Travels With Nate

Guinness. It’s an internationally recognised name, it’s seen in probably 90% of pubs and bars all across the world from London to San Francisco to Tokyo. Guinness. The iconic adverts and two part pour. The shamrock that’s drawn in the tight, creamy head on the top of your pint. Guinness is everywhere. Guinness is unmistakable. I don’t think I really need to explain what Guinness is, but I will say that it is a beer I love to this very day, even in all of my beer geekdom. It’s reliable and delicious. Guinness is owned by Diageo these days, one of the biggest alcoholic beverage companies in the world. They’ve decided to try and expand the Guinness brand by bringing out two new beers and I was lucky enough to be asked if I want to try them. And of course, I jumped at the chance. In fact, I’m rather excited about trying them. They’re both modelled on recipes from many moons ago, but have been upgraded I suppose using modern brewing processes and a shiny brewery. To ...

I'm not well versed in Canadian beer as it doesn't seem to make it to the UK often. Sure, I've drank a lot of Carling which originates from there and I remember spending a day in London years ago in the Maple Leaf pub in Covent Garden drinking multiple pints of Sleeman's IPA and Honey Brown lager, but I'd never had anything from Canada's oldest independent brewery. What's interesting about Moosehead is that it was founded by a woman, Susannah Oland back in 1867 and is still operated by the same family. The fact that it was founded by a woman all of the way back then is great but people generally don't know this. People quite rightly celebrate the female brewers of today, but Moosehead is quite an important brewery, in Canada at least, so she deserves some recognition. They've had quite a rocky history, changing names a couple of times and unfortunately two fires within 8 years but each time they recovered and got stronger. Also, its success in th...

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 months session is hosted by Belgian Smaak … and is all about your first Belgian Beer. My first Belgian? What is this, a new Fisher Price toy? My first Belgian beer was obviously Stella Artois. I’m not going to hide from that. Some people say that it doesn’t count, but of course it bloody does. I remember when I was 12, a friends’ parents were out for the day so we decided we were going to drink beer. We made the conscious decision to get drunk. It was irresponsible. We were 12 years old… we wanted to experience it and find out why our...

Obviously, as an amateur wannabe beer writer, I review beers and I read other people’s reviews of beers. Right now I’m getting absolutely fucking sick of reading beer reviews, to be perfectly honest. I see people write about aromas that make me gag just from the idea and flavours that really don’t make sense and make me want to vomit, and remember… I’m a seasoned beer drinker. I’ve had beers that have encompassed all manner of flavours, but let’s be honest here… most tasting notes by beer reviewers are bullshit. They’re incredibly off putting and I wonder if some people come up with the most ridiculous tasting notes just as a test to see if someone else will call them out and say “What the fuck are you even on about?” Even as someone who has drank so many different beers, I read reviews and I’m instantly put off. You cannot write that a beer smells like damp field mushrooms covered in manure, tasting like spunk covered hedgerow and expect people to believe your...