Since my love for good beer has increased to obsession level there have been a few people I have met that ooze of so much enthusiasm, passion, ambition, knowledge and likability that makes me realise that it’s more than what’s in a bottle. They make my enthusiasm wake up, they make me want to write more blog posts and try to turn people from their boring pint of mass produced beer to something more interesting, they make me love great beers more, people like Logan at Beaverto

Due to family and football commitments I unfortunately wasn’t able to attend the first two SX Bottle Shares but with a blank space on my calendar I was going to make sure that I was in the Alehouse this April! Even though my bottles had made it from Bruges and Barcelona unharmed I was worried that they wouldn’t survive the journey to Belgravia and back, as to make it in time for kick off I would have to leave straight from work! After a slightly delayed train and a close shav

So the final beer is here… And I hold my hands up… Due to #12beersofnye plus #twobottlesofdessertwinenye on new years eve I wasn’t in a good place to be enjoying a beer and describing how it was! So the last beer of #12beersofxmas was had on new years day after dinner and shared with my family! #review #beaver #belching #12beersofxmas #brewery #Beer #craftbeer #bottle

I am currently trying to play catch up as the 30th and 31st of December have flown by and I kind of feel like I have fell at the last two hurdles! So the first catch up beer is Brewdog’s Mixtape 8. This was another gift from my best pal (two #12beersofxmas gifts from him makes him a very good friend indeed!), this gift for my birthday back in April. I had never heard of it before it was given to me so I was excited to try. The artwork on the box and bottle is incredible! A re

Being the beer fans that my girlfriend and I am it means when Christmas time or birthday friends and family step into a world of beer they don’t know and try to find new and exciting beers as presents. This year my sister ventured to her local brewery Ridgeway in Oxford  where she tells me the beers are named after different levels of bad elfs and bought us a present! This huge 10.5% is a very bad elfs indeed so bad he is criminal! It pours a perfect golden amber which shines

I seem to be working a day behind at the moment with #12beersofxmas but I will try my best to catch up tonight! This one was actually rather cheekily had half hour before day 9… But it over lapped into day 9 while drinking so it counts! Plus this beer is too big not to have its own post! This isn’t the first time I have had the pleasure of drinking Bible Belt, my first was in Latvia at the previously reviewed ALEhouse in Riga, this was straight from the tap and it was amazing

Originally I wanted to bring everyone a live from the pub #12beersofxmas yesterday but as I was out with friends in Southend this proved almost impossible! Unfortunately Southend is a bit of a good beer wasteland! There were a few moments worthy of a mention, The Old Trout is head and shoulders above the rest for the quality and range of beers and I did have a ok beer in there called Knee Deep but not something I wanted to use for #12beersofxmas. Also I had a bottle of Brentw

Part of a mixed case of Purple Moose beers I got delivered for Christmas this year. This Welsh brewery is quickly becoming a big favourite of mine! They’re selection of beers are consistently brilliant! This beer doesn’t disappoint either, a ruby mahogany brown colour with all those winter warmer Christmas flavours you expect, rasains, clove, sour fruit slight nutty wood flavour. Keep an eye on the blog for a full Purple Moose Brewery blog post coming soon looking at all the

This was actually a present from last year! So it has been aged in the collection for a year, so another year on all the aging it already has had at the brewery and it’s got this beer tasting incredible! It’s big, it’s boozey, it’s rich and warm! Afraid it’s a quick one today as we all know the rush of Christmas is apon us! Merry Christmas everyone! #review #oxford #12beersofxmas #vintage #brewery #old #dairy #Beer #craftbeer #bottle

I seemed to have missed the #12beersofxmas IPA day yesterday!!! There was lots of IPAs popping up on my twitter feed so maybe I am a little late with my one! American Rogue brewery is a top brewery although I have only had a very small handful of their beers I never seem to be disappointed. It was great news this year when Wetherspoons added a bottle of Rogue to their new craft menu. Already familiar with a Christmas beer called Yellow Snow (Mighty Oak Brewing Co) this bottle

