On a roll and getting the measure in Oxgangs

Location: South Edinburgh

Moodmusic: "I'll have a wee swalley"

Todays memories and soundbites
More Olympic madness
"ooh she is so much more sproingey than Beth, much higher sproinginess factor"
"wooooow that was boingy baby!!!!"
"wigglings who???"

It was another day of hard intellectual effort in the office.  Working out a conceptual framework around natural resource governance .... don't you know ..... Soooo after the success of last night it was a quick trip to the local supermarket in this different location to find more Scottish offerings. Here they are.  And no I'm not drinking all of these on my own .... I refuse to admit that I am a lush!

Drinks

1. Harviestoun, Bitter and Twisted (4.2%)
Reactions
Emotional: Oh
Critical: I thought the label was more impressive than the beer.

2. Williams Brothers, Cock O' The Walk (4.3%)
Reactions
Emotional: Alloa ... aah this is more like it
Critical: Burnt sugar toffee flavours making way for a fruity hoppiness, nice ruby roundnessand warmth.  Nice head and clean finish. We didn't think this qualified as a session beer.

3. Traditional Scottish Ales, Lomond Gold (5%)
Reactions
Emotional:  Mmm mellow summeriness
Critical: Mild and mellow, lemon citrus without the sharp tang, pleasant clean palate, light fizz, great for summer supping.

4. Fyne Ales, Maverick (4.2%)
Reactions
Emotional: Oh yeah .... look at that head
Critical: Drak roasty toasty bitter bitter with real depth and malty integrity.  I like this bitter alot.

5. aaghhhh had enough now ....... the Ossian will have to wait for another day


Oxgangs view

http://www.capitalcollections.org.uk/index.php?a=ZoomItem&key=QnsiTiI6MSwiUCI6eyJpdGVtX2lkIjpbIjEyNjQwIl19fQ==&pg=1

A mighty haul beside the Tweed

Location: Peebles on the Tweed

Moodmusic: Sand martins, herons, dippers and a man fishing for salmon 

Todays memories and soundbites
"It's disturbingly like some of the darker shades of the carpet"
"Here, look, we can cheat, lets put some wood on the top to singe"
"The wonderful smell of woodsmoke drifting on the July summer breeze"
"Moon on the river"

Drinks
Well its a night of chat with friends after a walk along the river bank.  Lots of local lovelies a haul from the shop by the bus stop.

1. Orkney, Red McGregor (4.0%)
Reactions
Emotional: Mmm ymmy mummy
Critical: first Scottish world cask ale gold medal winner and worthy of it.  Warm ruby happiness.  Made me think of a currant Christmas. Dry nose and biscuit finish.

2. Broughton, Scots Oatmeal Stout (4.2%)
Reactions
Emotional: hints of autumn
Critical: Lovely deep smokiness and warmth, peat bogs and the apetite for oat cakes and mackerel. Lovely smooth creamy porridge head. One bottle is not enough.

3. Houston, Crystal Pale Ale (5.0%)
Reactions
Emotional: Crystal clear ingredients list
Critical: Sunshine citrus undertones, caramel thickness coming from African honey hues.  Not as wow-wee as the previous two ales, but that's because they were fantastic. Might be best drunk from the fridge on a summers day. OMG perfect partner with feta .... really ..... an empirical co-produced viewpoint.

4. Stewart, Cauld Reekie (6.2%)
Reactions
Emotional: Mmm we quite like this
Critical: Chocolate molasses missing some deeper base notes.  Goes well with Green and Blacks 85%.

5. Traquir, House Ale (7.2%)
Reactions
Emotional: It draws you in and makes you feel like burrowing in amongst the wonders of a woodland. A beer of its place - bier de terroire
Critical: Earthy bog swamp and blackberry aromas, breaking into a treacley burnt sugar aspects with complicated mushroom and liquorice vanilla complexity.  Very thought provoking. Is this an ale or a stout? How do they make this taste this way?

