Travels With Nate

Tuesday 3rd December 2019 was a particularly cold day. I remember it clearly as it was during a particularly tough week. I was hungover from the night before and had no food in the house so I decided to pop to Aldi. Whilst I was there, I grabbed a bottle of Rheinbacher and a Cornish Pasty and decided to sit on a bench in the middle of Anderson's Meadow in Norwich to eat and drink. I mean, it started as a relatively normal day as that's the kind of routine I used to live by when I had no food in the house and nothing better to do, but little did I know how crazy my day would get. I sat down on the bench and I remember feeling absolutely bloody freezing and questioning why I didn't just go home to begin with. I rolled and lit a cigarette, took my bottle opener out of my coat pocket, popped the top off of my Rheinbacher, placed the opener and bottle cap in my pocket and took a swig as I would any normal day. Ah, delicious 11am Rheiny; refreshing. I was about to open m...

Beer is a wonderful thing; it comes in many different forms and there are at least 2,397 experts on the internet trying to feed you information about beer. There are books, too. Tons of them. Y'know those paper things we kind of forgot about back in 2015? Well, them. They feel funny, so I'm unsure as to why you'd want one when you can get all of your completely REAL yet unknown facts about beer right here on Booze, Beats & Bites! HERE ARE 7 COMPLETELY REAL YET UNKNOWN FACTS ABOUT BEER: 1) Beer was invented in 1764 in Ukraine  - A chap called Boris Krakovic first came up with the special recipe with beer whilst tripping on LSD. He combined a few things and it just worked. 2) Beer contains more than 4 ingredients  - Other sources will lead you to believe that beer is made with Malt, Water, Hops & Yeast but they are WRONG. There are actually 7 ingredients... the other three being real money, old gameboy cartridges and broken dreams. 3) Beer is better ...

Ever since the dawn of the craft beer movement there has been a single topic of conversation that never goes away. A topic that haunts every corner of the beer internet, whether it's a CAMRA forum, Twitter, craft beer Facebook groups or Reddit. It's a conversation I no longer get involved in as there are a thousand different answers but I can tell you right now, the bullshit you're being peddled are LIES. Those answers cannot be further from the truth. I feel bad as I've been hiding the answer for so long; I've been burying it deep within my soul and brain but I feel ready. I feel ready to tell you the truth, dear readers. Here it is, and it will shock you to your very core. You will never be able to look at a keg tap the same way again; the craft beers you're drinking will forever taste different. They'll taste more magical, maybe, or will it ruin the illusion. THE REAL REASON KEG BEERS ARE MORE EXPENSIVE THAN CASK: We are taught our whole live...

I learned four years of French in school, and I was good at it according to my French teacher, who was actually French. She spent the best part of year 9 trying her hardest to convince me to continue with French into my GCSEs as she was confident I could be fluent one day but being a stubborn teenager, I didn't listen and continued with Spanish. I'd never really given much thought about visiting France until I went to Paris maybe 6 years ago and despite the actual trip being shite for various reasons, I loved the city and vowed to return one day. The problem is, however, that I ended up getting obsessed with visiting Germany and the Czech Republic and rarely would think about visiting elsewhere. That is until July last year when I saw £25 flights and thought "at that price, I have nothing Toulouse " (and no I won't stop with that pun). So I booked, along with a little apartment, not far from both canals and gave the city my best shot... It's a Walkable...

I recall once writing an article entitled "Why I'm Over Beer Festivals" which turned out to be one of my most popular blog posts, clocking up over 9,000 views after somehow going viral on Reddit and in several of those  Facebook groups. Even after I wrote it, I still kept going to beer festivals. I just get sucked in because people I know will be there, which is arguably the best part of them. The one beer festival I absolutely had to  visit being the lager lout that I am, was the Franconian Beer Festival in Nuremberg and here's why: 1) The Setting  - Imagine a beer festival in the moat of such a castle in a beautiful city as Nuremberg where you can look up at the large walls and high towers, shaded but still warm in the summer. That's how I can describe it. People talk about the IMBC venue being special, but I challenge you to visit The Franconian Beer Festival and not fall in love. 2) Free Entry  - Yup, you don't pay a single cent to get into th...

When I booked my trip to Toulouse for September I wasn't really sure what to expect from the city and its beer scene since very few people I know had spent time there so I did some googling, as you do. What I found surprised me as it was unlike any other city I've been to in that many of the pubs and bars seemed to be modelled from the British style of pub. I'd heard previously that Charles Wells had a chain of pubs in France and once I'd done some research I was determined I needed to check it out, and when I did it surprised me. The George and Dragon  is situated on the corner of an unassuming narrow residential street, at the foot of a cross road near a couple of cafes and could well be described as an estate pub had it been in Stockport and not Toulouse. There were a couple of tables out the front of the pub, with old chaps standing around chain smoking cigarettes, slowly drinking their dark amber coloured beer and occasionally engaging each other in convers...

I love Pulled Pork as it's a versatile food stuff that you can cook and get plenty of meals out of, whether you're going to eat some now and take some to work the next day or freeze it for a rainy day. I also love Chinese food, but I'd never thought about Chinese Pulled Pork until someone invited me to their house for lunch one day a little over a year ago, and fell in love with the Chinese Pulled Pork they cooked so I had to steal the recipe from him and make it myself. Since then, I've probably made it about 5 times and each time people tell me how delicious it is and how the want the recipe but y'all know me, I'm slack at getting on my blog sometimes but here it is... my recipe for Chinese Pulled Pork: Ingredients (some amounts may not be exact as that's how I roll): 1kg Pork Shoulder (rind trimmed off) 1 jar of Lee Kum Hoisin Sauce (from an Asian supermarket as I'm convinced it's better than the same brand you get in the supermarket) Ha...

