All Things Beer!

Had a great night out with 10 friends last night at our pal's massive, gorgeous MANSION (!!!) in the Lanarkshire countryside.  They barbecued a beef tenderloin, and we shared a 30-litre barrel of Buttenheim Lowenbrau kellerbier.

Off to London on Wednesday for the Great British Beer Festival!
 http://www.gbbf.org.uk/

I love IPAs and last weekend at Belladrum,the Black Isle tent had a gorgeous IPA on draught and I sure drank my fair share!  I have never seen it any pubs or in bottles or anything. I have been dreaming of it ever since. 

Had some Black Isle Goldeneye Pale Ale last night - lovely stuff!

I've disregarded my "No pumpkin stuff till September" rule because I'm having trouble dealing with gross summer weather. The pumpkin ales are out in the stores, and I'm a-drinkin' 'em! 

That's super exciting! I'm off to the US for work in a week's time and I shall be filling myself and my case with pumpkin beer!  Hehehe

Had a great night out with 10 friends last night at our pal's massive, gorgeous MANSION (!!!) in the Lanarkshire countryside.  They barbecued a beef tenderloin, and we shared a 30-litre barrel of Buttenheim Lowenbrau kellerbier.

Off to London on Wednesday for the Great British Beer Festival!
 http://www.gbbf.org.uk/

What fun on both accounts!!!  Have a great time at the beer festival!

Had some Black Isle Goldeneye Pale Ale last night - lovely stuff!

Absolutely yummy! 

I was also at the Beer Festival on Weds and it was great.  I found two stouts and a golden ale that I loved:

Ascot, Anastasias Exile Stout: toffee & molasses
Titanic, Chocolate & Vanilla Stout: name says it
Conwy, Honey Fayre: honey beer

I enjoyed a lot more beer (yay for being able to drink thirds) but those three were my favs.

Currently enjoying Sam Adams' Otoberfest and Blue Moon's Harvest Pumpkin Ale. The Blue Moon box is a sampler pack. So far I have had the Pumpkin one and the Caramel Apple Spiced Ale. I was really looking forward to the Caramel Apple one, but it is bland, and quite disappointing. It is almost tasteless, and I don't get any sort of caramel, apple or spice to it. I forget what the other two in the box are, and am currently too lazy to get up.

With being in a new town two hours from where we were, we are getting a different set of local(ish) craft breweries to try. We're finding beer in the liquor stores we couldn't get before.

It is odd, I don't care for mass produced American beer, so before moving to England I stuck to import beer - English and otherwise - but now that I am back, I seem to notice just how many great American beers there are. Of course, they are all from small companies who will never get the big recognition they deserve. Then again, if they were mass produced they would lose the TLC that makes them what they are.

I love the fall/winter beers! TamaMoo, you got me all excited about the Blue Moon Caramel Apple beer, but then I kept reading. How disappointing! I gave DH a few months in a beer club as a Christmas gift. It was nice trying beers from small microbreweries that we never knew about and it was even nicer having them delivered to our door! I highly recommend it and it wasn't that unreasonably priced.

GBBF was great, and we are definitely going back next year!  
Wish i could remember all that I drank over the 2 days we attended, and my programme has unfortunately been given away... but I didn't really try much new stuff. I mainly just stuck with old favourites that we don't often see locally. I had several pints of Abbeydale Deception and Dark Star APA, for that reason.

We spent Friday going round to various pubs:   Holborn Whippet, Euston Tap, (both fairly useless to cask ale drinkers... they had like 3 cask and a million keg/craft   ) The Jerusalem Tavern, William IV, Ye Old Mitre and the Oakham tap which seems to be called both Oaka and the Mansion House.

But OMG, London!  SO. MANY. STAIRS !!!
I'd forgotten how much stair-climbing is involved!  

Sounds like a great trip Albatross!

I went to my firk UK beer festival this past Sunday, in Southend on Sea. My favorite was a pale beer - Ginger Pig. Yum!

Wachusett double hopped "Green Monsta" IPA- 6.1%. Mmm my current obsession here in the USA - I will need to find some to try and bring back home to Scotland


Pumpkin beer, Oktoberfest beers, "harvest" beers and still hitting the end of summer ales on tap. It's been enjoyable to drink for sure!  I had no idea there were such nice beer establishments near my parents - but they've been popping up over the years for craft brews and they even have casks which seems to be up and coming here. Mmmmmm.

I am not a beer drinker but a friend of mine has bought me a bottle of Banana Bread Beer back from the UK...Going to get it super chilled and try it. DH might end up with a whole bottle but I will give it a try.

I've had that bottled Banana Bread beer... it's really quite nice!

We were in one of our local 'spoons last night for one of these Battle of the Brewers things they've been doing a lot lately.  Last night it was Oakham v Saltaire.  We get plenty of Oakham up here these days, so i stuck to the Saltaire... Blackberry Cascade and Elderflower Blonde.  Both nice, although the Elderflower was a bit overly-perfumey.

One of our pals has just bought, done-up, and opened his own pub in Carlisle, so we're going down there in a few weeks to check it out.

I am not a beer drinker but a friend of mine has bought me a bottle of Banana Bread Beer back from the UK...Going to get it super chilled and try it. DH might end up with a whole bottle but I will give it a try.

I adore the Banana Bread Beer. It is quite nice. I was overjoyed to find a liquor store in Owensboro, KY that sells it. At that time, we were 30 miles away, on the Indiana side of the Ohio. Now we are closer to 120 miles away. Still, we are headed through Owensboro on the way to and from Nashville next week. Just might have to stop in and get some. 

Bought a few US brews to drink whilst watching NFL. First off is a Sam Adams, I thought "that doesn't taste like Sam Adams", checked the bottle and it's brewed under licence in the UK by Shepherd Neame! Not sure when that happened, when I last got some for Superbowl it was just imported by them. It's a phrase I hate to see and generally don't buy a beer if it says that on it.
At least the Point amber lager, brewed in Wisconsin, that I also picked up in Morrisons tastes a little like a proper Sam Adams, and I also have genuine Sierra Nevada and a Flying Fish (that one I bought back from US).

I was in a pub the other day with Orkney Beers all on tap -
Mmm, Corncrake is lovely!
I had tried the Skullsplitter before at the Orkney Brewery, but only out of bottles.  I tried it again the other day out of the cask. It's 8.5%, but it tastes really strong - I actually felt like (tasted like?) I was drinking hard liquor.  Very sherry overtoned to me. It was not unpleasant, but would take some getting used to I think.