25th June 2012

Friday was a double celebration for me. It was midsummer's day, which here in Finland is a huge thing, and it was also my birthday. Being one year older I should also be one year wiser, but with all this beer I've been drinking I might be stuck in reverse.

Malheur 10 (Belgium)

Thanks go to Jose for bringing this for me. When I poured it in to the glass I wasn't sure what this beer was. It looked and smelled like wheat beer, but thankfully didn't taste too much like it. Unless I've just become so accustomed to wheat beer that I've actually started to like it. What I do know about this beer is that it's very strong and actually very good. A quite typical Belgian effort, lots of flavour and plenty of alcohol.

Staropramen (Czech Republic)

This was my first beer to start the weekend of celebrations. I was looking forward to this because I really like Czech beer, and as you can see, my girlfriend Tiia was quite excited about it too. And with good reason. Although this beer doesn't taste so much different from some of the other Czech beers I've had so far, it's not a bad thing. So overall the weekend was a success... apart from the England-Italy game, but I won't go in to that. 

18th June 2012

A rather nice pair of British beers to drink while watching England scrape past the Swedes.

Brains Dark (Wales)

Although this sounds like a racist zombie's favourite beer, it's actually a rather nice drink. It tasted very bitter, rather like what I'd expect a lump of coal to taste like. If you like dark beer then I would definitely recommend this. If not then there's nothing so remarkable here that would make you change your mind. I do like dark beer though, so for me this was great.

Tribute (England)

The bottle says that this is "The South-West's Favourite", and actually it's quite easy to see why. This looked slightly cloudy in the glass and had a nice strong flavour. And at only 4.2% you could drink it all night and wake up the next morning without wondering what happened to your keys/phone/face/furniture. 

11th June 2012

The European football championship kicked off at the weekend, and I'm quietly confident that England has the ability to get knocked out in the quarter finals.

Victory Storm King Imperial Stout (USA)

This is a powerful beer, both in taste and alcohol content. Stout is one of my favourite types of beer, especially when it's done right. And this is definitely done right. It leaves an aftertaste like you'd just drank three cups of strong coffee without stopping for breath. It's good. And I mean really good.

O'Kell's Aile Smoked Celtic Porter (Isle of Man)

For those of you don't know, the Isle of Man is a tiny island located between Britain and Ireland. Apparently there's a brewery there, and if this beer is an example of what they brew, it's a pretty good brewery. I'll admit that the word "smoked" on the label frightened me a bit, I've had some bad experiences with smoke beers. But this one didn't have the overpowering smoky taste that the others had. This one tasted more like the tar flavoured things that you can get, at least here in Finland. A nice mild beer.

4th June 2012

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Tsingtao (China)

20% of the global population is Chinese, so you would think that at least one of the 1.6 billion people living there would be able to make a decent beer. However you'd be wrong. There are only two Chinese beers in the book, and both of them can be described as "below average". Maybe all the Chinese are too busy making cheap copies of expensive electronics, I don't know. But I do know one thing, at least the European and American beer industries will be safe if this is the best they can do.

Chimay Tripel (Belgium)

The drunken monks do it again. Trappist beer quickly became one of my favourites after I tried the first one. This beer has a really strong taste, a taste which makes you think it has a high alcohol content, but at a reasonable 8% it's not going to melt your tonsils. Those monks may have a boring life, but at least they make a nice beer to make up for it.