Travels With Nate

Evening, it's been a while since I've done a full on beer review instead of just brief notes from events but I feel that this is worthy... but am I? Northern Monk BrewCo was born around six months ago and after all of the planning, they finally got around to brewing their sole launch beer: New World IPA. A lot of you probably already know David Bishop - or the Broadford Brewer as he's more commonly known. He's one of the first people I started following on twitter when I first started tweeting about beer and as a renowned beer blogger and homebrewer he has given me a lot of insight into beer. Finally, I get to taste his beer and it's not a homebrew... oh no, it's commercial. I've been excited about Northern Monk BrewCo ever since I first heard of it. As you can see, the branding is fucking awesome... but how is the beer?

For quite some time now, Melissa Cole has been hinting about an exciting project that she was involved in but was sworn to secrecy but finally it was announced a few weeks ago... Urban Sessions is occurring! Well what Urban Sessions is, is a pop up beer festival/bar/musical event/food/awesomeness in The Old Baths in Hackney Wick which will be around for 4 months. I happened to be in London at the weekend so I thought it'd be rude not to pop down for the soft launch. The idea is that they have a shitload of beers from all around the world, along with cocktails and ciders and essentially just party! Over the 4 months they have about 500 different beers on as well as pop up tasting sessions, monthly beer matched dinners, spirit education events and Meet The Brewers, so I'm going to need to revisit a few times!

The Session is a monthly event for the beer blogging community which was started by Stan Hieronymus at  Appellation Beer . On the first Friday of each month, all participating bloggers write about a predetermined topic. Each month a different blog is chosen to host The Session, choose the topic, and post a roundup of all the responses received. For more info on The Session, check out the Brookston Beer Bulletin’s  nice archive page . This month’s session is hosted by Justin of Justin’s Brew Review , which is entitled “IPA: What’s the big deal?” and it’s a question I once asked. Once upon a time, in my early days of beer geekdom, I had a beer called Punk IPA from a brewery called Brewdog . I’d had IPAs in the past, but they were pretty lifeless so when IPAs got popular I thought “Why? They’re not that good. And then I had Punk. I chanced upon a bottle at Norwich Beer Festival – I forget the year – and it blew my tits off. I actually recall shouting “HOLY SHIT” as I got my firs

I'm sitting in the beer garden of one of my favourite pubs in Norwich, The Reindeer, drinking Brooklyn lager and a question popped up in my head... "Is it really a garden?" I mean, they call it a garden and it's nice to sit here in the sun, smoking and drinking but essentially it's just decking with some picnic tables. A garden I see as an area that has a lawn, with flower beds, as well as a patio or decking but neither on its own. I'm not sure it can constitute a garden with just flowers in pots, and hanging baskets. I mean, you wouldn't call a balcony a garden, would you? A garden, ideally, would also have an area for kids to play so they don't run around the tables knocking peoples drinks over and screaming in their parents ears for another bag of crisps even though they've already had two bags today which is more than they'd be allowed usually. A garden would also be somewhere you can bring your dog, with a communal water bowl by the lawn.