Falling off the wagon, and all that...

Well, I have now completed my second week on the wagon and the parade of extraordinary beers before my eyes at Westbridge and Northcote is beginning to take its toll on morale.  Yes, it's getting e'er more difficult to stay on the damned thing and that irksome little Beer-Putti-sod is shooting me full of arrows. 

My Wagon. With trusty man minding it

We have taken delivery of Meantime IPA on Keg at Northcote (this is a rarity, normally only available in bottle).  Serious, Empire-Building beer at 7.5%. I imagine it's good for fighting. And lying around in the heat being brought tiffin. Or whatever. I gamely nosed a thimbleful this morning and can confirm that it is a hop-monster. 


Other new beers in today include two from deadhead brewer Dark Star of West Sussex. These guys have won all kinds of awards from the Campaign for Real Ale, but we don't necessarily hold that against them.


The legendary 3.7% Hophead (a James Ellroy era word for a heroin addict) is a rich yellow in colour and, as the name suggests when read literally, chockful of hops (not heroin). We also have their citrussy 4.7% American Pale Ale today. It's not as bad as it sounds.


In any event I am certain that the thirsty swine of SW11 will have finished this lot off before I make it down to B&Q to:


1) buy axe
2) chop up of the above-pictured wagon with said axe (being mindful of how close trusty man is standing to it)
3) build large bonfire with the chopped-up wagon
4) commence the satisfactory, if unnecessarily cruel, process of barbecuing of the horses
5) order pint at bar


I am told that the appointed day for this event, Feb 18th (don't ask), will co-incide with the arrival of Schiehallion, a cask lager from Harviestoun (last time I was on the wagon I missed it altogether).  Not a bad way to fall off...

The Beat My Heart Skipped

Just thrilled to have discovered Audiard. Having been bowled over by Un Prophete on the weekend I felt compelled to rent his previous film (he only makes them at five-year intervals). While lacking the ambition of Prophete The Beat My Heart Skipped is still fabulous.

The Elusive Samuel Adams 27% "Utopias"

Braumeister Ben McFarland confirms that this is as 'rare as rocking-horse dung'. The search goes on. Have also just been corrected: Utopias is correctly expressed as a plural. Explanations on a postcard, please.

The bottle is beer-bling in object form, no?

Anti-Prohibition March 1929

By 1929, the Prohibition Bureau estimated the illicit production of homebrew at 22 million barrels (31 gallons per barrel) annually, nearly the same amount of legal beer sold in 1919. In some cities, so much homebrew was being made that sewer systems were choked beyond function by the onslaught of spent hops.

At Last...a photo which does Draft House Man justice