Caramel, liquorice, and apples

It's all in a Westvleteren XII beer from Belgium. A Trappist beer, an ordinarily very difficult to get hold of (only from the monastery, have to ring and arrange pickup etc etc), this came from a box sold as part of a fundraising initiative.

It's very robust and warming at 10.2%., but not overpoweringly so. Very smooth, and only lightly carbonated. Dark, though, with a light touch of foam head.

Taste wise, well to me it's got caramel, liquorice, and apples. In a very nice balance. This is a robust beer for enjoyment at slightly below room temperature, over a longish time. Boxes sell for around €50 including a pair of lovely gold rimmed glasses, and 6 lovely bottles, from many good beer stockists.

Galway, instructions for a pleasing weekend.

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I've just spent a lovely weekend in Galway, courtesy of some living social deals. We had a stay in the Forster Court hotel, which was most impressive - a very welcoming hotel, with comfortable rooms and pleasant and attentive staff. The hotel's just off Eyre Square so is merely minutes' walk from the main heart of Galway city.

Arriving on Friday night after work we had a tasty meal in the hotel. Saturday then we made our way to Kenny's Bookshop in the Liosbaun retail park, where the famous bookshop has moved to. In all the times I've been to Galway since they moved from the city centre I've never been to the new location so I had it in mind this time. It's in an almost industrial unit - but there's a lovely almost untidy (no offence!) clutter to the seats, couches and stacks of books in amongst the tall shelves that makes it very conducive to browse. 

So that was an enjoyable hour or so - my wallet escaped almost unscathed, though I did purchase a book on a practice Martian landing in the Arctic which will I'm sure warrant a mention at a later time. 

Out to Salthill then for a walk along the prom - we parked by the diving boards and walked back down towards the centre of Salthill. Stopped for a "Strange Brew" in the Oslo bar before heading back up to kick the wall. Oslo is a great bar, with a fantastic selection of beers (some brewed themselves) and a beer hall towards the back - well worth a visit if you're out that direction.

Back to town then for a freshen up before a tasty pizza in Fat Freddy's (pizza bianco - pesto, pepperoni, potatoes and cheese on a yummy base) - oh, and if they have a crostini with pear, honey and goats cheese when you're there, do order and enjoy. After that a couple more beers in the Salt House.  This is a real cosy little place with an even better selection of beer (We went for the Bay Ale and a Metalman Alternator, both tasty) but perhaps not such a great selection of board games (as advertised on the website). Get in there early as it's quite small, not so many seats, and has a fantastic selection of beers and whiskeys. 

After another tasty breakfast and checkout (with gift of cookies and bread!) from the hotel, we wandered along the canal which sort of parallels the river Corrib. This was a part we've never seen and is a lovely route for a walk. 

Another lunch in the Front Door pub - a deceptively large pub, but with loads of nooks and crannies so it feels really snug. Great food in here too, and this place will be on our "must go again" list. I had a vegetarian quesadilla which was really tasty. I didn't miss the meat and there was lovely salsa on the nachos that came with it. M had a chicken caesar salad that had plenty of chicken and bacon and lots of flavour. 

There will be photographs, once I get a chance to download them and upload them! 

  

Back to Black and White

I had a bit of time with the photos this morning, and I picked one from the holiday in California last year to see how effective it would look in black and white. This was taken down a country road well off the highway (we were looking for horse-stables) and the United States Postal Service obviously don't go too far off the beaten track because all these mailboxes (post boxes?) were together at a junction!

I'm happy with it, think it worked quite well. I have it on my etsy shop for sale, wondering if it will attract much interest? 

In other news, we went for a bite to eat in Kildare this evening, and the Silken Thomas is now serving Crean's lager - a very enjoyable (and Irish-brewed) and reasonably priced alternative to Big Lager. I highly recommend it! 

Some generally random photos I also took recently.

Trying to eke out the honeymoon pics a little bit, still have San Diego, Las Vegas to do and possibly some other transit pics - for another time!

