Beer Compurgation

I swear I'm trying. I'm still drinking all my Advent beers in time, no matter the struggle, but the times for posts is eluding me. I'm afriad it's all just so damn social at the minute. It'd probably be nice to spend some time staring at my beautifully decorated living room and watching a Christmas film at last, but instead I am out celebrating. It's great Christmas, but it is crippingly exhausting. Blue Mountain Brewery and Barrel House are an 8-year-old Virginia based brewery. I know relatively nothing about them, but their Christmas beer Blitzen is welcomingly part of this Beer Advent Calendar.. It is the brewry's take on a French-Belgian Biere de Noel and is presented beautifully in corked 750ml bottle. Surprisingly for the style, the beer label encourages you to enjoy this beer before the best before date presented on the cork of July 2014. I thought that a 7% dark beer such as this may actually have got better with age so let's find out....

With the best wishes of the Brewery Dupont...  Avec Les Bons Voeux - Brasserie Dupont 's festive beer first created in 1970 as a new year present to their best clients. A 9.5% saison tripel of sorts, it's a hugely revered beer; with a design that suggests speciality. The makers of the greatest saison in the world can surely only create brilliance when making something festive. Christmas is on its way. The number of beers left is frighteningly small. The beer fatigue amongst all these work parties is strong so garnering enthusiasm and love for a beer is becoming more and more difficult. It'll take a monumental drink at this point to make me feel magnanimous. I'm suffering for the love of this calendar but, as a popular snowman once stated... "Some people are worth melting for"  So, as this beer sung out of my Advent Calendar, I wrote the below notes and present them unedited; choosing not to reassemble the affectionate love-in that prov...

Something that I've really enjoyed about this year's Beer Advent Calendar is revisiting and redisocvering Belgian Abbey/Trappist beers that I have sadly neglected in recent years. Maredsous Brune 8 and Rochefort 10 have both been sensational. So I'm really looking forward to rediscovering Chimay Blue. With an unsurprising 100 on Ratebeer, this is a famous beer that is year dated, as older versions are well sort after. My own version is from 2015 so it will be interesting to see how it comes up when "fresh." "Seeing is believing, but sometimes the most real things are those that we can't see."  Chimay Blue 9% When you're unfair to a beer and don't give it the time that it deserves, it maybe deserves an apology. See what we British like to do is combine a load of dried winter fruit and booze at Christmas. Fruit and booze unintentionally seems to form the majority of the tasting notes of my Advent Calendar beers. Raisins, sher...

Time for some further hard-hitting journalism. I liked the look of Kapuziner Winter Weissbier whilst shopping online for Christmas beers for this calendar. I liked its scene on the label. I liked the flip-lid. I liked how it fitted into the theme.  My German is a little rusty but, from what I can gather, the Kapuziner beer brands hail from a small, hilly brewery but are now owned by the Kulmbacher Brewery Corporation. Gosh, not very craft is it?  Now that you've all learnt so much about this beer and its history, let's find out how it tastes under Beer Advent Calendar Window Sixteen. This is one of those occasions where I like how my nonsensical notes I've written whilst drinking the beer so I'm going to keep them as they are. Enjoy!  "I'm a cotton headed ninny muggins."  Kapuziner Winter Weissbier 5.4% Pouring a flat, really murky orange colour, Banana Boonana Banana on the nose. Oh how minions would like this beer. I mean, at ...

As the start of the post-craft year of 2016 begins, I can't wait to get back to good wholseome beer with good wholesome brewers. You know what phrase I want to revitalise next year - microbrewery. Everyone now is a macro or a craft, macro or a craft. I want next year to be the return of microbrewery. Are you a macro? No. Are you craft, then? No wafflefodder, we're a microbrewery but still making some damn tasty beer.  Tatton Brewery from Kuntsford are not at Indy Man Beer Con. They aren't subject to SABMiller bids. They won't be forming some part of an extensive Cheshire Beer Expo 2016. They are one of many making consistent beers in cask and bottle that seem to be unfashionable. Part of me wants to love this year old Red Hot Poker that has made it into my Beer Advent Calendar (it is their Christmas beer,) but part of me expects to hate it.  "That's what it's about isn't it? I mean, that's what it's always been about..."  Ta...

Elizabeth Browning has just reminded me of a period in my youth that I’d forgotten about. Her famous poem – How Do I Love Thee (Sonnet 43) – was part of my poetry book sex that I was to study for my GCSE English Literature examination. There was numerous poems in the book and only a select few would actually be included in the examination. In the end though, I wasn’t required to study Browning’s poem for one simple factor: it was considered too “girly.” Yes, our GCSE English classes were split into gender specific groups; the only subject to do so aside from P.E. Somebody made the decision that, to keep young adults interested in literature, they should be made to read “gender suitable” words. For Shakespeare, we ever-so-manly boys studied Merchant of Venice, whilst the girl group studied Romeo and Juliet. For a book, we did To Kill a Mockingbird; a book considered too masculine for the girls as they read Wuthering Heights. And in our poetry lessons, whi...

*If you are here strictly to read Golden Pints winners, scroll down and skip the introduction* I know the majority reading this just want some one word answers to the "Golden Pints" questions (and they are in there somewhere near the bottom) but allow me a little self-indulgence first. It's been a very different year drinking wise for me to previous. Life changes that required me to focus my money elsewhere have led to me changing the way I drink. Fewer online orders, fewer of the big expensive "one-offs" or imports purchased and fewer Sundays nailing Port Street Beer House's bottle menu. At the same time I became a pub regular for the first time in my life. I transitioned from familiar face to regular customer to regular barfly to part of the family in twelve months. Popping in to see bar staff rather than *just* for the pint became a thing. Nipping in on my own waiting for a train and leaving four hours later than planned happened a litt...