Beer Viking » London

Around My Garden in 80 Beers – the lead-in

Doc D — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 20:49:52 +0000

I’ve been inspired or something or maybe its just too much sunny weather for a Beer Viking. Let me try to explain – I’ve really enjoyed using Around London in 80 Beers and now also have Around Bruges in 80 Beers (2nd edition – you need to get it!) sitting in my hands just taunting me to make a raid on that Belgian town…

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.

Epic Beer – A Twitter Driven Tasting in London

Doc D — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 22:10:28 +0000

We had the pleasure of running into Luke the brewer of Epic Pale Ale from New Zealand thanks to Twitter. Thanks to Twitter – that’s a whole other ‘power of social media’ post one day – we managed to track him down at the Market Porter next to Borough Market. He’s been over in the UK brewing a guest ale for the upcoming JD Wetherspoon beer festival next month. Being a friendly kiwi he immediately gave a bottle of Epic Pale Ale to take home to try. This beer is not available anywhere in the UK – yet. He also let slip he’d be back at The Rake for small tasting the next day.

Of course the next day we headed out on a small raid of the Rake in the hopes we’d get to try Epic with the brew master. Lady luck was on our side and we got to try two Epic’s – the Pale Ale and season brew the Mayhem. Here’s a brief review and ranking of both…

“the facts”	Epic Pale Ale	Epic Mayhem
Style	pale ale	IPA’-esk
ABV	5.4%	6.2%
Bottle Size	330ml	500ml
Origin	Auckland, New Zealand	Auckland, New Zealand
Notes	arrived by way of Luke’s luggage on Air New Zealand.	Sweeter than a normal IPA but very apple-hop tones.

“the ranking”	0-5 for each	0-5 for each
Nose	3	4
Appearance	4.5	5
Taste	3.5	4
Finish	3	4
Total	14/20	17/20

We are looking forward to the Epic UK mashup brew at the Weatherspoons festival and also to following more adventures of @epicbeer on Twitter. Be sure to visit the Epic website and blog for more info on these great beer from New Zealand.

Some photos from late 2008… random

Doc D — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 10:39:38 +0000

Ok so the BV team needs a flickr account… Anyway some photos from ’08. Most are from the Groninger brewpub in Hamburg (December) and one is a Friday session at the Rake in London (~October).

Gröninger Brewpub - Hamburg

Gröninger - cooper kettles!

Cooper kettles - 1800 liters each

Gröninger -golden larger (ale?)

Rake Session - rated left (best) to right (ok)

In Search of a Perfect Pint – The Science

thetank — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 12:28:48 +0000

Great article in the Independent about the importance and science of good beer making. Which was published the day that Rob Bell was giving a talk at the RI about the Science of Beer.

From reading about the great work Rob is doing at O’Hanlon Brewing Company including the resurrection of hte Thomas Hardy Ale, he’s gone on the Beer Viking wish list for brewers to meet and share a pint with to talk about hops, malt and the whatever else comes to mind.