The Beer Bucket List - from a personal perspective

It's strange how people sometimes come into one’s life then, as quick as they appear, they vanish. When you're approaching the 70th anniversary of your arrival on planet Earth, all sorts of people have crossed your path, often going back many decades. Apart from family members, these people include those who we went to school with - infant, primary, and secondary school, and then, for those fortunate to have attended university, people from your student days.

Following on, and into the world of employment, in whatever category, there are work colleagues who become a part of one’s life, for various periods of time. If, like me, you've worked in a variety of industries, and for several different employers, sometimes in different parts of the country, then there are more people whose career paths cross with yours.

The example I'm about to give, isn't someone who was part of my life for any significant period of time, and it isn't someone I claim to know well either, but the other day his name flashed up on a well-known beer blog (Boak & Bailey), along with a link, that provided a fascinating insight into how this individual started off with a beer related blog of his own, before branching into the world of writing, publishing and PR- the latter with at least one well known and well respected international brewery. With this in mind, it's worth taking a brief look back not just at what this former blogger's achieved, but how one of his later books ended up give me something to reference my own their experiences against, and this latter point is really the main subject of this particular post.

I started Paul’s Beer & Travel blog, in the autumn of 2008, joining a number of individuals whose names and reputations were far more illustrious than my own, and some of whom are still writing about beer today. Most though why they got bored with the subject, branched out into different areas of interest, made a definite career out of beer writing, or sadly in a number of cases, have shuffled off this mortal coil. Just over a year later, in December 2009, I had an enforced day off work it's due to heavy snowfall, I was unable the drive into the factory. In addition, there were no trains running either (no surprises there), so feeling at a loose end, I decided take a wander down into Tonbridge.

The following narrative, from my post of 18^th December tells the story, and provides the link to this article, some 14 years on. The snow clouds had cleared leaving a beautiful bright and crisp sunny morning. so off I went with no clear-cut plan, apart from picking up some Czech currency for my forthcoming trip to Prague. This accomplished, I made my way to Tonbridge's only independent book shop, MR Books, for a chat with the then owner Mark Richardson, and also to see if I could pick up a copy of Jaroslav Hasek's, satirical classic, The Good Soldier Svejk, ahead of my forthcoming visit to Prague.

"You're not the first beer blogger in today", Mark informed me. "Oh", I replied, "who was the other?" The "Pencil & Spoon" blogger, I was told, and he said he wants to meet you. "Mark Dredge" I said, slightly surprised, "in here? "Why not," said MR Books' proprietor, "he only lives across the road in one of the new flats". I responded that I would like to meet Mark, so following a quick phone, call the winner of the British Guild of Beer Writers New Media Writer of the Year 2009 duly appeared in MR Book’s shop.

I hadn't realised that Mark lived in Tonbridge, but it turned out that him and his girlfriend had recently moved into one of the newly-built flats that occupy the old market site, opposite MR Books shop. Mark couldn't stay long, as he was in the middle of preparing dinner, but we had a pleasant chat, nonetheless. We both griped about the lack of a decent boozer in Tonbridge, and certainly the lack of anywhere selling the darker ales which ought to be about this time of year. MR Books suggested that I open a pub but having run the Cask & Glass off-licence for five and a half years, I'd had more than enough of the licensed trade!
 

We parted company, promising to meet up soon for a drink, but as is often the way with such well-meaning intentions we never did. Continued following Mark’s Pencil and Spoon blog, even though he seemed to be branching off it in a slightly different direction, and it was to be a further five years for our paths crossed again. In the summer of 2014, I attended my first European Beer Bloggers Conference. Held in Dublin, this was one of three such events held in various European capitals I enjoyed, during the latter half of that decade, and was, as fellow beer Blogger, Tandleman, forewarned me, a very boozy affair. Tandleman was right of course, and to say that the beer flowed freely would be an understatement, and what’s more it was included in the price of the conference package.