Peebles view

Lazy Friday afternoon with lashings of Franks ginger beer

Location: Wales coastal path

Moodmusic: Geiger counter of Olympic madness is not going boing round here

Todays memories and soundbites
It was such a lovely day.  After a hard working week it was a spontaneous mid-afternoon decision to make the most of the day, jump into a red convertible Mini Cooper, and why not take along a picnic beer?  Sat on the edge of the Menai Straights and watched the sea bass hop out of the water, the swallows pick up gnats above the beached seaweed and over the flooded fields, and a lazy rabbit lollop along the hedgerow behind. It truely felt like summer at last.

Drink
1. Kopparberg, Frank's alcoholic ginger beer (4%)
Reactions
Emotional: Forgive me .... it's a sunny day outside and I'm driving so let me enjoy this!
Critical: Not something to recommend for every day drinking, but, cold on a hot day, in the right place it hits the mark.  Sweet ginger - nothing hot and fiery - gentle pale ale lager tones with sticky ginger highlights.

Menai view

Tatton to Warwick RECOVERED

RECOVERED POST Posted: 20 Jul 2012 04:31 PM PDT

FRIDAY20th JULY

Location: Out and about in the Midlands

Moodmusic: Another warm and sunny day, horah!  I have sunburn.

Drinks

Location: Tatton Park

1. Tatton Brewery, Tatton Best (4.2%)

Reactions

Emotional: Why did the barrel run dry just as I ordered?

Location: Catalona, Warwick

2. Damm, Estrella (5.2%)

Reactions

Emotional: Tastes like it should be drunk in Barcelona

Sweltering heat in Cardiff - Zero degrees?

Location: Zero degrees and the Angel, Cardiff central


Moodmusic: Goodness, the Olympics have reached here too - crikey - wasn't this the theme tune for UK plc in 1997?!


Today's memories and soundbites
"Oh .... Heat"


Drinks

1. Zerodegrees, Black lager (4.6%)
Reactions
Emotional: I remember this from a previous life .....
Critical: Complex and interesting. Take time to enjoy the mix of high and low notes.  Kind of chocolatey and rice krispies.  Very delicious but perhaps not on such a hot day.

2. Brains, Smooth (3.7%)
Reactions
Emotional: Well it is cardiff so what do you expect?
Critical: This is really easy drinking on a hot evening . I'm liking this. lovely amber colour. a smooth dense head, fresh bitterness, tropical honey and clean finish. it fits well into today.

Camden canals with bottles Fullers and Cobbdens

Location: Somers Town, Regents canal and Albert dock

Moodmusic: So sunny again I really do have sunburn on my cheeks and I am seeking shade

(Yester)days memories and soundbites
Well this is a whole section of London I have never explored before, the area around the back of Kings Cross and St Pancras.  I have only ever rushed to and from Kings Place whilst working. Regeneration development underway so still changing.  I took a walk after a visit to the British Library (Writing Britain exhibition and room of Treasures), up through Somers Town, into and through St Pancras old church and park  (Cromwell's troops were billeted here whilst we are on the theme of the civil war again!!) and then lazely beside the canal at London Wildlife Trust Camley street Natural Park.  Sat for hours watching the world and narrow boats go by, then explored more of the canal up and down the towpath which was very busy with cyclists and eventually ended up at the Filling Station before heading back to the way home.

Drinks
Bottled ale this time round, no ale house found canal bankside, just cider at the Filling Station and I am NOT going to get into cider reviews!!  Never found Brewdog


1. Fullers, London Pride (4.7%)
Reactions
Emotional: I know, I know this is a well established old favourite that doesn't come from a new micro-brewery, but hey ho never mind I was in London so thought I had better have some of this
Critical: Steady brew, medium body with dry finish. Deep malty base, earthy and somehow bread-and-cheesey down to earth and very English.  Certainly merits the popularity it has gained over the years. Think this is classed as a Pale Ale.

