Midweek Mirth

Maybe the dog knows something we don't?

Cliches

Had one of these at the weekend, a new one from my favourite brewers Verdant, "It's Cliched to be Cynical at Christmas" is a juicy IPA in a classic Verdant package, murky, fragrant and rich it's all you want for Christmas!

Thinking about stuff...

The older we get the more we think about what remains of our lives and how we can make the things we do count for something, typically that means making us happy or making our loved ones happy. It's a tricky thing to do but fortunately (with luck) we're a bit wiser now that we once were!

Christmas Vino

We opened a nice bottle of Ozzy Cabernet to have with our Christmas dinner this year, from the Margaret River in Western Australia, this Leeuwin Estate offering was really singing, chalky soft tannins with a huge hit of blackcurrant and cassis with a spicy finish, an excellent wine. It cost about £50 quid and would definitely improve with some more bottle age, I might even treat myself to another bottle and keep it for a few years!

Pair of Deer

While out for my constitutional walk the other day I rounded a corner and happened upon a couple of deer, it was quite a shock for all of us as I was in the middle of a housing estate! They took one look at me and legged it but it was a nice moment on what was otherwise a typical grey day in December.

Other Dimensions

While in Bermondsey the other week we had a look around a Glass maker's shop, there were some lovely vases and ornaments sculpted from coloured glass, at the back of the shop was the workshop and I noticed that the furnace was open, I had to snap a picture as it looked just like a portal to an alternative dimension, amazing stuff!

Top low

Had a can of this the other day, it's a new beer from Verdant called "Peripheral Visions" and it's their first attempt at a hazy low/no alcohol beer. It's brilliant, so clean, super hoppy and very easy to drink, I'd be totally happy to drink this when I'm the designated driver or during dry January etc. Well done Verdant!

2025 A Year in Pictures

January - After "dry January" we broke our fast at the Woolpack, Bermondsey with a pint of DEYA!

February - Out and about in a chilly Winchester with friends

March - Chillin poolside in Florida for a couple of weeks

April - Delicious food at Dorian in Notting Hill, London with my Daughter

May - Walking the Levada's in Madeira

June - Awesome oysters at Pearly Queen in London, with my Son

July - Wonderful beer bash at Verdant down in Falmouth, shout out to the Seaview Inn!

August - Rediscovered course fishing on the Windrush in the Cotswolds

September - Brilliant long weekend in Berlin and Munich for Oktoberfest

October - A week in the Big Apple, so many memories

November - Touring South America, visited the awesome Iguazu falls in Brazil/Argentina

December - Bowie at the V&A in London, my favourite city to come home to

I would walk 500 miles..

I've been continuing to walk every day this year and my grand total (in miles) for the year will be up to par with previous (recent) years, this year's total is 1760 miles. I plotted this on a map centred on my home town (see above) and it's quite an impressive oval!

Maids in a row..

While in London last weekend we discovered a new pub (refurbished) on Borough High Street, called the "Blue Maid" it's a classic London boozer that has an impressive selection of craft beers (see above). I often stay around the London Bridge area when I'm in town, so with such a tasty selection of crafty ales, I suspect this one might become a regular refreshment stop from now on!

How much is that doggy... etc...

Nice to see that "Jim" the stuffed dog at Slough station is back in his rightful position in a brand new box on the Platform for London bound trains. Jim died in 1896 and understandably was looking a bit scruffy in recent years, he was removed this year for reconditioning and is now returned and looking splendid!

Summer Memories

 
Snapped back in July when my Son and I attended the Little Summer Beer Bash down in Falmouth, Cornwall. We had a great weekend and sampled plenty of lush Verdant beer, this particular example is called "Neal Gets Things Done" and is one of my favourites, loaded to the gunnels with NZ hops and drunk at their town centre venue called "The Seafood Bar" (also great nosh!), the candle is just there to add some atmosphere..