Not included though, was accommodation, or the cost of travel to and from the host city. However, some pretty decent food, plus a substantial end of conference meal, was part and parcel of the deal, so who stumped up the cash for the food and the beer? The answer of course, is the sponsors, and given the location of the conference, it’s no surprise that Guinness were one of the main backers of the event. Also high amongst the main sponsors were Czech brewers, Pilsner Urquell, who had brought over their own mobile bar, complete with integral cooling unit, plus glass rinser. It was then that I bumped into Mark Dredge again, who by this time was working for Pilsner Urquell, as part of their PR team.

Three years later, and Mark and I crossed paths again, not in a physical sense, but following an approach from the publishers of his latest book. Titled The Beer Bucket List,” was described by publishers Dog ‘n’ Bone, as a “Collection of over 150 unmissable beer experiences, featuring the world’s greatest beer, bar, breweries and events: it’s the ultimate bucket list for every beer lover.”

Asked if I would like to review what turned out to be Mark’s 5^th book, I of course said yes, and after my complimentary review copy arrived, I soon got stuck into it. You can read what I wrote here, but for the point of this article, I want to list those unmissable beer experiences of Mark’s that I have enjoyed myself. So, without further ado here they are, in no particular order.

• Tour Fuller’s Griffin Brewery
• Best of British Cask Ales (too many to mention)
• Modern (Pale & Hoppy) Cask Ales
• Drink in some Wetherspoons Pubs
• Best of London’s Historic Pubs
• Bermondsey Beer Mile
• Blue Anchor - Helston
• Kent Green Hop Fortnight
• Thanet’s Micro-Pubs
• Visit Burton-on-Trent
• Marston’s Burton Union system
• Sunday roast with a pint of Cask Ale
• Pint of Marble at Marble Arch Inn
• Great British Beer Festival
• Edinburgh pub-crawl
• Drink Guinness in Ireland
• Porterhouse Brew-pub, Dublin
• Oktoberfest Munich
• Augustiner Hell vom Faβ, Munich
• Hofbräuhaus, Munich
• Annafest, Forchheim
• Schlenkerla Tavern, Bamberg
• Weihenstephan – world’s oldest brewery
• Altbier in Düsseldorf
• Kölsch in Cologne
• Drink Baltic Porter in Poland
• Drink Pilsner Urquell in Plzen
• Drink Polotmavý in Czechia
• U Fleků, Prague
• Drink Westvleteren 12° at In de Vrede café, next to the brewery
• Three Classic Belgian Breweries – Rodenbach, Brasserie Du Pont, Westmalle Tripel
• Three Essential Belgian Bars - Moeder Lambic, 't Brugs Beertje, De Halve Maan
• Amsterdam Braun Café, De Wildeman
• Carlsberg Brewery, Copenhagen
• Experience a Hop Harvest
• Visit China – the world’s largest beer market

Writing about the book on his blog, Mark says he was inspired by thinking about where in the world he'd most like to drink a beer. And then by thinking about where he'd suggest others go to drink. The list included the places that any beer lover really should go, plus all those many oddities and idiosyncrasies that make beer – and travelling for beer – so great.

So, with just 36, out of a total of 150 experiences ticked off, there are many more places to go, and beers to drink, but don’t forget, Mark’s list is just one person’s take on the beer world, and others, including me will have their own ideas as to what constitutes an unmissable beer experience. Please let me know what you think.

The road to recovery leads to beer

Spoiler alert, just like the previous post, there is very little in this article that relates directly to beer, although the good news is that I’m starting to feel a lot better than I did mid-week when I drafted that particular piece. It’s still “man flu” as far as Mrs PBT’s is concerned, especially as she has largely shaken off her bout of the lurgy, but at least she isn’t blaming me for bringing the infection into the house.

We ventured out, earlier today, just for a shopping trip over to Kings Hill (West Malling), but both perhaps mindful that we’ve done very little in the way of Christmas preparations. More about that later, but on the plus side, I finally managed to pick up a few cans of that Forged Dry Irish Stout I wrote about back in August. There was just a few, slightly tired looking four packs of the beer, lurking in the beer aisle at ASDA’s Kings Hill supermarket, which was more of a surprise than anything else.

