Nice set of brewing links thanks to the Bitter Brewer. BV will be adding this to this list over time. Wanted to save it as a reminder and to use later here – hence the quick dirty post.

Home Brewers Links:

http://www.northernbrewer.com

http://www.homebrewhome.com

http://www.basicbrewingradio.com

http://www.homebrewing.org

http://www.homebrewmart.com

http://www.homebrewery.com

http://www.monsterbrew.com

http://www.howtobrew.com

http://www.byo.com

http://www.homebrewtalk.com

http://www.beeradvocate.com

http://www.homebrewzone.com

http://www.DIYbrewing.com

http://www.brewboard.com

http://www.thebrewhut.com

http://www.homebrewheaven.com

http://www.homebrewtees.com

http://www.highgravitybrew.com

http://www.allaboutbeer.com

http://www.beertown.org

http://www.morebeer.com

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…

In the meantime, I’ve been thinking about starting both an annual and LIFE ‘list’ of beers that I have tried. This is probably the super geek or science nerd trying to coming out — but hey what can be wrong with finding another way to enjoy beer and tell the world (or least remind the BV crew)?! So, what do I mean by ‘lists’? Well to start it would be a simple way to track all the different beers we get to taste each year – a running total of individual beers and would probably include some other notes as well. As a starting point here are the data points I would include:

Brewery Name, Beer Name, Region, Style, ABV, Tap/Cask/Bottle or Other, Appearance notes, including colour, Nosing notes, Tasting notes, date, location consumed, Optional details like interesting ingredients, IBU, etc.

The rules are you list the 1st one of the season (ie, if you drink a lot of Sn Pale Ale or Dark Star Golden Ale it would still only get one entry) and if you manage to consume the same beer in both cask and bottle form those each count as 1 entry each. A sort of running total. A simple list.

Here is a sample for 2009 so far (just a rough field list to be padded out later on):

Fullers Vintage Ale
San Miguel
Tropical
Meantime Pale Ale
Sierra Nevada Anniversary Ale
Insulation Bitter, Hyde
Avibtinue
Rogue Juniper Pale Ale
Stone IPA
Little Creature Pale
Neglo Modelo
Stella (I know, bad form but I was on an airplane)
Brocklyn larger
etc etc

Feedback appreciated on both the data standard and the concept of ‘beer lists’!!! And if anyone knowns of any good beer lists please send us the link… In the mean time keep drinking.

I met the wine maker back in the summer of Trois Terres in the S. France. Cool dude. More on that another time. His wife was kin enough to send me a case of his wine. Tonight we cracked opened a bottle of 2007 ‘La Minerale’ Vin e Pays d’Oc. Its very nice. Need to get Oz Clarke over to help me describe it.

Anyway… More later including a photo of the very cool label.