Verbatim: Fuller’s 1845. Bought for me by a customer at the Malthouse, where I’m now working — not just drinking. And bloody hell is it fantastic. Deliriously smooth, only to explode into an utterly massive malty middle bit (very refreshing when everyone seems to be busting their arse to overhop things, these days), and then a nice mellow afterthing that goes on and on. Full freaking marks, I say.

Afterthoughts, October 2010: As testament to my slackness, even the ‘Lazy entries’ only get their first mention of my new job about a month and a half after it started. The Diary itself only had that fact recorded a little while later.

And to double-demonstrate slackness, I months-later realised that I’d actually had the 1845 some time prior. The customer who bought this for me did so out of shock and empathy for the fact I’d never tried it. I feel a little bad about that, now. But it was a stonkingly good beer. So I don’t feel very bad.

The distaste of extremities in brewing for extremity’s sake that I display here is definitely a continuing theme. I’ve got little time for one-trick ponies and stunt brewing — at least when it tries to pass itself off as the real thing, rather than a stunt. We’ll get to that…