This evening I was playing with some photos I took on a walk with friends in Monaghan - a Coillte property I think. We were on the Dartrey estate, and there seems to be plenty of scope for a return visit! The weather wasn't great so we just did an out and back walk, but I got a couple of interesting shots. Lovely bluebells too, but not as nice as in my local woods in Monasterevin of course!!

Kind of a grey day...


I loved this detail from a tree by the lake.


And the Rhododendrons were in bloom also, quite a few of them.






So that's a short post to round out the bank holiday weekend - a pretty busy one, with bloom on Saturday, entertaining family Sunday and doing some hardcore lazing today (though we did tidy up a little, honest) with the help of a Hitchcock movie as well as the movie Touching the Void.

This weekend has been finished off with some very tasty Dungarvan Black Rock Stout, very well put together. Tasting notes on the side (vanilla, aniseed) very helpful and seemed accurate to me. That'll go on the perennial list then too!

Oh, and busy Tuesday too - the talented students of the DIT photography school are opening their final year exhibition in Temple Bar, at the Gallery of Photography and the National Photography Archive - looking forward to seeing these! It's on now, and open for a couple of weeks - drop in and see and enjoy.

More info here! http://www.ditgraduatephotography.com/

Another day in Dublin...a lovely afternoon

I had to snap this photo - "no right turn" sign with an election poster for a strong left alternative beneath it!

It's great, how simple a day can be so enjoyable. We ordered rings for the wedding last week. They rang us this week, to say that they'd arrived, so onward we went. (hoping that we could meet some friends to watch the unfortunate rugby game, but one's foot, having been injected recently, was not up to the walking that would have required).

So, yeah. Parked. (BTW, the car park near Jurys' Christchurch has a €10 parking deal between 11am and 6pm, if anyone's interested). A bit peckish, so we found ourselves in the Porterhouse, having seen a menu (and don't tell anyone, but they advertised the Dungarvan Brew Co. Copper Coast Ale......). Interesting soup and a phenomenal all-day breakfast were enjoyed in the company of that Ale and a Kriek (cherry beer - try it!). The breakfast in there comprises ginormous sausages, yummy pudding, great scrambled egg, and lovely rashers, served with tomato, mushrooms and toast, in a frying pan. On a plate. Can't be beaten.

We soon ran out of brackets (only joking) and went to collect our rings (via some shoe shops. That was unsuccessful) - unfortunately, only one was available due to a miscommunication. Anyway. It fits, and is shiny. That is all that's required. :P



A quick wander around adjoining shoe shops, an unexpected bumping into with an aunt, and some coffee later, as well as some photo opportunity in TCD, brought another couple of hours to a close, though my foot was getting tired at this stage.





And the weather wasn't even great! Still, it was a mucho enjoyable afternoon.

By the way, there are still some great sales on....



Oh, and the Copper Coast? Another lovely beer from Waterford, you'd almost say it was a chocolatey and malty ale. Yummy, and moreish, and a definite recommendation, though maybe a step or 2 down in this blogger's list from the Helvick.

As for the Kriek. Who'd have thought cherry flavoured beer would work? Yet it does, it's light, drinkable and refreshing. Reminiscent of Belgian holidays, which helps!

A return to Kilkea, Athy, and some beers.

You may remember I was at Mullaghreelan woods, Kilkea, between Athy and Castledermot recently. Even if you don't, I do, because it wasn't that long ago. Anyway, I remember spotting a spot beside a river that I thought had potential.

Yesterday, with other halves being away on a chicken rouFndup weekend or something, A Friend and I took the opportunity to spend some hours making photographs - where better than this place, thought I. So he came to me, and we ventured on out, with our gear. Turned out to be quite interesting - there's a 5-arched bridge over the river, and quite a long weir - must investigate further, as there may be an old mill further downstream. So plenty of scope for photos - and this is what I got!

