6 Nations 2021

Italy – Where to start?! This has been their worst ever championship. Italy have not won a 6 Nations game since 2015 (their 22-19 win against Scotland). It is really hard to see what they bring to the tournament and although they have 15/20 minute periods of good play within games, it has been years

Birthday beers

A lot of people seem to see the 30th birthday as a bit of a negative milestone… no longer in your 20s, over the hill, time to start growing up?! Personally, it didn’t seem too daunting at all and in fact created a great excuse to have a bit of a get together with friends

USA

When you mention beer and the USA stereotypically I always think of huge commercial lagers like Coors Light and Budweiser. Nevertheless, there are a number of far more interesting American beers now being stocked in UK supermarkets like Sierra Nevada Pale Ale and Blue Moon. Heading off on a three week holiday to the States

Summer Lightning – The Hickory (Barge) Inn

One of the massive perks of teaching is the holidays and it’s always great to head back to Devon for a few days to catch up with Mum and Dad. Devon is blessed with some great pubs and it is really disappointing to have seen many being forced into closure over recent years. A lot of contributing factors

It’s been a while…

My beer blog has been somewhat neglected over recent months, with me becoming a married man one of the main factors! Nevertheless, I was really keen to get writing again and I have a homebrew and a few other beers to review. My previous post centred upon a batch of Coopers Australian Pale Ale which was incredibly easy

New home brew and reviews

So, two weeks post marathon and beer is well and truly back on the agenda! I thought ahead and got another home brew on the go prior to the run with a view to it being ready in the summer. I opted for a Cooper’s Australian Pale Ale kit (on the recommendation of a couple

A year of beer

So, it has been a year of reviewing beer and indeed embarking on my first homebrew production – many fine (and not so fine) ales have been sampled. I have thoroughly enjoyed broadening my knowledge and appreciation of ale but whilst flicking through some pictures on my phone, I noticed a glaring omission! Earlier this

The first taste of homebrew

So, I have jumped the gun a little bit and only left my IPA to clear for 11 days as opposed to the suggested 14 but I simply couldn’t wait any longer! I cracked open the bottle and there was a pleasing fizz which meant there was sufficient priming sugar for carbonation. When pouring into

The first brew – bottling

So, it has been 10 days since I set up my ale in the fermentation bucket and therefore, time to bottle my beer. After seven days I added the IPA hops to the bucket. I am still following the instructions to the letter and next time I can make tweaks that I see necessary. One

The start of home brewing

Finally, after almost a year of blogging on beer, I have decided to take the plunge and try to make some of my own. Whilst begrudgingly accompanying Claire around a local department store, I stumbled across a small section of home brewing equipment. This certainly improved the shopping trip and I invested in a starter