Truefitt Brewery Opening

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On Saturday I was delighted to attend the opening of Matt Power’s Truefitt Brewery in Middlesbrough. It’s really exciting to see the return of exciting beers being produced on Teesside.

An apology firstly for enjoying the beer so much and chatting to @BeerReviewsAndy and @davelozman, I forgot to take any pictures! I’m still getting the hang of this blogging business.

Matt had laid on his four core beers for us to try, and along with a happy crowd of drinkers who were enthusiastically tasting and enjoying them all.

I managed to try three of the four, starting with Mydilsburgh IPA which is a 5% English IPA. I would describe it as a session beer despite the abv, as it had a pleasant hoppy taste but not the ‘in your face’ hoppiness that seems to be the current trend of IPA. I’d certainly seek it out for a try that’s for sure.

I then tried the Ironopolis stout which I had to go back and check that this is just a 4.7% abv as it tasted like a much stronger beer due to how rich and full-bodied it was. It is very easy drinking and I could have happily drank it for the rest of the afternoon.

Finally I tried the Erimus pale ale at 3.9%, very much a session beer. I’m a fan of strong beers and tend to not enjoy low abv as they always seem a little thin and not strong on taste. It was a real surprise with how much punch it packs into its low abv, full of hoppy taste with subtle bitter after taste. My wife who isn’t a beer drinker really enjoyed this beer. If we ever get a summer this year, it’s the perfect summer evening post mowing the lawn or sitting in the beer garden pint.

A big thank you to Matt for inviting us along on Saturday and I hope his beers will go far and wide in the coming months. I’d certainly recommend giving them a try if you get the opportunity. You can follow Matt on twitter at @TruefittBeers or his website http://www.truefittbrewing.co.uk/.

 

 

Best and Worst

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In a week where I have had a rare chance to visit the pub on several occasions and having tried several excellent beers, a chance comment on twitter seems to have sparked a little idea for a Sunday evening twitter hashtag.

Having bounced it between @filrd, @cksaddlers & @mbell in slightly irreverent tone, I came up with a plan for a Sunday night best and worst beer of the week using #BestnWorst. To highlight what was the best and the worst beer you have had in the last seven days, sort of Sunday night beer chart show.

This of course will be totally non-scientific and just for fun as they say, but a chance for everyone to think about the highlight of the beery week.

This does lead to the issue of naming and shaming of bad beer or more accurately the opinion of an individual about a beer. Personally, I don’t want to offend anyone, only to provide honest feedback. I happily tweet about great service or great products, so it can’t be wrong to provide some critique of something that doesn’t quite hit the mark!

After all, if you just go around saying how brilliant everything is then you risk just sounding like a fanboy rather than measuring when things go well. On the other hand if you just complain about things without praise then you probably just look like you’re grumpy!

So it’s important to strike the right balance, and in my opinion if I was a producer I would be keen not just on adulation for when you do something well but also to get feedback when something maybe isn’t quite what they expected.

Please feel free to comment and get ready for #BestnWorst for this evening.

David

Whisky, Whiskey so good they named it twice.

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I bought a book this week, not earth shattering news to blog about although since converting to become a Kindle user it is quite a rare event to purchase an actual book made out of paper instead of e ink.

The book is called 101 whiskies to try before you die, by Ian Buxton and having read the reviews decided it would make a good starting point for trying to build a little collection and guide me into trying a few diverse types of whisky that I maybe wouldn’t have considered. It includes lots of Scottish whisky, but also a diverse selection of others from around the world.

101 Whiskies to Try Before You Die

Also the fact of a goal that you can tick them off as you work your way through the 101 appeals to the part of me that didn’t grow up, and still hankers for finishing his Panini football sticker album every world cup.

On reading through the book I have so far realised that I have only tried a maximum of four of the bottles mentioned. This is going to be a bigger job than I imagined, which brings me to the not so small matter of cost. The author points out that the 101 vary from affordable to being quite expensive, with a total cost over £7,000 to get them all.

This makes it a very expensive Panini sticker album, albeit without ending up with five Wayne Rooney duplicates and the elusive “shinies” that you can’t manage to get. I’m not planning on dying anytime soon, so hopefully this leaves me quite a long window to complete the task.

It did get me thinking though, that perhaps other fellow whisky fans out there may also have the book or might like the idea of giving this a go and that potentially a swap shop arrangement could be done to speed up the processes and make it less financially tricky to get past the domestic authorities.

Now being fair to the author I won’t list any of the 101 bottles as his book is available to purchase at a very reasonable price anyway, but thought fellow owners of the book or whisky geeks might think its a good idea?

Sláinte

David

The Virtual Pub

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As an alleged responsible family man I rarely get chance to visit a pub these days and when I do, I try to at least make it somewhere with exciting beer and good company. Unfortunately I don’t live anywhere near a pub with the above criteria fulfilled, although there are three pubs in easy walking distance from my house they all operate to the lowest common denominator of cheap food and mass market beer.

I can’t blame them for this stance, it’s not like they would sustain a living on the times that I or my wife and I would still make a visit and I guess they know their market.

So in my journey into looking for the best of what I do get to drink, home is where 90% of my drinking is done. This of course is at least convenient and I choose what my personal wine cellar and beer cupboard contain, but it doesn’t have the social interaction of a nice pub or random conversations that you get into.

This is where Twitter has changed my drinking habits, not only have I discovered all sorts of exciting beer and wine but also the fact that I can talk to like minded individuals while I’m doing it.

I can sit down, sip my drink of choice and either listen in to other peoples conversations, join in with the regulars or welcome a stranger into a debate. As in a real pub the conversation flows from sport, current affairs and of course discussion on what we are drinking, along of course with hearing some things you really disagree with. Also as in a real pub, people drift in and out along with as the evening progresses the conversation often degenerating into slightly more drink fuelled objectivity.

Whilst this isn’t a substitute for the real pub, I personally find it adds to my enjoyment and at least I still get a fix of social interaction.

Having checked my tweets from various levels of alcohol intake, I have so far avoided the use of the phrases “Your my bestest mate” or “I love you man”, so perhaps at least that has to be a positive.

I’d be interested to know if anyone else thinks of it the same way.

David

 

The Journey….

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I was in somewhat of a quandary for what to write as my first post, but decided to give a brief idea behind why I have decided to start blogging on all things drinking. So the title of this post might have been better being called “My name is David and I’m a beer geek”.

I started so innocently, having become pretty much exclusively a “little ol wine drinker”. On wandering through the beer aisle at the supermarket and getting past the rows and rows of yellow fizz that had turned me to drinking wine in the first place, I discovered that there seemed to be quite a selection of interesting looking beers.

Having tried a few and found them to be pleasant but not hugely inspiring, rather like the type I drank as a regular pub goer when I was younger, I stumbled in quick succession into finding Punk IPA and Sierra Nevada pale ale and my eyes were opened.

To discover such exciting tasting beers was an eye opener and a little hunting on the internet lead me to reading blogs about beer and discovering on-line speciality beer shops of where to buy these nectar of the gods products from.

From there it led me to twitter and to start talking to like minded people and even better being able to give feedback to brewers and hear about there new brews.

In a little over a year I seem to have gone from a passing interest to having been inspired by the people who are on my blogroll and being encouraged to give it a go myself….

Here I am my name is David and yes I’m a beer geek

 

See I have admitted it now and hopefully through my probably not very well crafted words, will try to add a little something to the drink blogging world.

Welcome to Tipple Me Fancy.