Sitting on the Baltic Sea, the tri-city area of Gdansk, Sopot and Gdynia is not somewhere I’d ever thought of going until we had some time booked off work, searched “everywhere” on Skyscanner and found £20 return flights, but we’re glad we did. How to get there: We got direct flights from Stansted using Ryanair who operate 2 flights there, and 2 flights back every day but it is serviced by other airports in the UK. Once you’re there, it’s only a half hour bus journey into the city centre although if you have loads of luggage with you, Uber is cheap enough. Where to stay: We stayed in a Novotel very close to the centre because we’re a big fan of the cheap convenience of Accor hotels, which cost us about £120 for four nights. Unlike many cities, I would recommend stay right in the centre as public transport is tricky due to it not being on google maps. When to go: If you like cold weather, winter is the time for you! We’ve heard that the Christmas market is ...

It's a weird time for WWE, especially for their flagship Monday night show, Raw. We have a heel "acting GM" in Baron Corbin who doesn't just make the fans hate him, but they legitimately want him to just go away and get off our screens, we have a tag team division whose best teams have been written to be laughing stocks, Ronda Rousey whose matches I'm starting to feel aren't worth watching since she's always going to win with an arm bar and never lose the title and apparently we have something called "The Universal Championship" but we rarely see that because current champ Brock Lesnar is a lazy bastard. Smackdown, however, keeps me interested week-on-week. Of course, there are some silly segments like the Miz sucking up to Shane McMahon (hang on, why has Shane suddenly reappeared every week?) and whilst the New Day's antics are fun, sometimes, like last night's USOs Vs The Bar rap battle are just baffling. We've got some good chara...

It's no secret that I've been struggling to write decent content for a while. It's a shame but I don't know; most of what I try to write I end up deleting because it's too controversial and I can't deal with the debates anymore. I'm tired of it. To be honest, I've really fallen out of beer as something other than a beverage. At the end of the day, it's literally just a drink. I know for some people it's a lifestyle and their livelihood as they work in the industry, and that's cool, but that's not me anymore. When I do write, however, the content is generally about my travels as well as beer and food . I gave up on the Beats  element about music years ago as I stopped listening to so much music, and frankly, my music reviews weren't very good at all. So, I needed to replace Beats  with something and given my love for professional wrestling, why not change it to Beatdowns and write about wrestling since I watch so much of it...

It's taken me a while to get round to writing this post; it's something I probably should have written two years ago, and then a year ago but having come back from Berlin a month or two ago I think it's finally time to share my craft beer experiences! I love traditional German lager and drinking in the proper locals pubs when I'm away but I also really enjoy seeking out the modern craft beer scene and Berlin certainly has a cracking one, so I'm going to tell you about some of my favourite craft beer spots in Berlin that you should visit . Brewpubs: Berlin has quite a few little brew pubs which are small and range from the traditional to the modern, all of which are pretty cool. Vagabund Brewery  - Vagabund is very modern and owned by American's I believe. It's a tiny, bright bar with a bit of street seating outside and maybe around 6 taps. You're probably not going to hear many conversations in German here! I had their American Pale Ale which was...

Ah, Currywurst! A Berlin institution and indeed, if you've been to Berlin and didn't eat Currywurst whilst you were there, I'm not sure we can be friends. My first Currywurst was on my first ever trip to Berlin in August 2016 where I stumbled upon a stall at the Street Theatre Festival on Alexanderplatz; I grabbed a cheap €3 plate as well as a beer and sat in the warm sun, and fell in love. Later on that trip I visited the Currywurst museum (yes, such a thing exists) and although a novelty, I feel it was possibly the wurst (SEE WHAT I DID THERE?) eleven euros I've ever spent. The premise of Currywurst, for those who don't know, is simple: It's effectively sliced boiled and fried sausage coated in a sweet curry ketchup and topped with curry powder; you'll usually find it served with chips and mayonnaise on nearly every street corner in Berlin. I'd seen the famous CurryKing brand of microwavable Currywurst in supermarkets in Germany but never did I e...

When we learnt that our last trip to Nuremberg would coincide with the Nuremberg Alstadtfest - or Old Town Festival - we got the impression that it was just  a beer festival but as we discovered, it was so much more than that. The Altstadtfest which happens over 12 days every September is effectively a festival which celebrates the beautiful city of Nuremberg. It spreads across the whole of the old town and as we discovered, it was incredible. The main square is bustling full of stands selling traditional German food such as Drei Im Weggla (3 small Nuremberg Bratwurst in a bun, and for the love of god don't you fucking dare put ketchup on it) as well as various traders selling clothes and handmade items, and there's a giant stage where live music of all kinds takes place over the course of each day and evening until around midnight. If you stand on the bridge on the south bank of the river Pegnitz, if you're lucky you might catch the water jousting which is a highl...

The first time we ever went to Nuremberg we were pretty unaware as to whether what we refer to as "craft beer" existed over there. Of course, we did research beforehand but I guess since it was our first trip there, we really just went to the obvious traditional restaurants, pubs and brewpubs that we'd read mostly about. It wasn't until the second time I went, with Alec, that the craft beer scene was discovered; and then the next time last September with Sammie I discovered even more of this, outside of traditional lagers. I absolutely love Nuremberg and I'd highly recommend visiting, so I just figured I'd share with you some places where you can step away from the tradition of Germany and find some delicious craft beer... Mr Kennedy  - When I first visited Mr Kennedy, it was a tiny dark and dingy little bar on what seemed like quite a sketchy and dark street just behind the city walls, and then they moved location to a bigger dark and dingy bar in the o...