A bitter dissapointment with a nice hoppy outlook

Well bugger. That's another plan shot to shit*. If you read the last blog post then I'm sure you saw the bit at the bottom where i said that i applied to go on the first leg of a trip known as The Great Baltic Adventure. Well annoyingly i received a reply back today and was told that the first leg was now fully booked so I would either have to go on another leg or not at all. Unfortunately this would mean costing at least £200 extra plus also a heap more hassle organising getting to and from ports, so it had to be not at all.

Its not all bad though because my new back up plan is to go to this years Oktoberfest instead, which is something Ive been thinking about doing for the last few years anyway so it makes sense to go now as I've got this shiny new blog to tell ye all about it. I may also try to go to this years Great British Beer Festival as well so I can look and write about comparison between England's and Germany's biggest beer fests. Plus an excuse to get drunk is always handy.

Ive really got alot going on this year. GBBF, Oktoberfest, my 21st this year, MANOWAR in just under 3 weeks (EPIC!!) and I've got a few other little ideas floating around as well, so yeah, busy, busy, busy.


Another beer related topic (i suppose they almost always are really) I want to chat about is that last month marked a year since I started home brewing. My first batch was a standard 20 liter brew which the math wizards among you can guess made 40 500ml bottles, I have since reduced the size of my batches just because it makes life easier, but I've still got 5 bottles of this original batch left. The beer is a 6%abv dark ale, just right for a bit of ageing, so what i thought i would do is drink a bottle, write about it and then age the remaining 4 bottles for another year to see what difference it makes. If that goes well, I may just age the remaining 3 bottles even longer...but ill think about that more in a years time.




Appearance: Really dark, almost black in colour, but if held to the light the beer turns an amazing shade of ruby. A decent amount of carbonation with a nice golden head.


Smell: Prunes with a slight hint of cherry. Faint yeasty smell.

Taste: Rich and very creamy. starts very bitter, kinda like burnt coffee (can you burn coffee??) but it fades pretty fast and is then followed by a faint tartness (which is a good sign for the ageing) which brings the fruity flavours that were in the aroma in to full swing and finishes with a slightly sweet port-like flavour



Right I'll come back to that next year I suppose. Now I'm off to get ready for work.

Take care all.


* I'll try and keep this PG most of the time, but hey, I'll swear if i need to.