Top Beers of 2025 (1-10)

So here we go again, the top 10. It’s been a bit of a year for travel and collaboration beers, many great brewers have been working together to create some wonderful "mash-up" beers. Last year I promised myself that I would cast the net a bit wider next year and I think I've managed that quite well, extensive travel in North and South America as well as trips to Europe and the UK have delivered an eclectic mix of some delicious brews!

1. Every Minute Matters - Siren-Green Cheek: Number 2 on my 2020 list this was re-brewed in 2025 with a slightly tweaked recipe, still brilliant, still bitter AF but so well balanced a real desert island beer. I couldn't not put this at number one this year, an excellent brew.

2. Two Turbid Doves - Green Bench: Sampled at the Green Bench taproom in St. Pete's Florida back in March, it was quite a warm day and the taproom was a good walk from our hotel, this beer went down a treat! Such great flavours and just the right balance of hop, malts and bitterness, a real treat.

3. Two Worlds Apart - Siren-Beechwood: A new Westy for 2025, a collaboration and a super beer. I do like a good West Coast IPA and this is exactly that. Fruit, dank and bitter with perfect balance, a real banger from my local team.

4. Table Beer Mosaic-Enigma - The Kernel: This beer (in all its forms) has to be in the top 5 session beers in the world, a triumph of flavour without the hangover from the ever brilliant team at Kernel. Sampled at their new taproom in Bermondsey, London.

5. Blue Crab - Other Half Brewing: Chugged at the OHB taproom in New York, this beer is up there with the best US IPA's from Trillium and Treehouse IMO, classic combo of Citra, Simcoe and Mosaic it's old skool and brilliant for it!

6. Pete's Pale Ale - Green Bench: A light pale ale, absolutely perfect for the Florida heat. Sampled at the Green Bench taproom after a long walk it didn't touch the sides!

7. Putty 2025 - Verdant: There has to be a Putty on the list every year, it's about the only thing to look forward to in January in the UK and this year it was singing. More Nelson hops than usual and it was delicious for it, a great beer and a wonderful tradition.

8. Nine Mile Ride - Siren-Elusive: I've had this one on my list before and this year's re-brew was perfectly up to scratch with previous efforts. A classy Westy that celebrates a well known road around these parts, a great beer.

9. Forever Ever - Other Half Brewing: A DDH miracle from Other Half, sampled at their taproom in the Rockefeller Centre in New York City this low ABV crusher was a delight.

10. Fest Helles - Augustina: Sampled at Oktoberfest in Munich (see picture above), in theory "just a lager" but boy this one's a smoothy. As well balanced and clean as you like, a near perfect beer that's designed to be drunk in large quantities at the festival and we were certainly happy to oblige!

Christmas Hits

RIP Chris Rea, everyone mentions "driving home for Christmas" when discussing him but for me his album track called "Stainsby Girls" is what I think of first. Thanks for the music Chris.

Christmas Castle

Went to Windsor for some drinks and a meal with friends yesterday, the castle was looking cool illuminated with all kinds of royal "stuff", slightly better than the ugly mug of that Epstein nonce I suppose! 

Had a couple of cracking beers in the Two Flints taproom under the railway arches, named "NZH 105" and "NZH 106" (original!) they featured experimental hop varieties from New Zealand as part of the "Bract Programme" which is a breeding scheme aiming to identify the best hops of the future. Very strong weedy characters with super dank white wine and gooseberry back notes, very delicious indeed, must see if I can find some cans of these for the holiday!

Unexpected Boxes

Spotted on a recent visit to Winchester, this Victorian post box installed in the window of an otherwise plain looking house in one of the backstreets behind the Cathedral, from the blurb on the front it looks like it's still used! 

Friday Smirk

The lads talking about how particular religious sects always think they're "special" but as Hitch once said, they're (religions) all wrong in the same way, they promote faith over reason.

Weathered

The weather in the UK at the moment is dialed up to 11 on the sh1tty scale i.e. a seemingly never ending series of Atlantic depressions sweeping in bringing with them relentless rain and wind, eugh! 