I only discovered the cans, after leaving Eileen at the checkout queue, and doubling back to the alcohol section, not quite on a whim, but more so because I remembered that ASDA was the UK grocery chain chosen by brand founder and owner Conor McGregor, for the launch of this new entrant to the stout market, on this side of the Irish Sea. Rather than repeat the story behind Forged Irish Stout, and the involvement of its “colourful” MMA fighter, and founder, the link here will take you to the article from 10^th August, which attracted 90 page views, but zero comments.

Perhaps I’m being churlish by describing the product launch as over-hyped, but I have looked for the beer in several other ASDA stores and drawn a complete blank. For the record, Forged Stout is undoubtedly a very good beer, although whether it’s poised to take the Dry Irish Stout mantle away from Guinness, is open to question. Instead, I would argue the case for Black Heart Draught from BrewDog, a beer which is receiving far more in terms of promotion and presence within UK supermarkets than an upstart from across the Irish Sea.

Moving on, the carpet fitters have finally finished the job, and for the first time since the beginning of October, when we departed for our Mediterranean cruise, we can walk up and down the stairs without waking those on either side of us. It’s not until you’re without a particular facility or feature, that you realise just how much you miss it, and hobbling up and down the creaking bare boards of a 90-year-old staircase certainly wasn’t the most joyous experience in the world.

Given the daily traffic up and down a staircase, and the disruption involved in painting the surrounding wall and ceilings, it made perfect sense to call in the decorators whilst we were out of the country for an extended period. We’d instructed the tradesmen to remove the rather worn carpet from the stairs, landing and hallway, although three weeks later when we returned from holiday, the starkness of the bare wooden floors and stair treads came as something of a shock, especially when viewed against the freshly painted walls and ceiling.

I contacted a well-known national chain carpet store, and they arranged for a surveyor to call at the end of the week. Mrs PBT’s chose the carpet, we paid the bill and expected to hear from a fitter within a few weeks. Those “few” weeks dragged on into a month and a half, and if I hadn’t phoned the company, we’d probably still be walking up and down a carpet less staircase. The girl I spoke to in customer services had somehow mixed-up Tonbridge with nearby Tunbridge Wells – she excused herself by saying she was from Essex, nuff said, but somewhere along the line the company had obviously mislaid our order.

To cut a long story short, the father and son team of carpet fitters arrived mid-afternoon on Thursday, cut and laid the carpet for the hall and landing, but had to return the following day to complete the stairs. This was because the carpet was too cold, having come straight from the warehouse, and this meant it wouldn’t flex sufficiently to fit snuggly around the alternate 90° angles of a slight of stairs. You'd never have thought carpet laying could be so technical, but it does make perfect sense when you think abut it. The fitters did a first-class job, and it’s hard to describe the joy felt from walking up and down a newly carpeted staircase. That’s another job crossed off from a slowly dwindling “must do” list, and its completion has come at just the right moment.

I returned to work this morning, and there are now just two more working days for me before the lengthy Christmas shutdown. I’ve only has a couple of beers over the past 10 days, the last one being a bottle of Fuller’s excellent London Porter. At the moment tea and coffee have more of an appeal, but as the week goes on, I fully expect to be indulging once again in a glass or two of the finest hopped, malt beverages.

Since returning from the cruise, and prior to picking up this bug, I’d began drinking my way through a few of the Oktoberfest Biers I bought from Lidl, back in September – see Wiesn-Tragerl from Kalea. So far, they’ve been malt-driven, quite sweet in taste, and with a noticeable touch of ethyl alcohol on the palate.  This is perhaps not entirely surprising, given that most of these beers have abv’s of between 5.5 & 6.5 %, and this matches the experience of many beer drinkers. Here, the consensus is that an abv of around 5% is the ideal strength for a quaffing beer, especially when the beer is a pale-coloured lager.

