Verbatim: Westmalle Dubbel. A fine example of a Trappist beer, them being the only thing to tempt me towards Religion.
Afterthoughts, October 2010: That beer list made for a handy prop. Little did I know I’d eventually take over its editing, and spend endless nerdy hours tinkering with layouts and fonts and phrasing.
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.
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.)
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.
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?
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.
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.
Verbatim: Fraoch Heather Ale. 500ml, $7ish, 5%, 29/10/07. Watching Dr Who, and having been randomly given a sprig of heather on Lambton Quay. Heather instead of hops. Apparently old school Gaelic. It’s good. Flowery, very slightly peaty (less than they say). The only fault would be that it’s not different enough, or as you’d expect. Oh. Surprising kick, though. And grows on you. Better when less cold.
Afterthoughts, October 2010: The timing really did weird me out, here. I’d bought a bottle in the previous few days, and had it sitting on my desk at my place on the Terrace. Then, when wandering home, some very peculiar chap was walking down the street handing out sprigs of heather. How the hell could I not take the hint? I did wish that the beer was as peculiar as the chap — but I also know these unhopped beers would hardly be commercially-viable if they were as utterly freaky as I (for some reason) wish they would be. But this, like the Spruce Beer not-too-long before it, was good fun.
Verbatim: Three Sisters Scottish Ale. 500ml, $7ish, 4.2%, 27/10/07. Watching Top Gear and having a beer to normalise after going to a mad Christian thing. Bubbles vanish. Smells very dark / burnt coffee and choc. Decent dark ale, but.
Afterthoughts, October 2010: The “mad Christian thing” was the big (and creepily-named) ‘Harvest’ thing that evangelical bigwig Greg Laurie threw here in civilised old Wellington. It was pretty strange. Though, admittedly, I was there specifically to witness the strange. Even the few Christian friends (I have plenty, actually) I bumped into there were pretty weirded-out, too.
Verbatim: Kapittel Watou Tripel. 330ml, $6 or so, 10%, 12/9/07. Random find at Rumbles. Funny cartoon monks on the front. Bottle conditioned, nice bubbles to show it. Amber, but smells and tastes darker. Nice low fruitiness.
Afterthoughts, October 2010: Correctly listing / categorising these things sometimes gets quite tricky, when you aren’t able to read the language — and when the marketing gets slippery. This one’s apparently branded an ‘Abt’, and a ‘Tripel’, and a ‘Quadrupel’, depending on who you ask.
And in terms of Diary timing, there’s another four months just plain missing. Weird.