Must be time for another Southern Hemisphere trip very soon...

Top Beers of 2025 (11-20)

The first instalment of my top beers of 2025 runs from number 11 through to number 20. Since we’ve been retired, we’ve been travelling a lot more and this list reflects that, the standard in the UK is as good as ever but you’ll find some rather special beers from much further afield in the list this year! 

11. Baby Sharks - Verdant: Classic Verdant murk and part of the “Sharks” family, this one is at the low end of the ABV range and probably the best session hazy in the country now.

12. Flor de Truco - Cerveceria LOA: Consumed in Santiago Chile, a local Chilean beer that turned up in cans at a restaurant, a full on hazy NEIPA and absolutely on the money for flavour profile, so good we had to have two cans each!

13. Kasta APA - Kasta Microbrews: A classic American Pale Ale, brewed locally to be hoppy and full of tropical fruits flavour, also had a slug of malt and decent bitterness, perfect for the 30+ degrees at the location (Crete, Greece!) a real tonic after the usual "industrial lagers" that pervade most tourist spots there.

14. Expressions Strata - Siren: I always thought that Strata hops were overrated that is until I tried this little number, the full panoply of flavours, tropical, citrus, dank and peppery, an interesting series and a great beer.

15. Persistence of Time - Siren: Drank this at the Siren 12th birthday party event, it featured Nelson hops (my favs.) and cannabis Terpenes (hey man!), dank AF and fruity, nice.

16. Le Lez - Verdant: Made in conjunction with French brewers Prizm (Montpellier), a blend of NZ and US hops limey and deeply dank, such a saturated flavour, oooh la la!

17. Fruit Car Sight Exhibition - Verdant: A classic that’s appeared a couple of time on my lists, but it's so good. I was lucky enough to snag a couple of cans and had them at home. 100% Citra hops with huge aromas and flavours of Mango, Apricot and citrus, Verdant really are at the top of their game.

18. Neal gets Soundwave - Siren-Verdant: A collaboration between two of my favourite brewers, this brew attempts to merge the flavour profiles of two flagship brews, Neal gets Things Done and Soundwave, the result was pretty good.

19. Grand Caravan - Trillium: Even though I went to America a couple of times this year this was my only Trillium beer (I know, must try harder!) but it was a banger, classic Trillium, balance and flavour punch, I can only dream about them setting up shop over this side of the pond one day.

20. Psych - Verdant: (pictured above) I put this on the list not because it was a favourite beer from a taste point of view but because I reckon it was the best Low/No alcohol beer of the year (by a long chalk!) So good that I snagged 24 cans of it for “dry January” and designated driver situations next year!

New Continents - Part 10

 

Our second bike tour of Buenos Aires took us to the Southern side of the city, it was a slightly longer tour than out first at around 20km as the different districts were more spread out however it was just as interesting. The tour included a lunch stop in La Boca (see above), today this colourful district is a classic tourist trap but back in the late 19th century was a destination for millions of immigrants from Europe and Asia, particularly from the Italian region of Liguria (the place has more pizza than empanadas) The area is so staunchly Italian that it's tried to secede (unsuccessfully) from Argentina on several occasions, in 1882, 1923 and 1986. Being close to the docks it has all the trappings of that kind of place, i.e. cheap housing, sketchy bars, street crime and a primarily working class population, however it's also famous for the Tango and football, two religions here that seem to allow people to escape from their otherwise tough everyday lives. Yes, that's Messi holding the world cup on the balcony of the bar in the photo above, he's everywhere in Argentina and has supplanted Maradona (who came from La Boca) as a figurehead for the culture there. 

There's a football stadium (La Bombonera) right in the middle of La Boca (see above) and it's home to Boca Juniors one of the premier teams in South America and the home of Diego Maradona (he of "hand of god" fame) someone who is still revered in this part of town. I couldn't help thinking that their stadium looked like a branch of Ikea, apparently there was some Swedish flag involvement in it's colour scheme!