2. GreenKing, Tolly English Ale (2.8%)
Reactions
Emotional: Well, I wondered what a low strength budget busting beer would taste like ...... drinkable actually
Critical: Thinnish head and not too much aroma. Tastes like a pineapple infused sweet tea kind of brew.  Not as sweet and sickly the more you have.  Its a bit thin, but passable.  Quite fizzy, but not badly so considering the flavour and style of the drink.

London view

rubbish wildlife

new Kings Cross

African music on the Thames

Location: London Pleasure Garden, docklands

Moodmusic: Senegalese

Drink: Just had to complain about the state of the beer supplied, God knows what it is supposed to be
Food -  Just gone for food. Only  2 stalls of African food. Ghanian running late and Nigerian's failed to turn up (I guess they are still arguing in Peckham)!

At least for the first time in months, with such a strong W African presence, I don't stand out as the tallest woman on the block!

Angelique Kido was fantastic.

Amplify your voice.  Preserve free speech.

London Festival - Africa stage

I'm not camping ... no ...... she lives in a house

Location:  The home .... I'm not permanently in a tent (beer or otherwise)!!

Moodmusic:  Home on the range

Drink
Homemade rosehip wine (11% I think - mates concur)
Picked and brewed from September 2011. C J Berry recipe as always, with slight modification. Shared a freshly opened demijohn with friends over a vegetable stir-fry this evening.  Very nice. I have made this 3 times in my life and every time it tastes like sherry.  Not good if you don't like sherry but fine if you do!!  It's a bit "in your face - and tart" not the real heavy roll around your tongue mellowness of a sherry, but interesting and passable.

Recipe
2lb rosehips
3lb sugar
1 tspn citric acid
water 1 gallon
yeast and nutrient
pectic enzyme

Gather rosehips after a frost (but you can also just pick and keep them in a freezer for a week).  Mash, crush or cut up the rosehips and add to sugar and boiling water in a fermenting bucket.  Add yeast, acid, enzyme and nutrient when water blood hot.  Leave to ferment in a warm place for 2 weeks. Stir daily.  Then strain into demi-john as usual.

Rosehip view

 6.5/10

Dawson sour toe

Somebody just invited me out for a drink ..... I don't think so .... Yuck  http://www.sourtoecocktailclub.com/sourtoe.html

Stop the beer duty escalator

http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/29664

Got the Twitter working .......

Twitter addition to the blog now working properly.  I have set my objectives, sorted out the technology and learnt how to manage it. Random entertainment, beer and pub news, swift beer reviews, and pub one-line stories. My photos of interesting things in and around pubs will now take shape as a Twitter specific series "Odd things found in pubs".

https://twitter.com/beesblarney

Corinium Dobunnorum

Location: North and west Cotswolds

Moodmusic: Touring always much more fun when you have somebody to be silly with

Today's memories and soundbites
"What?  What happened to your voice? I don't understand"
"Yew trees and cedars in churchyards, layers of meaning and history"
"The king (Henry VIII) he killed his wife?  Wow they were powerful in those days!"

Drinks

Location: Golden Cross, Cirencester

1. Arkell's, Wiltshire Gold (4%)
Reactions
Emotional: Bog standard bitter.
Critical: OK.  Another easy pint.  Has background flavour of the local limestone and chalky water. Enjoyable at a basic level.


Location: Kings Hotel, Chipping Campden

2. Hook Norton, Hooky (3.5%)
Reactions
Emotional: OOOooooooohhhh this is lovely.  I want some more please!
Critical: Really great depth of flavour.  Hoppy and comforting,  great balance and bitter finish, and very, very drinkable.  Woooppps .... there goes another afternoon in the sunshine.


Cotswold view

Random remote rural art ...... arty expensive sculpted crows ....... why???  Just because?