An overview of the bridge:


A view along the weir, a nice long exposure for some milky water effects


A picture of A Friend, scouting around for targets - his medium format camera doesn't quite have the portability or the clickability a digital camera has, but it's magnificent to hold and has an amazing viewfinder..


And another detail of the weir - whatever way the water was flowing, it turned out to me it looks like a watercolour - but I didn't paint it!



Following that, the light was fading, so we dropped into the shop to buy some (what I didn't realise was gone off) chicken, then we ordered chinese and fired into the beers:

Porterhouse Red - Excellent, very tasty, nicely drinkable, just the right amount of carbonation. The highlight and first beer down;

Porterhouse Hersbrucker pilsener -  a very fine pilsener, again, nice and tasty but this one for me didn't stand out. Above mass market beers yes, but a kind of ordinary non-standard beer if you get my meaning. Quite hoppy, I think, though I'm never quite sure - need more training.

Wells Banana Bread Beer - well now, this was different. Everyone should try this once. You mightn't have another, but it's very very interesting. I was glad we'd split the bottle two ways, as it's quite an overpowering taste, but a very clever beer. I'll have another, but maybe not for a while! It tastes quite strongly of banana bread. Not sure I had to spell that out...

Sierra Nevada Kellerweis - a hefeweisen beer, nice colour, cloudy as you'd expect, and tasty - which you mightn't expect in this style from the US. Could have more, definitely, nice and fruity. A Friend suggested custard, and I'm inclined to agree, there was a sweet vanilla flavour from the beer, which is definitely reminiscent of custard. Mmmm.

Recent beer conquest.

After an enjoyable day (aside good things come in paper products: This includes fish, chips, icecream) shopping for wedding bands, I arrived home in need of refreshment. I took some beer out of the cellar (possibly the only upstairs cellar in Ireland) and popped it in the fridge for 2.3 minutes whilst I emptied the car (of more beer, and some other stuff.)

One of these beers was a Dungarvan Brewing Company Helvick Gold (I called it blond in the twitter, but that's cos it's a blond ale, and I'm easily confused) which has been making its way up the "to drink" list for a couple of weeks now.

In short - beautiful. A very drinkable ale, with a lovely refreshing, moreish mouthfeel. It does, as it says on the packet, have a lively fizzy head, but this doesn't come through when drinking it, just the right amount of carbonation for this drinker. Flavour wise, it sits very well on the yummy side of the fence, nicely hoppy, and as above, very moreish. Label suggests citrus and pine overtones - I haven't got the most educated palette in the world, but yeah, on reflection I can see where they come from. I would suggest overtones of a most enjoyable beer. Would imagine that a few of these would go very well with a barbecue!

This is going on the "if you see it, buy it" list.

Pros: Irish, tasty, refreshing.
Cons: Still can't get quality beer like this in the local offy.....

I should post more about beer.

Edit: Just browsing briefly this morning I saw that the Dungarvan Brewing Company won the "Best New Producer" award at the 2010 Blas na hEireann awards for this very beer. Well-deserved!

Mullaghreelan woods, Athy, Co. Kildare

Today we went for a walk in the woods, just a short one in the Mullaghreelan woods in Kilkea - between Athy and Castledermot in Kildare. It was a lovely day for it with nice bright low sunshine.

The woods themselves are small enough in area, mostly deciduous but with some coniferous stands centred around an old Rath believed to have belonged to the O'Tooles in times past. There's a short walk around (though you can extend this by taking the leg towards the castle, sadly no longer a hotel), illustrated with some informative signs.

And of course, there is no woods complete without it's own abandoned cottage.

In other news, this weekend I finished Iain M Banks' "Surface Detail," his latest Culture sci-fi novel. Based around the idea of a war between pro- and anti-Hell (Hell being a constructed reality in this novel) forces. Brilliantly written with the usual mix of technology, and the wry personality of the Ship Minds. Highly recommended. It's quite long though, so you get a bittersweet feeling at the end, slightly relieved you've got the story finished, but wanting for more. Enjoyed occasionally with an Erdinger Cristal. Lovely beer. MMMMmmmm.

