation

The other weekend I had an afternoon out in Leeds city centre where I visited  Tapped Leed s for the first time, a fairly new establishment having only opened last year. It boasts 27 beers - 13 cask and 14 keg. There are also house beers brewed on site in the brewery whose kettles sit in the bar area itself. It's modern in design; square, matching and formulaic. It feels fresh and clean but certainly bar-like. As an ex-resident of Leeds it is interesting and incredulous that such a bar exists in a prime location (on the main road running to the train station by the brand new Trinity shopping centre) in a city whose drinking establishments have always seemed hidden or camouflaged. It stands bold as brass opposite the ever popular Yate's as an anti-thesis to it's rival. A doorman watches over even though it is early afternoon; a reminder of the reputation of this corner of the city.  Do I enjoy my time here? Of course. We sit on high stools just near the bar and sup a va...

If you don’t make mistakes then how do you learn? The problem for large CAMRA run festivals for as long as I've been attending them has always been to do with the Saturday dregs the majority of hard working folk are punished with supping. Each time this happens people complain that they have to pay the largest entry fee for the poorest range of beer available across four days. Every time the same arguments are had. But you live and learn, so they say,except, actually, they never do. To address this issue I had to take matters into my own hands when it came to the Manchester Beer and Cider Festival 2014 that was being held at the remarkable venue of the National Cycling Centre . The location prospect, plus early beer lists made me excited to have chance to attend, but I knew that the organisers would do nothing to target the problematic Saturday run-off. So I risked jeopardising any work I had to do in my job Friday morning by heading down to the festival Thursday even...

There was a time when I might have found a personal surmising of my own last 12 months a little self-indulgent. It is negativity within me that I am trying to shake off, but we will get to that later on in this seemingly endless ramble. 2013 was a year that can lend itself to the old cliché of being full of highs and lows; positives and negatives. Though I could be truly narcissistic and talk of my personal life at this point, I rather refer to my life within the beer world and my time as a blogger. In drinking and sampling terms I’ve supped some truly memorable beverages. I never came around to writing my own Golden Pints for the year, partly for I was too busy writing a Beer Advent Calendar post each day, partly because I fear I could open my “beer of the year” at 11.59pm 31 st December and partly because I find it too difficult to complete every category. Luckily, when it comes to remembering beers, I’ve got a blog for reference. Easily the two best beers I drank last year...

Let us end Christmas on a high. Let us do so because my calculations are poor and patience even worse. Let us rejoice in the coming of the Lord and Saviour and therefore we get crap loads of presents because some preacher was born 2013 years ago. Hark, for a 14-year-old woman has got knocked up and the only defence there is to claim it's because God has impregnated her. And I am a Christian and a Christmas lover before the pitchforks are sharpened.   Today the Advent Calendar comes to an end. I've really enjoyed it this year, where as last year's had become a chore by the end. Family casualties and endless work merriment made some of the posts published late, but I endeavoured and still am glad to keep mine solely Christmas ale exclusive. Last year I vowed never to do such a calendar again. This year I find myself already looking forward to December 1st 2014.   Somehow this year I ended with two beers left come December 24th. Perhaps it is due to the moving around...

Well this is truly very good. Just like the beer yesterday, Alesmith, Winter Yule Smith 8.5% has had to battle through my brutal seasonal cold to form part of my Advent Calendar. I'd been really quite looking forward to this one and considered forfeiting today's beer as, not only did I have a feeling this would be good, it was also rather pricey and it seemed to be wasted on a cold that has numbed both my sense of smell and taste. Luckily, this happens to be good enough to fight through it all.   This is, of course, the Winter Yule Smith where this beer is brewed as a big Imperial Red Ale; the Summer Yule Smith is a Double IPA that I have sadly never tried. It's not a traditional choice for a festive beer, but this is more of a celebratory beer for the season, just like Sierra Nevada's Celebration Ale . Prior to tasting that beer in Window 17 I was disappointed to think that this Alesmith beer was going to be a big hoppy affair, rather than a warming winter tre...

So here's a brewery everybody hates. Everybody hates words like Budweiser, Stella Artois, Anheuser-Busch and InBev to the point wh Leffe . Whatever they've done for the sustainability and success of their business doesn't change the fact that Leffe was the first real Belgian and Abbey beer I started to drink when I was 18 and that developed my tastes away from the traditional British cask ales I was used to. Anyway, you can buy Leffe's Blonde and Bruin in Aldi these days and they still taste as I remember so who am I to complain. ere we'll argue over everything they produce and associate with until our laptop keys are broken from the ferocity of our typing. I say "we" but you can count me out as I love   This little bottle of Leffe Biere de Noel 6.6% was intended to be Window 22 of last year's Advent Calendar. It was due to illness and a hectic schedule that no beers were drunk last year for either Window 22 or 23. It is by complete coincidenc...

Today is the day of my first ever re-review of a beer. This Advent Calendar has tried to avoid repetition on last year's and I certainly found enough different Christmas beers in order to do so, but I have made an exception for Hook Norton Brewery's Twelve Days 5.5% which popped up in Window 21. This same beer made up Window 15 of my Calendar last year in which I used the majority of a short review to compare the 2012 bottle I had to one I drank in 2010. So why the re-review? Well, this happens to be a bottle of this beer from 2010 that has been unintentionally sat in the back of a forgotten box for all that time. I stated last year that it wasn't as good or nearly as "Christmassy" as I remembered and was therefore a tad disappointing. I'd like to see if it was the beer that had changed or my palate.   I needn't give much backstory into Hook Norton as any self respecting beer enthusiast should know of them and their beers. They've been maligned ...