Golden Cross view

Sunny dreaming spires with Whitehorse and Roosters

Location: Learning central

My favourite library the Bod (est. 1598) where I once swore not to "kindle therein, any fire or flame"


Moodmusic: So nice to get hot and sweaty and feel the heat of summer


Today's memories and soundbites
My third visit to Oxford this year.  Music and dancing previously, but took a friend on the tourist trail this weekend.  Started with sunny Friday night sitting out, and then hot sunny blue sky day today wandering the very busy city full of graduating students and Spanish school children.  Popped in to some of my favourite mainstream haunts from times past.


Location: The Eagle and Child, St Giles 

Tolkein sat and wrote his tales in this pub, alongside chatting with his friend CS Lewis

Drink
1. Roosters, Welsummer (4.5%)
Reactions
Emotional.  Excellent! Yummy.
Critical. This is a beer brewed for the summer by Roosters and in partnership with - for - Nicholson's pubs.  It was described as a pale ale although it wasn't that pale to look at.  It was very interesting ..... lots of complex flavours from ingredients I wasn't sure I'd tasted before.  Well balanced complex and well rounded ale that leaves you wanting more.


Location: White Horse, Broad Street

Inspector Morse drank here

Drink
2. WhiteHorse, Whitehorse (3.7%)
Reactions
Emotional. Cooooooling down
Critical. Great swift half on a hot afternoon.  Could very easily be a session beer. Lively producing a smooth head, clean flavour, slightly floral and grassy.


Oxford view
Born in 1827 Pitt Rivers was an English army officer, ethnologist and archaeologist. He pushed forward new methods in collection and display.  The Pitt Rivers museum houses his and the University's anthropological collection.

Fish skin war helmet - natural battle armour 

War trophies - shrunken heads from PNG

"How do they get the heads that small?" "Hours of rubbing with hot pebbles apparently"


University Natural History museum, site of the great debate on natural evolution in 1860 in a clash between the church and science about whether or not Darwin got it right.  Without this amazing event Darwin's theory may not have been pushed forward or attained credibility and the church may have continued to tell scientists what it was they were allowed to conclude from their work.

The University Botanic Garden has some amazing plants including this jade vine from the Philippines, which looked like something plastic from another planet

So long and thanks for the fish!

Location: Albion Vaults, Shrewsbury

Moodmusic: A fond farewell after a year of co-production

Today's memories and soundbites
"They hung a shipwrecked monkey in Hartlepool during the Napoleonic wars, fearing it was a French spy. And recently the first mayor, a monkey, was re-elected to office after getting in on a ticket of free bananas for all school children"

Drink
Just time to give Rob a send off, wish him well in his new life, and sit round in an old school pub co-producing the blog entry, before dashing back to the four corners of Wales from whence we all traveled. Cheers Rob!

1. Banks, Sunbeam (4.2%)
Reactions
Emotional: "The most summer I have had this summer so far"
Critical: High notes of fresh citrus zingy fruity summer bliss.  We discussed if this was a session beer or not. Consensus was it tasted beautiful, great balance, but a bit too quick to get you schloozled. Was definitely interested in a take away, but not in carrying it on the train. Thumbs up for a delicious fruity pint evoking summer meadows and festivals.

Shrewsbury view

British Film Institute - Roll out the barrel

The British Film Institute has released a series of films which document in rare detail just how times have changed when it comes to the British pub, and the people who drink in them.

Article on BBC Radio 4 Today programme access here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_9736000/9736405.stm

BFI link: http://www.bfi.org.uk/blu-rays-dvds/roll-out-barrel

Perfect pints to preserve the planet

Apparently pubs will be able to save almost £3,000 a year, serve better pints to punters, and conserve significant amounts of energy using state of the art drinks cooling technology being developed with Government backing.

http://www.wired-gov.net/wg/wg-news-1.nsf/lfi/DNWA-8W2K6Z

Essex marshes ....... great expectations?

Location: The Layer Fox, Layer de la Haye
Totally brilliant pub.  Cask Marque. CAMRA. cash machine, local food deli, paypoint and recycling all here!!  This is how a pub should be.

Moodmusic: Great to see the sun again literally and metaphorically

Today's memories and soundbites:

"Are we there yet?"