And thanks to Coillte for allowing us all onto their lands.

The Lost Booker prize

Apparently, they didn't award a Booker Prize in 1970, for some reason, but recently they awarded one to fill the gap. The book that won was recently read by your correspondent -Troubles, by J.G. Farrell.

Set in a hotel in Ireland around the time of the War of Independence (early 1920s, methinks), it tells the story of the time through the metaphor of the hotel and it's occupants. Really, I didn't know what to expect, but I enjoyed it - it's well crafted, but I didn't find it as engaging as some other books I've read recently (e.g. Room). I don't know if I'd make it a recommendation, though you probably would enjoy it.

J.G. won another Booker Prize for his book "The siege of Krishnapur," so I must check the library catalogue for that one and put it on my list if I can!

Onwards and Upwards, Asne Seierstad's "A Hundred and one Days" is next on the list.

And tonight's posting was brought to you by a Deuchars IPA (mmmmmm, wonderfully moreish every time) and a Brewdog Pilsner. Not at the same time though.

Bargain Alert, and transformers

Leann Follain, a nice stout from O'Haras, is available in Superquinn at the price of around €5.70 for 3 bottles. That's not bad for a nice beer!

I've been to see Transformers:Revenge of the Fallen today, thanks to those cloud droppings. I think those reviews are right, it is too long, and it is too fussy. There are too many unnecessary transformer characters - there are twins for example, that are just silly and superfluous. And how come Optimus can transform totally in a fraction of a second during battle, but when he has to talk to the NEST leader on the telephone (off-screen, of course....) it takes him (seems like) 10 minutes?

Ach of course, it's brainless, with beautiful and accomplished (if overdone) CGI. I suspect, however, that it could have been a lot better. If they'd just kept it simple, with the usual cast of characters (ok, replace Jazz, and maybe add one or 2 to freshen it up....) and a similar story I'm sure I'd have enjoyed it more. Roll on the threequel.

Also did anyone else notice that the carrier they blew up was number 74 in one shot, but 2 shots later became 71? Did I imagine that? (I know 74 was on view much later on in the film too.....). Yes, turns out I was right. More here, if you want to read about nerdy errors!

Rating? Average. And that's only cos I like transformers...

A great song for a nice cold beer and a barbecue

It's the "I Like Beer" song! Which I found embedded at this website, but thought I'd share with you myself! It's a nice day for a cold one, must be nearly time to light up the barbecue! No road trips today, just some weather-related moseying and reading and a few bits round the house - only a small few mind!

Mmmm, money

So I had a bottle of Broughton's exciseman (scottish) ale last evening, the 80/-. All of that punctuation means shilling, by the way, which I'll be calling it from here on, 80 shilling. This, by the way, referred (I think) to a mark on the cask made by the exciseman, referring to the amount of duty owing, and this varied in shilling amounts according to the strength of the beer. This one is 4.6%.

Quite a nice beer - a little sweet, probably, for some tastes, but as a single bottle it's fine. It's dark, and malty, according to the website, and I'm inclined to agree with it - though I'm no expert... The kind of beer that is unremarkably good, if you know what I mean - just as it is not among the worst I've had, neither is it among the best, but that of course is personal taste! Of course, it didn't taste of money!

Brewferm Gallia.....

I'd definitely brew it again. Even if I over-carbonated the last batch (or because it's been sitting there for 4 months...), it's still a tasty beer. I do like the Brewferm kits, because to be honest, they're in small enough batches (about 10-13 litres, generally) that you don't have too much bottling to do, or to find bottles for. And they mostly taste nice!

Gallia went well with the first Barbecue of the year, though we ate indoors - it got cold a bit quickly this evening...just finishing roast banana with meringue...mmm..