This is a statement I not only agree with but is one which matches my own experience of enjoying beer over half a century. Discovering that the 6.0% beers served up at the legendary Franconian Annafest, were only sold in litre measures did make the event far more of a challenge than it should have been, and if I’m brutally honest, less enjoyable than I’d been anticipating. My Annafest experience happened 10 years ago, with most of our visits to the Kellerwald taking place during daylight hours.

During the evening, it was refreshing to take the bus back down into the town of Forchheim and enjoy a few “normal” strength beers in one of the local pubs, along with a bite to eat. I suppose though, that when you’re part of a crowd, swaying along with the music, whilst chugging a large earthenware mug of strong Festbier, you don’t really notice yourself becoming more and more intoxicated as the session wears on.

 Hey now, let’s not become too moralistic over this, because events such as Annafest and the far better-known Munich Oktoberfest (similar high strength beers and litre measures are the order of the day at the Wiess’n), are about letting ones hair down, joining in with the spirit of the event, and generally having a god time in the company of similarly intoxicated revellers, many of whom you won’t have met until an hour or so before hand.

So, on that note, and with dreams and fond memories of time spent in Bavaria and Franconia, it’s time to draw this narrative to an end, and time too for an early night, spent dreaming of such things. "Zum Wohl" as the Germans would say!

Indisposed and generally under the weather

I’ve been taking things easy for the past few days, especially when it comes to beer. A touch of man flu is the cause, and it hasn’t been particularly pleasant. It's obviously woman flu as well because Mrs PBT's has also being affected, so does this make it gender neutral, or non-binary flu? Gender neutral flu, perhaps, or non-gender specific flu? or just plain flu, except it obviously isn't influenza, as both of us  received our flu vaccinations, back in the autumn. It's been lingering on though, as it's now approaching the two week mark from the time when I first became aware of its presence. 

I’m pretty certain I picked this particular bug up from work, where it’s been doing the rounds, having been brought home from school by one or perhaps two colleagues young enough to have kids of a certain age. In the end, this was the situation that persuaded my sister to abandon a career in the classroom, becasue she invariably came home with something nasty! Unfortunately, this particular incarnation of the common cold is very persistent and had been dragging on a long time. It’s the type of strain of upper respiratory tract infection, that lulls you into a false sense of security, because just when you think it’s on the way out, it rebounds back, with an increased ferocity.

Fortunately, neither of us have much going on at present, as it’s the classic "calm before the storm" moment – the storm being Christmas, if I’m allowed to say the "C" word with 12 days still to go before the so-called "Big Day."  Fingers crossed this unwelcome seasonal pestilence is on its way out, but apart from a visit to the podiatrist, plus dragging myself into work, I've largely been confined to quarters. This “break from the norm” has given me the chance to catch on some reading, put various papers etc in order, and re-start my hunt for a replacement vehicle, but on the downside, I've been seriously off my beer!

Tonight, I pinched a can of Mrs PBT’s Guinness Draught 0.0, and I have to say that this smooth, and full-bodied, alcohol-free, dry Irish stout, is very palatable. I was in trouble though for helping myself, even though I said I’d buy her another pack. "I don’t go helping myself to your beer," was her response, and she does have a point, but all joking aside, Guinness have got it right with this temperance version of their iconic beer, right down to the nitro-pour can.

Given my part-time hours at work, there are now only four working days before the factory shuts down for the long, festive-season break, or what American readers would call the “holidays.” I‘m not sure how long companies, or government organisations in the US shut down for over the Christmas period, although I do know there’s no tradition such as “Boxing Day.” My brother-in-law, on the other side of the Atlantic, is retired now, so him and my sister are now enjoying the extended leisure time that comes from no longer “working for the man.”

