Golden Pints Awards 2011

 As 2011 comes to end this evening I thought I would wait till the last second and pick my picks for the golden pints award 2011. 2011 was a real eye opener for me when it comes to beer and I enjoyed every step of my journey and looking forward to new things in 2012 and hope that most of you will come on my journey of seeking the best beer the world can offer.


          Best UK Draught (Cask or Keg) Beer

1: Magic Rock Human Cannonball 2: Buxton Brewery Axe Edge 3: Summer Wine 7'c of Rye

     2. Best UK Bottled or Canned Beer
         1: Buxton Brewery Axe Edge
         2: Porterhouse Plain Porter
         3: Magic Rock High Wire

     3. Best Overseas Draught Beer
         1: Stone Brewing Oaked Arrogant Bastard
         2: Great Divide Rumble IPA
         3: Nogne O Saison
    
     4. Best Overseas Bottled or Canned
         1: Duck Rabbit Milk Stout
         2: Brooklyn Sorachi Ace
         3: Schneider Weisse Tap 5

     5. Best Overall Beer
         1: Brooklyn Sorachi Ace
         2: Orval 2 year (Thanks Matt from North Bar for holding one for me.)
         3: Schneider Weisse Tap 5

     6. Best Pumpclip or Label
         1: Left Hand Fade to Black
         2: Roosters Baby Faced Assassin
         3: Magic Rock Curious NZ

     7. Best UK Brewery
         1: Magic Rock Brewery
         2: Buxton Brewery
         3: Kernal Brewery

     8. Best Overseas Brewery
         1: Stone Brewery
         2: Left Hand Brewery
         3: Nogne O
         
    
     9. Pub/Bar of the Year
         1: Grove Inn Huddersfield
         2: North Bar
         3: Mr Foley's Cask Ale House
 

    10. Beer Festival of the Year

          Sadly I only went to one but it was very nice

          1:Headingley Beer Festival

   

    12. Independent Retailer of the Year

          1: BeerRitz

   

    13. Online retailer of the Year

          1: MyBrewerytap.com

          2: Beersofeurope.com

 

    15. Best Beer Blog/ Website

          1: The Good Stuff

          2: BeerSay

          3: Ghostdrinker

 

    16. Best Twitterer

          1: Broadford Brewer

          2: Geekleeds

          3: Briggatebeer

  

    17. Best Online Brewery Presence

          1: Magic Rock

          2: Buxton Brewery

          3:Hardknott

 

    18. Food and beer matching in the Foley's Kitchen

          1: Chili with Black Band Porter

          2: Steak Sandwich with Propaganda

          3: Foley's Burger with Dark Arts

 

    19. In 2012 I'd most like to:

            Expand my beer and food pairing for the British Bloggers Conference and to have the satisfaction of doing a homebrew and working within a brewery to produce beer for the masses. Do a couple more brewery tours and try to get out and try to find the best beer in the country

 

 

 

 

 

 

     

My final chapter of my beery week with the parents.

Now here is the end to this series of writing I hope you enjoyed reading them as much as I have enjoyed trying to remember all the beers and good times I shared with my parents over the past week.
Okay then the soppy stuff over with on to the hoppy goodness that concluded the liver killing week.
Ive saved this part of the story for this blog but I must have spent more time in the local beer shop this week than I have ever spent in there since Ive found out about it, the place in question is Beer Ritz in Headingley. Now then my Father and I visited this haven at the very least 3 times in the week that he was here and picked up some fantastic brews. Here are some examples I'm not going into tasting notes I'm just going to list some of the beer we decided on.

Buxton Axe Edge
Darkstar Expresso Stout
Magic Rock High Wire and Cannonball
Punk IPA, 5 Am Saint, and Hardcore
Wensleydale Porter
Hardknott InfraRed
St Peters Honey Porter
Robinsons Old Tom
Duvel
Schneider Weisee Hopfen-Weiss
Kernal Imperial Brown Stout and Export Stout
Gwynt y Ddraig Farmhouse Cloudy Scrumpy
Meantime IPA
Wychwood Hobgoblin
and just to top it off I think we bought a couple bottle of Jever and I'm sure I'm missing some.
Needless to say it was quite a week and many beer we drank and to be honest I wouldn't change any of it.

Friday came and it was sad seeing that my parents would be leaving on early Saturday morning but they got to see their granddaughter for the first time and it was all smiles. That afternoon we brought Lydia shopping and walked into town for some last minute gift shopping. So one last trip to visit The North Bar which was enjoyable to say the least. It was Oktoberfest so we indulged a little bit on the wares they had on tap first up was a half or Sierra Nevada Oktoberfest which just wasn't my cup of tea I think I'm getting tired of all the hoopbla about Sierra Nevada because in the states they are just known as that fail safe if they have no other beer. Oktoberfest for me was quite boring and uninspiring so I needed to try a couple of more before we left. I tried the Paulander Oktoberfest it was quite pale but an easy drink and I bought my Mom a Paulander Salvator which she seemed to enjoy because for the first time in a week she finished her pint off faster than my Dad and I. I bought my father yet another pint of Black Band Porter by Kirkstall and like he said you can never have to much of a good thing. So we sat and sipped or gulped in my Mom's case and again watched the world go by wishing we had more time with each other but I wanted to show my dad one last good beer. My mom opted for some sort of cider that I didn't catch the name of but my dad and me opted for a bottle of aged Orval seeing that this was my first Orval I wanted to make it a good one. We once again got a great pour from Jim and got the sediment in a shot glass and put it to the side. After drinking half of the beer we dumped the shot into the glass and you can instantly tell the difference I prefer the sediment in the beer rather than out of the beer personal taste and thats the best thing about beer drinking everything is up to your personal taste. We said our thank yous to Matt and Jim at North and decided it was time to go home but we did have a quick stop off into Gerry's and checked out their beery offers and bought some bottle for one last back garden cigar. We picked up Adnams Broadside,Wadworth Swordfish, and Brewdog Trashy Blonde and 77 lager. So this was the end to our week and the end to a great vacation. I really hope you all enjoyed following me on my beer journey with the parents and hopefully I will see you in the pub.

