In the meantime I’ve set myself a project for the Summer of ‘09 (which has now started for me at least). The project is to enjoy 80 different respectable (=good to great) beers in my garden before the end of September. I am also going to use this as an excuse to post up short tasting notes and perhaps some vignettes on enjoying beer in the comfort of one ‘sown garden (or island or farm or empire).

Beer No 1 and No 2 are already done – in the can as they say in the tv/movie/video biz. And you can see a Flickr slideshow below. This slideshow should grow to well over 80 slides by the end of summer – as some beers will be worthy of more than a single photo.

Beer No 1: Ayinger Frühlingsbier, Germany

Beer No 2: Young’s Kew Gold, UK.

I will be back with my tasting notes of these two lovely brews later in the week.

I stumbled upon this FriendFeed of UK Beer Blogs which is a nice resource – need to find who set it up (thanks!). Got me thinking we should do the occasional post with round-up of good post in the beer-blogosphere – maybe call it the beer bong?. Here’s one on a rainy April night in London.

• Stonch’s Beer Blog has a post about one our local’s the magnificent Florence and its latest brew from Herne Hill. Great pub and one of London’s few micro-brew/brewpubs.
• BrewDog — in their own words (well Martin Dickie’s). Glad that BrewDog won their battle with the Portman Group – keeping brewing dogs!
• Some naughty beer ads get banned, darn… Another post here from Tandleman’s Beer Blog.

We have to say well done to JD Wetherspoon’s for their International Real Ale Festival (Apr 15 – May 4) – great way to promote real ale to the masses (regardless fo what you think of JDW). We’ve had 3 of the guest ales so far – all very good – these are:

1. FLYING DUTCHMAN WIT BIER 16/20 – very tasty!

2. Epic Pale Ale 15/20.

3. Yukon Lead Dog Ale 10/20 (probably not cold enough to really give it credit)

Good night from BV HQ…