Further round the tour we saw the "Pink Palace" (Casa Rosada) famous for the balcony on which Eva Peron addressed crowds of supporters back in the day (see below)

We finished off the tour back in the centre of the city (playing chicken with the rather assertive traffic!) and exhausted retired to our hotel to relax in the air-conditioning!

On our last night in BA we decided to have a swanky meal at our hotel and after an interesting chat with a really nice Dutch sommelier I settled on this bottle of Malbec (above) from a high altitude (3110m) vineyard in Salta, which seemed fitting after we'd visited the city earlier in the trip. It was delicious, so intense, a suitable bookend to some great wine discoveries over the few weeks that we'd been on the continent.

The next day we awoke to another blue sky day and, after some coffee and pastries and with some sadness, we headed to the airport and too our flight home. We had to fly via Rio again and as the photo below shows the airport dealt with this duel destination conundrum by listing the flight twice, once for Rio and again for Heathrow (never seen that before?)

Anyway the flight itself, although long, was fairly uneventful and we arrived into London on a misty and cold morning, we were sad to be leaving the Southern Hemisphere with it's awesome landscapes and it's blue skies but also pleased to be home.

Meaningful Maps

I'm sure this map shows some deep and meaningful thing, dunno what though..

Strata

Tried one of these at the weekend, it's a new beer from my local craft brewers, Siren, and is a showcase beer for the Strata hop. It's a pale ale/IPA that has been double dry hopped (DDH) with this variety, I have had it several times before in other beers and TBH it's never really impressed me that much however this incarnation is a banger!

The official flavour profile of Strata is as follows (from the internet)

"Strata hops are known for their complex, multi-layered profile featuring strong passion fruit, strawberry, and grapefruit notes, often with a unique dank cannabis or chili pepper undertone, making them ideal for bold, modern IPAs, Pale Ales, and NEIPAs where they add tropical fruitiness, citrus zest, and earthy depth, while also boasting good disease resistance and high alpha acids for bitterness."

Sounds great, and in this beer I can attest that most of these flavours came through in abundance, a delicious brew, one to look out for.

Timely Stories

 Certainly a story for our times..

New Continents - Part 9

 

We landed back in Buenos Aires late in the afternoon (see above) and we came into the "internal flights" airport which is right in the middle of the city, the view is quite different from the "international airport" which is out in the sticks, a little like landing at London City airport rather than Gatwick. Anyway, a quick 20 minute taxi ride delivered us to our hotel which was in the Recoleta district (the posh part of BA)

Our plan for the four days was to explore the main sights of this (rather large!) city, we had several things lined up including a couple of bike tours, some Tango dancing, an Argentinian BBQ and some serious R&R at our hotel, we checked in, dumped our bags and headed out into the early evening to track down some dinner!

The next day we got up early and walked to our pre-designated bike tour meeting point, picked up our chariots (completely manual, no battery power for us!) for the day and met our guide. The route was around 15k stopping off at points of interest and for lunch. We set off mid-morning under a blazing sun and blue skies, in a snake of around 10 bikes with our guide at the head, it felt like a school trip. We saw many things, in the picture above you can see the memorial to Eva Peron (Evita) it looked rather ragged and in need of a bit of TLC, clearly Evita isn't as popular as she used to be! Moving on we also saw the memorial to the Falklands war, an interesting stop, it seems to still be a fairly big deal in Argentina and the monument was overseen by uniformed soldiers (see below), we rather awkwardly watched them change the guard.

After many more statues and monuments, some rather lovely shaded parks, the rose gardens and some scary traffic riddled city streets we ended up at the Recoleta cemetery where Eva Peron is buried. It cost 20 bucks  to get in and see her so we didn't bother (once you've seen one bit of inscribed marble you've seen them all) however the old Spanish church (1732) that's there alongside the graves was pretty interesting (see below) and also free to explore.