The Final List. Some may be duplicates
Kirkstall 3 swords
Kirkstall Black Band Porter
Kirkstall Pale Ale
Brewdog Hardcore IPA
Brewdog 5 am saint
Brewdog Punk IPA
Brewdog Dark Tokyo Horizon
Brewdog Avery/Brown/Dredge
Brewdog Trashy Blonde
Brewdog 77 Lager
Magic Rock High Wire
Magic Rock Curious
Kernal Export Stout
Kernal Brown Stout
Temptest Brave New World
Beer Here Dark Hops
Stone Russian Imperial Stout
Gadds/revelations Cat Double IPA
Orkney Oyster Stout
Darkstar Espresso Stout
York Centurions Ghost
Dark Star Hophead
Schinder Weisse Tap 5
Paulander Salvador
Orval 1 year
Duvel
Ridgeside Single Hop
Copper Dragon Challenger
Hobgoblin
Guinness Foreign Extra Stout
St Petersburg Honey Porter
Brooklyn Lager
Leeds Brewery Pale
Leeds Brewery Best
Black Sheep Riggwelter
Jever
Adnams Broadside
Batemans XXXB
Batemans Old Perculiar
Wadworth Swordfish
Old Tom Old ale
Red Willow Smokeless
Red Willow Ageless
Red Willow Fathomless
Odell St Lupin

And again as I said above I'm sure that I'm missing out on some but when you drink that many in a week you might lose one or two.

A very intesting beery week with my parents. Part 2!

So Sunday started with a bang with it being the day we celebrated the one year mark of the birth of my daughter and her christening. We had loads of people show up and I cant really afford to supply everyone with craft beer so I bought one of the only over produced lager I could stomach and that was 1664 while a certain beer blogger brought some San Miguel. This was a day I wasn't looking to be a beery snob I was just there to enjoy family and friends and to celebrate the day my life changed for the better.

 That was until Mr Dean showed up with a plastic bag full of Beer Ritz gold. I didn't want to steal any of his beer but there was a simple but yet fantastic looking box in there so I got curious and pulled it out.  It was a nice black box with three different breweries on it and a bunch of not so positive reviews, the bottle in question was Black Tokyo Horizon by the lovely guys from Brewdog, Mikkeller, and Nøgne Ø.
Now I like most of you reading this was going to somehow someway get my hands on this beer just to give it a go and see what these 3 brewhouses could do with a little collaboration.  The reviews as I said above have not been great but I personally and the 3 guys sharing the bottle seemed to agree it could be due to the fact that 4 of us shared the bottle and only had about 2 and a half mouthfuls a piece but I personally enjoyed it. Black Tokyo Horizon seemed to be just Tokyo on steroids and I personally love Tokyo I haven't had the pleasure of trying the other 2 brews that inspired this one but the couple of mouthfuls I had I really enjoyed, it made me think of food like a good steak marinated over night and grilled to a perfect medium rare with a baked potato and a bottle of Punk.  After all that goodness was done and with the party drawing to a close  everyone was gone and we cleaned up. Thank you to Dean from Foleys and Leigh from LeighGoodStuff for coming and celebrating that perfect rainy English day with us.

Off we went back home and off to the local shop to pick up some more beer which was a challenge, what could I possibly pick up from the local shop that would show my Dad what England had to offer so I picked up some classics. We picked up some Theakstons Old Peculiar, Triple XB Batemans, some Abbot Ale and 3 or 4 bottles of Guinness but not the black oil as you would think I could find in the local shop but some Foreign Extra Guinness and at a bargain as well £1.55. Sadly after we got back to the house after an exciting day we all crashed after our first Guinness and saved the rest for some other day.


Monday morning came and what else are you going to do on your holiday but open a beer at 11:40 in the morning. My dad enjoyed his Abbot Ale while I took it slow and had a bottle of Darkstar Expresso and we sat in the back garden enjoying the sunshine and planned our day. We knew we had to get some meat from my wife's requested BBQ on Tuesday so we made the plans to bring the family into the market and we to Mr Meats and picked up 3 racks of ribs and a Boston Butt which is the front shoulder if the pig. Picked all that up for a reasonable 40 pounds and went for a lunch at nando's and we all made fun of the beer selection and went home.

Monday evening was another kettle of fish indeed while we started with a couple of pints of Ridgeside Pale at The Hop where I saw a strange thing an extra cold cask of Yorkshire Blonde more on that another time and a couple of pints of Black Sheep Riggwelter at a unnamed bar because my experience there was awful. A short walk later we went to a pub Ive heard of but never been to hidden under the high rises just passed the dark arches The Grove Inn. We sat in one of the back rooms and enjoyed a couple of pints of Kirkstall's Black Band Porter talked some trash about American Football and my father and I both agreed we very much enjoyed this pub and the feel of it.

Off to The Adelphi after that to end our night where again we enjoyed some fine beers and some not so fine ales. Two pints of Brooklyn Lager that were indeed quite tasty but didn't sit right for whatever reason but hell they had a beer garden of sorts and we were allowed to smoke cigars and talk a little more trash about anything and everything in particular. We ended the night with a couple of pints of Leeds Best and some unnamed Lager that wont be sad in this blog post.  So that's Sunday and Monday Tuesday didn't hold to much because of the massive hangover but Wednesday was another story and will be told on another day. Here is a hint for whats coming...................