If you’ve paid attention to this blog over the years, you’ll have clued in to the fact that I quite like the occasional malted beverage, and that I strongly prefer the black, opaque ones to the ones I tend to disdainfully dismiss as “see-through beer”. I may also have mentioned over the years that I tend to prefer stouts in… Read more →
Tag: drinking
For Lá Bealtaine
A Toast See this bowl of purple wine, Life-blood of the lusty vine! All the warmth of summer suns In the vintage liquid runs, All the glow of winter nights Plays about its jewel lights, Thoughts of time when love was young Lurk its ruby drops among, And its deepest depths are dyed With delight of friendship tried. Worthy offering,… Read more →
Aside
The preceding post was brought to you by Crémant St. Nicolas cidre légere mousseaux from Ciderie St. Nicolas. Here’s a lovely picture of it on my desk. (It won’t oust Archibald’s Hard Cider as the champ, but it will fuel blogging quite nicely.)
No Fear Of The Dreaded Two-Day-er
It’s weird–or maybe not so weird, really–but reading certain news items my reactions are almost entirely filtered through my years of training as a science fiction reader. Sometimes I read the story and suddenly see all kinds of comparisons between some real world event and things I’ve read–either direct connections, or analogies. Sometimes I read something and can’t help but… Read more →
I drink alone
Well, my plan to try out a couple of interesting beers each night for the six nights kind of fell apart. Primarily this was down to too many nights when my all-day meeting schedule ran over into evening activities. (For the record, the official count was 57 hours of scheduled meetings over 5 days, and that doesn’t include the social… Read more →
Aside
Generally speaking one should not mess around with any kind of major upgrade (operating system, router firmware, web service, etc) while drinking–this was lies madness. WordPress upgrades are so painless though, that I can run one from a hotel room while sustaining a mild buzz.
Julio and religion
A very full day of meetings today, ending with a relatively late working dinner, cut short my beer exploration time tonight. So I only had time to explore one small beer: Saint Bridget’s Porter from the Great Divide Brewing Company. While the bottle describes this as a “Robust Porter” I didn’t find it particularly overwhelming in terms of robustness. That… Read more →
…down by the schoolyard
As is my wont when attending days of endless meetings in the “Boston” office, I’ve made a trip to see Julio and stock up the fridge for an exploration of some interesting looking beers that I haven’t tried before. After today’s marathon meeting session I retired to the hotel and sampled my first selection: Mayflower Porter, from right here in… Read more →
Aside
A completely unsolicited endorsement: the combination of St. Ambroise Stout and Sartori Reserve Raspberry BellaVitano cheese is ridiculously yummy. That is all.
Aside
I note with some interest that the winner of this year’s Canadian Brewing Awards in the Stout category is the St. Ambroise Oatmeal Stout from McAuslan. Not news to me. I’ll have to look into Hockley Valley Brewing, and that Imperial Stout from Grand River Brewing as well–more reasons to look forward to the Ontario move.
Aside
Apparently I missed the 250th anniversary of Guinness yesterday. There was a time that couldn’t have happened, since I would likely have been accidentally celebrating it on any given day anyway, but that time is receding into the distant past now. Hell, I used to have the stuff on tap in my house. When I do have a pint at a bar, I still go to Guinness when it’s the only stout, or the best of the available ones, but it’s not religious anymore and there are many better stouts out there.
Canadian Style Democracy At Work
One of my standing gags when talking foreign policy to Americans (and I by no means think this is exclusively mine–it’s the kind of joke that’s just obvious) has to do with the difference in diplomatic styles between the countries. Americans, of course, tend to us a lot of guns and a bit of butter, where as the stereotypical Canadian… Read more →
A Monday Night Gallimaufry
Let’s see if we can close some of the myriad tabs I’ve opened in the process of trying to catch up with everything that happened in the non-work world while I was off spending time at the Melbourne office: I’m quite impressed at the 16-year old (from the city where I did my university days) who managed to isolate plastic… Read more →
Me & Julio, Day 8: Tragedy
There was, as you may have noted, no Day 7. Last night I didn’t get to explore any of my stash, since I dined with a friend, and he provided me with samples of Dragonslayer Imperial Stout from Middle Ages Brewing Company, Saranac‘s Black & Tan, and Dogfish Head‘s Palo Santo Marron–it was kind of an east coast night, with… Read more →
Me & Julio, Day 6: A quickie
The movie means no time to really experiment with beer tonight. Well, the movie and the fact that we drank The Outback out of Newcastle Brown. However, one of my Australian coworkers picked up a couple of beer for me (at Julio’s) while searching for some Czech beer that’s hard to get in Australia, and I did manage to sneak… Read more →