I don’t know about you fellow beer fanatics but whenever I have friends who go somewhere on holiday or travel somewhere I sometimes get awesome bottle shaped presents brought back to me. My best pals little brother lives in Vancouver and he went to visit him just before Halloween and on his return he gave me a 750ml big bottle of Steamworks Brewing Co Pumpkin Ale. I never got around to drinking it at Halloween but it’s a special beer so what better time than to include it in

Day 2 of #12beersofxmas and today I am bringing this unique beer to the table… I picked this up in the Wine Factory in Chingford high street a month or so back and when I first bought it I didn’t even notice the little present inside the beer bottle! Thanks to my online beer buddy Kev aka Belgian Beer Geek he warned me that the hop inside the bottle makes this beer a bit of a “gusher” when opened… A hop inside the bottle??? I went and checked the bottle and there it was a sin

So here we go I am joining the gang of beer elves and getting involved with the #12beersofxmas… And if you are going in you got to go in big… And for me this is one of my favourite beers I have ever had! It’s a risky first beer because I have only had this once and it was actually in the browerij De Prael in Amsterdam and it was like love at first taste! But was it the fact I had a few beers previously that day, or the amazing atmosphere in the brewery bar or that holiday bre

Urthel Brewery is based in Ruiselede, West Flanders Belgium, andcreated by female brewer Hildegard van Ostaden. Being the sucker for a great bit of marketing I was drawn into these beers by the glass shape and the funky cartoon old man that can be seen on their labels. Urthel claim to be a forward thinking brewery which sticks to traditional Belgium brewing techniques. I have been keeping a pair of bottles to try for some time now, so today I crack these bad boys open! First

Put pepper in my beer you say? Are you having a laugh??? So I bought this beer as part of Sainsbury’s British Beer hunt range as many of people did, to be honest at the time I was so delirious about all this cheap different beer I didn’t even know what I had picked up!  When I got home I realised it was a pepper flavoured beer and thought it was a bit odd and it got pushed to the back of the list of beers to try next. My packet of pepper had actually fallen out of this bottle

Back in the summer I visited the Belgian Coastal town of Ostend and wrote about my adventures here… Since returning from my travels I have had this bottle of Keyte sitting in the fridge waiting for a moment where I can sit down and give it a good taste instead of knocking it back after having a few beers! Brewed 2004 in celebration for commemorating the siege of Ostend Keyte is a high fermentation 7.7% Belgian tripel. It is brewed at Brouwerij Strubbe in a town called Ichtege

While in Ostend we visited the T’Koelschip Beer shop which you can read about here. While in there I picked up a bottle of Brouwerij De Leite’s Cuvee Jeun’homme, an oak aged 6.5% goud blond (gold blond). Brouwerij De Leite was founded by Luc Vermeersc, Etienne Van poucke and Paul Vanneste around 1997 on-wards while on a brewers course. Brewed in a really small set up the De Leite  trio started to knock beers out from  bigger brewery in 2008. De Leite refers to the Dutch word

The French are not really well known for their love of beer but preferring their love for wine instead, something I discovered on a trip to Paris last year. Gallia used to be found in Paris between 1890 and 1969, barely surviving the WWII the brewery gradually made less and less money till it was closed and knocked down in 1968 and a year later the beers had all vanished. 2010 and there is a rebirth… William and Jacques two French men who dreamed of brewing their own Parisian

My girlfriend first bought this beer on our first trip to The Essex Beer Shop and we tried it over the weekend and loved it so I thought it rude not to buy another one when I returned to The Essex Beer Shop tonight. Puck’s Folly was crowned Golden Ale of East Anglia in 2009 and is brewed by Farmers Ales in their stable Brewery behind the Blue Boar hotel in Maldon Essex. It pours a nice clear golden colour with tiny carbonated bubbles raising to the top of the glass to a nice

It would be rude not to have the Mayflower Gold first out of my buys from the newly open Essex Beer Shop. Most of my teenage to adult life has been spent visiting Billericay for its pubs as it is one stop on the train for me and where I live doesn’t have much to offer in the way of drinking places at all, so when I first read about Billericay Brewing I was truly excited at the the thought of a beer from the place I grew up drinking. Mayflower Gold is an American Pale Ale styl