Looking ahead, I’ve got 12 days of leisure, before heading back to the office on 2^nd January 2024, so how to use that time wisely? There’s the aforementioned car search, and having narrowed down my choice to make, model, fuel-type, engine size, age, and affordability – those things are all connected, the only painful thing will be enduring the over-inflated sales pitch, the attempts as selling me “gap insurance”, paintwork-protection coating, and all the other “add-ons” that bump up the price, and the salesperson’s commission. As a cash buyer, I should have plenty of bargaining power, although I don’t intend om passing lightly with my hard-earned cash.

As for the main event, there will just be the three of us, as those days of extended, and sometimes fraught days of extended family get-togethers are long gone. I’ve pre-ordered a fresh turkey crown, as I do every year, and Mrs PBT’s will no doubt cook it the day before. I’m trying to talk her out of buying a ham as well, as it’s too much, as far as I’m concerned, especially with a rather large bird to chomp our way through. As in most years, I’ve accumulated quite a stash of beer, mainly bottles, and including some old favourites, including London Porter and 1845 from Fullers, Proper Job from St Austell, and Pilsner Urquell from the city of Plzen itself. There are plenty of other “interesting” beers to work my way through, including Belgian Trappists Rochefort and Westmalle, St Bernardus – including the latter's  Christmas Ale, and whilst on that subject, a couple of bottles of Harvey’s wonderful Christmas Ale, plus a Bonfire Boy or two, from the same brewery. In short, I shan’t go thirsty, and what I lack in quantity, I shall make up in quality.

There was a time when a polypin of traditional cask ale was a must, in the Bailey household, but I did find that having to drink my way through 36 pints of the same beer, ended up as a chore in the end, and those last few pints were nowhere near as enjoyable as the first few. In other years I’ve gone for the 5-litre/9-pint mini-casks, and there’s still every possibility I shall treat myself to one filled with Larkin’s Porter.

The other great festive-season tradition is a ramble, not necessarily on Boxing Day, but instead a cross-country hike with a group of friends, traversing some picturesque countryside and then ending up at an unspoilt country pub. Unfortunately, the weather has put paid to such activities for the past few Christmases, and I’ve a feeling that this year’s meteorological conditions, aren’t going to be any better. That’s a real shame, as catching up with friends, post-Christmas, in a classic rural retreat, has always been for me, one of the highlights of the season. And speaking of rambles and cross-country hikes in general, previous years saw me completing the North Downs Way, long-distance footpath.

Last year’s aim of hiking the Tunbridge Wells Circular Walk, didn’t come off, despite it only being 26 miles in length. A delayed start, due to atrocious weather conditions, lead to a loss of momentum, even before the start. This, combined with a poorly signposted route, and a guidebook that assumed the reader knew exactly where he or she is going, curbed my dwindling enthusiasm, but leaving out the excuses, there is no reason for me not to complete the TWCW in 2004. 

Tomorrow, we’re expecting out new stairs carpet to finally be delivered and laid. We’ve waited in excess of six weeks for Carpetright to get the wheels in motion, and none of us can wait to have some nice new carpet fitted to our stairs, hall, and landing. The house has seemed very empty with just the bare floorboards and stair tread to look at, as we had the old carpet removed by the decorating team we engaged, whilst we were away on the cruise. It transpires that Carpetright somehow managed to mislay our order - if you’ll excuse the pun, but the bare stairs in particular creak and groan when walked on, but given the age of the property (1930’s), this is not exactly surprising,

Finally, and whilst on the subject of decorating, the Bailey family is pretty minimalist when it comes to Christmas decorations, so no decking the halls with boughs of holly for us. What we do have are a couple of “Starburst” light projectors, one for the front and the other for the rear of the house. These clever devices, project a series of multi-coloured laser lights onto any suitable, vertical surface. In our case, this is the front or rear walls of the house. The pattern varies thanks to a slow-spinning disk in the lamp housing, and if, like us, your house had white-painted walls, you can enjoy your very own changing light show, without having to climb up a ladder, or string ropes of coloured bulbs from one branch to the next.

"Simples", as the meerkats would say, and simple to erect and just as simple to take down. Life’s hard enough at times, so why not take the occasional short cut, and leave time for the more important and enjoyable things in life.