I missed the Irish Craft Brewer's Brew It Yourself day today, (as advertised here, and here, and other places too) in Franciscan Well in Cork. I had half-thought about making it down, but the guilt of looking at the garden, and the state of the shed meant I had to stay home.

Oh, and the Bulmers Pear stuff, it's quite nice aswell - a can is being emptied as we speak. Decanted, from the glass, to the person. I babble. Onwards, and upwards. Bizarre to be thinking of lighting a fire after the spectacular weather and temperature we had today, but it's gone quite cool and Met Éireann promise frost, so there's excuse enough.....

10 minutes to big lotto win!

I'm posting now, just before I win the lotto this evening. It's gonna be great!

This evening I came across project gutenburg, which I'd heard of before but never investigated. It's a Web2.0 project to publish ebooks for free - presumably out of copyright texts. Maybe more on that later. Anyway, through that, I joined up with distributed proofreading - as an important part of the Gutenburg project.

The way it works is this - someone scans a page, and uses OCR (Optical Character Recognition) to turn the scanned image into text. This doesn't always work smoothly, which is where the first stage of proofreading comes in (this is as far as I've got - you have to have 300 pages successfully proofread before proceeding, presumably to weed out the unhelpful). Your mission should you accept it is to ensure that the OCR has properly reflected the actual text - an image of which is presented to you on your monitor with the OCR text below.

I've done 3 pages so far, I reckon if I try and do one or 2 a day I'm helping bring books to the masses. And I love books, whatever about the masses......plus, I might get to read some interesting stuff?

I've bought some Guinness in a bottle - not the draught kind, the "old fashioned" kind. More on that experiment another time. When I win the lotto, I'll be able to proofread all day, while drinking beer!

More nice things to do on a nice Saturday!

Today we went all the way to Kilkenny, in the county of Kilkenny. They were celebrating 400 years of being a city (we'll have no mention here of the town/city issues.......) and organised a broadly sunny and rainfree day for the events.

Many of the attractions, including Kilkenny Castle, and Rothe House were open for free, and there were also some street entertainers. I liked that man with the diabolo (you know, the thing that's a cross between a spinning top and a yoyo, with 2 sticks and some string?), but I think there was more to his performance as we only caught up on the diabolo bit. Very impressive work. There were some other entertaining juggling hula-hoop acts, and the obligatory samba drum band. And some walking heads.

I also dropped into The Wine Centre, that which is one of my favourite beer-discovery spots (and nice wine and whisky too, btw). I managed to limit myself to 5 bottles - O'Haras leann folláin, 2 scottish beers (an 80/- and an oatmeal stout), a Clotworthy Dobbin, and a Black Wych...

I've been drinking the O'Hara's just now this evening - it's a very dark stout, a little more bubbly than I expected, with yeah, definitely hints of coffee and chocolate. It's a little like beery cold mocha. Nice. Something else that we've been enjoying recently is some Dolfin chocolate, all the way from Belgium. This evening it's been the milk chocolate with a hint of cinnamon. Yummy!

Homebrew score!

I opened one of my Gallias last evening - and it didn't foam out of the bottle and glass all over the kitchen sink! So I got to taste it, and I found it to be not unpleasant. I think this is the best of the 3 homebrews I've tried so far, and was actually quite a nice beer. Puts me almost back in the humour to do another one - though I've lots of Gallia to get through (and I'm afraid to share it because 75% of it is really over-fizzy and it'll either put sharees off or ruin their trousers....) so it'll be a while. Plus, I definitely think kegging's the way to go.

2% beer....

No, it's not an idea for diluting beer, but it's worth noting that I've heard of at least 1 beer and 1 cider manufacturer that have released product with an alcohol content of 2% ish. Whilst you might have gathered that I like lots of different beer, and not necessarily the hugely commercial stuff, I have to welcome this development.

Low alcohol beer and cider is a good thing, isn't it? It might focus people's attention onto taste, rather than kick, i.e. drinking to enjoy the drink rather than to get the twirlybeds effect.

