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Actual Diary entries

Pilsner Urquell

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Pilsner Urquell
Diary entry #46, Pilsner Urquell

Verbatim: Pilsner Urquell. 14/5/08, 330ml, $3. At work, trying to write a beer list for “Paris 2.0”. So this is an audition, really. Five stars in the bible. Good, flavourful pilsner. And it’s the original. So full marks. Too bitter for Chloe, but she can see it’s a good’un.

Afterthoughts, October 2010: Ah, “Paris 2.0”, what a great example of Told You So you are. I worked at a pretty-horrible pseudo-British pub for a while (while back at uni, initially) and when it was eventually sold the I’m-not-kidding genuinely-mad woman who bought it sought to resurrect a mid-nineties Wellington staple that had fallen from fashion and was eventually scuppered for insurance money (leading to the pseudo-British place taking its spot). I told them it was a bad idea, but did my best to give them a Notebook Full of Good Ideas Certain to be Ignored. Ignored they were, and the place lasted mere months before being scrapped again. But that did lead to me getting a better job…

(“The bible” refers to one of Australian writer Willie Simpson’s books.)

Actual Diary entries

Leffe Brune

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Leffe Brune
Leffe Brune

Verbatim: A pair of Leffe Brune. Not both for me, honestly. Though I have always usually been more a fan of the Brune than the Blonde. So to speak.

Afterthoughts, October 2010: Like a lot of these at-Malthouse but-not-working-at-Malthouse entries, I was there with some of the people I worked with at the time, at a pretty-awful bar down the other end of town which is probably best left anonymous. For my sake. They did have a decent whisky selection, though. I got to basically be the curator of that, which certainly helped my Nerdery — my CV at the time covered both the beer and whisky bases by invoking the term “Malt Nerd”.

The wedges were awesome. A pain to make, apparently, but awesome. It is kind of a shame we don’t do them anymore.

Actual Diary entries

Badger ‘Tangle Foot’

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Badger 'Tangle Foot'
Badger 'Tangle Foot', where the beer-photography habit started

So here we are again with the dear old Tangle Foot. I’ve put the fuller story earlier in these pages, filed under the date of its original entry in the physical Diary. For now, the point is that once I started taking photos of my beer, I couldn’t resist the temptation to show them off. I started by uploading them to Facebook, where I started an album called ‘The Beer Nerd Diaries’ which eventually expanded out to include two sequels (‘The Beer Nerd Diaries 2: Eclectic Brewgaloo’ and ‘The Beer Nerd Diaries 3: Episode III: Revenge of the Pisht), before I got lazy. As I do.

I’ve classed those non-written-down-on-paper records as ‘Lazy Facebook diary entries’; though the photo-taking had finally started, it took a while before it and the Diary-writing habit synched-up with it properly.

Verbatim: Badger Tangle Foot. An old favourite, first discovered at King & Godfree’s in Melbourne, and re-discovered in the Malthouse fridge.

Actual Diary entries

Hofbrau Schwarze Weisse

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Hofbrau Schwarze Weisse
Diary entry #45, Hofbrau Schwarze Weisse

Verbatim: Hofbräu Schwarze Weisse. 28/4/08, 500ml, $5. Watching Hellboy. Not overly schwarze. Rich brown, really. Good head, lightly fruity nose, not too wheaty. Maybe a good intro to peculiar things. Nice fresh taste.

Afterthoughts, October 2010: I do continue to be gripped with the search for ways to introduce people to Peculiar Things. And this is a goodie for people who might say “oh, I don’t like dark beer” — too many of those people just mean “I don’t like Dry Stout”. (Just like too many of the overarching “don’t like beer” people turn out to be “don’t like lager” folk.)

Actual Diary entries

Emerson’s ‘Taieri George’

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Emerson's 'Taieri George'
Diary entry #44, Emerson's 'Taieri George'

Verbatim: Emerson’s Taieri George. 14/4/08, 500ml, $7.5. At home, with leftovers from Moth’s birthday dinner. Dark, dark ruby. Surprisingly clean nose on a nice big warm ale. Not scary at all, I think. Very smooth.

Afterthoughts, October 2010: “Moth”, by the way, means “my mother”; we’re an odd family for nicknames. And many other reasons. (My father is usually referred to as “Grim”.)

And there was another four Mysteriously Blank Months, just there.

Actual Diary entries

Orkney ‘Dark Island’

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Orkney Dark Island
Diary entry # 43, Orkney 'Dark Island'

Verbatim: Orkney Brewery Dark Island. 10/12/07, $6ish, 4.6%, 500ml. Watching House. Very black, but the bubbles don’t hang around. Smells of the usual dark ale stuff, but quite light. Feels almost foamy, aerated. All this isn’t negative, it’s just less full-on than expected. Good dark ale, with zestiness and not too much bitterness.

Afterthoughts, October 2010: RateBeer.com has it as an ‘old ale’, and BeerAdvocate.com has it as a ‘scotch ale’. You can see how these things get tricky. I had it pegged, in my relative ignorance as porter-ish, but hey. I really should get to Orkney one day; I’ve had a few good beers from there, and it’s home to my beloved Highland Park whisky.

And, damn, that’s a scanner-friendly pen, isn’t it?

Actual Diary entries

Gage Roads IPA

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Gage Roads IPA
Diary entry #42, Gage Roads IPA

Verbatim: Gage Roads IPA. 19/11/07, present from KP+LB, 5.1%, 330ml. After trivia, watching Top Gear. Miss Parker & Mr Baker arrived last week, with beer in tow. This is Western, proper bottle stuff. Slight metallic note, but not nasty like Beck’s. Good IPA. Hoppy + beery. Yum. Drinkable, very.

Afterthoughts, October 2010: Not sure why I got those last two words backwards. But anyway. It was loads of fun when Karen & Lee visited — not just because they brought me beer, but hint, future travelers, hint. I got to take them on a little roadtrip around the mountains and lakes and bubbling mud of the middle of the North Island. And that’s back when they still had different last names. Their joining-of-names the next year was another great excuse for a trip to the Big Country, and for many more good Australian beers.

Actual Diary entries

Ivanhoe

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Ivanhoe
Diary entry #41, Ivanhoe (A Very English Pale Ale)

Verbatim: Ivanhoe (A very English pale ale). 18/11/07, $7ish, 5.2%, 500ml. Note sure why I started a new page. Watching Dr Who. Nice reddy-brown. Say it’s well-balanced, and it is. Geat beery beer. Proper stuff. Nice round hoppy and malty note.

Afterthoughts, October 2010: Every now and then, I’ll mess up something seemingly-simple about my Diary; like here skipping a page (which you can’t discern from the scan, obviously), or not having a black pen, as with Duvel. It worries me more than it should. I just have that kind of brain. But still, I get over it, and make the notations anyway. That’s a relief.

Meanwhile, I’ve never read Ivanhoe. Perhaps I should. Or perhaps it’ll just join the long list of classics that I’m not even ashamed to’ve not read. (I have vague recollections of having a comic book version when I was little, but don’t think I ever read that, either.) I can’t tell if that’s wrong of me, or if that’s just very ‘English’ all the moreso.