"Will you take this woman ............."
"As the Buddah said, such good luck you didn't get what you want"
"The ancient Flitch town ........... what??!!  Must look that up on Google"

Drinks
Well its midday for a Colchester wedding. I wonder just how many different drinks as the driver I can have?  Obviously the recently discovered Becks Blue will play a part.  The inn that offered me a room last minute is lovely. A lucky find.  I shall be trying a beer or two in the morning instead. As somebody once said to me "Beer ... not just a breakfast drink"  this time it will be though, before a stroll across the well known Fingringhoe marshes (sorry they signpost 'wetlands' .... does that sound less boggy or muddy more attractive or something?) and on to Mersea Island.  Stayed tuned for the real ale update ...........

OK it ended up being

1. Colchester's, Red Diesel (4.2 %)
Reaction
Emotional: Mmmmmmm richly ruby rounded refresher
Critical: Not sure this is going to be one of my favourites but it was a nice rich thick and comforting pint. That sort of ruby warmth from something malty, but a great building bitterness through the pint.  I had it with a bowl of strawberries which were the perfect accompaniment.  I think this is what they call a session beer, i.e. good balance between malt and hops and easy to drink a number of pints of without getting too schloozled.

2. Blackfriars, Abbey (3.5%)
Reaction
Emotional: Ok .... going down easy
Critical: Easy to drink, a bit on the flavoured water side and a bit sweet, i.e. lacking hoppy depth, but nice colour, fine aroma and smooth head.  Pleasant, quick and easy.


Fingringhoe view

Whalebone Inn

Established 1734.  Whale bone from a whale stranded on the banks of the river behind the pub.  The grand old oak said to have grown from an acorn placed in the mouth of a pirate buried after hanging.

Rowhedge view

confetti composition

confetti imposition

Champagne campagne

Location: A field in wildest Wales (rain, wind, rain, little bit of sunshine - momentarily, humidity, rain, mud)

Moodmusic:  Such a grey and reflective day ............ can't somebody budge that jet stream?

Today's memories and soundbites

"Graham X"

"I looked at your work on the website today and decided that compost toilets were probably something you would be interested in regards your involvment with remote forest communities and NGOs"

"'Complexity, wickedness and public forests"

Drink
Under construction - elderflower wine.  Having no reason to make the customary elderflower champagne this year I have decided to opt for elderflower wine instead.  Picked a bag full of flowers today in between the showers and have now settled down into cutting the flowers from the stalks. Very therapuetic.  Hope this ends up being as good as my country champagne.

Recipe from C.J Berry

3oz or 3/4 pint Elderflowers
3.5 lb Sugar
1/2 lb raisins
3 lemons
tannin - I use a teabag in the must
1 gallon water

Gather flowers on sunny day (!!!) when they are fully open.  Add boiling water to flowers cut from stems with added sugar, raisons and lemon juice and teabags.  When blood hot add yeast and nutrient (and tannin if you are using that). Cover and leave to steep and ferment for 4-5 days. Strain into jar and fit airlock in usual way.

Elderflower view

about this much flowers more or less ......

Random happiness

I loooove a troubadour!


or two  ............ 

or even three 

must get back to Alicante and Cordoba.... spent some very happy and formative times working there.  Can the Urdd compete?? I think not!

Hibiscus wine?

Location: Home

Mood music:  Oh how time flies ...........

Drink
Hibiscus wine (aka roselle or bissap when made into tea) just racked ....... uuummmmmm well ....... not sure about that one at all.  Found a couple of packets of bissap from work trips to Mali hiding in the back of the cupboard last year whilst in a frenzy of turning anything into wine. This one may not have been a good idea.  Boozy and medicinal and somehow promising to be a little bit trippy ........ Probably the wierdest drink I have ever tasted and that's saying something after some of the things that have passed my lips in the many countries I have worked (e.g. fermented sheeps bile in the Philippines).

Roselle view