I do wonder, however, how it happens. Beer has an alcohol content because the sugar ferments when the beer is being made - I can see maybe 2 or 3 ways that the typical content is reduced.

1. Less sugar is used to feed the yeast - this would probably alter the taste, would it?
2. Less time is allowed for the yeast to ferment the sugars into alcohol....this would probably alter the taste too, I'd imagine....
3. There's A Chemical that can somehow reduce the alcohol content....
4. Dilute With Water?

Hmm. This is a puzzler. Answers on a comment please, or I'll have to find out for myself.

The DTs

MMmmmm. I had one of these the other night. A quite easy-drink beer for it's strength, it's apparently got 3 yeasts in it - I reckon it might be bottle-conditioned, because if you sit and watch the beer, there are little flocs in it, suspended by the bubbles I presume. You won't do that for too long, though, because it's nice and tasty, and not at all 8.5% in flavour. That means you have to be careful with them, so don't buy a 6-pack!

I wish I could be more precise with my description of the flavour (as with all beers I try) - maybe I'm not trying hard enough, or maybe I can taste the different flavours, and just don't know what they are called? Whichever it is, it's nice. A little sweet, but not overpoweringly. Look, I found somewhere to describe it!

Packaging is nice, a painted bottle to look like an older-style ceramic bottle. Which bin does it go in, at the recycling centre? I dunno! Pot luck - green or brown (That's usually pot luck with me anyway....)

Try it you'll enjoy it!

Tullibardine 1488

Whisky? Yes, I do like it. Beer? Yes, I do like it.
Whisky beer? Sounds dreamy!

This Tullibardine 1488 is a "majestic whisky ale" from the distillery. Not sure how it works, but the label says they use the malted barley from the distillation process - that and the aging in an oak cask explains why it tastes like whisky.

The eh, first mouthful was a mistake. Far too much! This is a beer to be drunk carefully, to be sipped and savoured. It's quite sweet, more than I expected. Definitely caramel and vanilla - stronger flavours than one of my favourites, the Innis & Gunn (also aged in whisky casks, but not made with whisky barley). It's 7%, so I thought I'd post about it now, rather than later!

It's a very deep golden caramel colour, with not too much in the way of carbonation. Overall I'm not sure I like it. First impressions were that I thought it had gone off - though there is no sign of a Best Before date on the bottle...Maybe it will grow on me, but there is a kind of vinegary sourness in there to be honest. It's very unusual. But we like unusual, don't we!

This is a better review here.

Ambiorix gets tastier

Hey all, just a random update. Opened (carefully) another of my ambiorix beers tonight. I got most of this one, though it took about 15 minutes to settle down in the glass - half in the glass half in the bottle meant I got to save most of it! It's quite tasty now, there's still a homebrew twang from it, but it's not as sour as it used to be. That said I'm wondering if every bottle is slightly different, because of different amounts of beer/sugar in each one, as in the mixture i bottled mightn't have been fully homogenous....hmm. I haven't had any feedback yet.

I bottled some of my second brew tonight. A Fixby Gold, which looks nice. I ran out of bottles, some of the ones I had weren't clean enough to use tonight so I'll have to find myself about 8 litres' worth of bottles in the next couple of days. Hopefully it'll be ok in the bucket for a couple of days yet!

And isn't it a great winter we're having? We had been thinking of holidaying in Ireland this year, but seriously, with weather like this? C'mon Bord Fáilte, get something done about it.

Topical Thinking Point for today - The return of college fees would surely be A Bad Thing? Aren't we sposed to be a knowledge economy? If the economics of gaining knowledge are personally punitive, we will not achieve that. Is the tax return on a higher-qualified population not sufficient to cover the costs? I'd have thought it is, but might be wrong. The current system, while not perfect, at least allows equal access to all on a monetary footing. If fees of 3-4k a year were introduced, attendance at courses would be dramatically cut, surely?