After the tour had ended we all retired to one of the many pubs next to the graveyard (it's a popular tourist spot) and had a nice cold beer. It had been a great tour and we decided to take another (around a different part of the city) the following day.

That evening we got dressed up and caught a taxi to the Palermo district and an intimate Tango show. Held in a little room/bar with a piano, the show kicked off at 7pm when the doors were shut and mobile phones switched off (I like events like that!) the dancing was amazing and the musical accompaniment excellent, unlimited wine too so everyone was in good spirits by the end! Photography wasn't allowed during the show itself, however I snapped this one (below) at the end to show how small the venue was, the dancers were the two people on the LHS, the others were pianist, accordion player and singer. 

After the show we decamped to a local restaurant and were treated to a 9 course tasting menu of (mainly meat!) various Argentinian dishes cooked over open fires (see below), it was a great evening and we were all pretty much pooped by 11pm and ready for our taxi back to the hotel!

The next day we bade farewell to our traveling companions (they were leaving two days before us) as they headed back to the airport, Heathrow bound. This left my wife and I alone to finish off our South American tour with two days of exploring BA and availing ourselves of our hotel's rather splendid facilities. More in the final part.

Friday Smirk

The boys pointing out a couple of the many holes in the Genesis myth, it never ceases to amaze me that so many people think that this story is actually true, like some (real) episode of the Flintstones..

New Continents - Part 8

 

There was a lot of wildlife to see in the area surrounding the falls, we must have seen at least half a dozen different species of lizard but there were also wonderfully colourful birds, reptiles of all kinds, insects and even monkeys, we were told by our guide that there was a programme going on in the park to protect and nurture a group of Jaguar although despite looking hopefully we didn't see any. I snapped this little fella (above) on the Brazilian side but pretty much everywhere you looked you could find something interesting.

On the Argentinian side of the falls the walks were split into lower, middle and upper and the granddaddy of them all "Mirante da Garganta do Diablo" or the "Devils Throat" is accessible via a little tourist train and a 2km walkway. We did all of them and each had a different set of spectacles to see. On the lower trail you were mainly alongside the falls or adjacent to the bottom of them (thankfully not under them!) and mainly in the jungle itself, the main attraction here was the wildlife, so many species of birds, insects and plants too many to count! Anyway see the photo below for one of the more common mammals that we saw, a possum like critter that seemed completely oblivious to our presence..

The middle trail featured mainly the smaller cascades and you could get alongside and above some of these, great views and an impressive 3-4km walk. The upper trail was the big one, it led to the biggest cascade of all and after a one kilometer walk across the main upper river itself you came to a viewing platform that allowed a spectacular view into the "throat" of the devil, I snapped this little video sequence of what it was like although you can't see too much detail because of all the spray however you can see several of the little swallow birds that fly around in front of the fall and the ever present rainbow that seems to frame the whole thing, an amazing experience.

After the natural spectacle that is Iguazu we could have quite happily ended the holiday there but there was more. The next day we headed back to the airport and jumped on a plane back to the city, a final four day farewell to the continent and a chance to sample the delights of the capital city, Buenos Aires bound we packed our cases once more..

Bowie

 

We went to London last weekend and visited the David Bowie exhibition at the V&A (East) Located in Hackney Wick it's essentially a huge warehouse full of cultural and artistic treasures (see above), it felt to me a bit like that last scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark where the Ark of the Covenant is being stored in some vast US government warehouse, I reckon the holy grail is in there somewhere!

Anyway, the Bowie section was quite small, just one room, but a real treasure trove. It featured a lot of outfits and costumes as well as instruments and song lyrics (hand written) both from him as a solo artist and also when he collaborated with others. I particularly liked the little semi-political notes that he used to write to himself, he was quite forward thinking, especially around things like the emergence of digital technology. 

All in all a great little exhibition, we spent at least an hour or so reminiscing about the 70s and 80s! Afterwards we met our Son at a pub in Hackney and had a good old catch up with him, a lovely day.