A beer I brought from Denmark when I wasn’t sure if I’d find any better beer in Denmark.
It’s a good triple. Has a tall head initially, but it dissipated quite quickly. And the taste is smooth and honey-like. Head is light, but quite focused. Better than a lot of Belgian triples I’ve had this year, but not something I’d go looking for in Denmark again.
I’ve heard about coffee getting stale over time. And here I am, returning after 10 days of vacation, and deciding to make a couple of flat whites from the beans I had left in the hopper.
First two shots ran at 3 bar. That’s for a coffee that usually runs at 7-9 bars. Only after purging the coffee, putting the beans from the bag and pulling another shot or two the pressure recovered.
Needless to say, I didn’t feel the need to taste the result of 3-bar coffee.
Lochlea is a distillery that likes to experiment with their cask strength batches. Apparently, Batch 3 is a peated one.
This is Batch 2, which, without me knowing, is sherried. How lucky.
At first sip I was skeptical. But over time, it actually grew on me, and now I consider this whiskey to be good value for money. Oloroso and PX casks at 60% ABV are really brought to life.
As I was visiting Newcastle, we ended up in a gastropub that had Springbank 10 and 15 on the menu. Of course I had to try one of them out, and since the difference between 10 and 15 was just 5GBP, I went for 15 years old. Paid 17GBP for the priviledge.
It’s a nice whiskey, I can’t deny it. It is smooth, a bit sweet, a bit smokey, and leaves a nice warmth in the throat. It just doesn’t worth 200GBP for a bottle. For contrast, Benromach 21 costs 136GBP.
Instead of experimenting with Belgian beers, which mostly failed, I now decided to experiment with British and American beers.
This one is a solid Imperial Stout, at 13% ABV, almost black and without any head. The distinction is the extra warmth from chillies and the smoky aftertaste. Still sweet, though.
“Ghost” is in reference to “ghost chillies” used in the process. Those chillies grow in Bhutia, North India. “Bhut” in the local language means “ghost”, so the name caugth up.
I’ve been using Bosch green drills for at least 7 years. But after the PSB 1800 combidrill started raising smoke on me, I decided it was time for upgrade.
I wanted to try Bosch Professional GSR FC first, but it wasn’t shipping, so I gave GSB a try, as it was available the next day.
First thing is that the battery system is amazing. After the bulky batteries on PSB, this is tiny battery feels seamless. Although I know the more serious combidrills still have the bulkier battery.
And it’s amazing that GSR is even shorter (both in height and length) than the GSB. Such a tiny and cool device.
Now there’s also GSR HX (yes, the namings are very confusing and not helpful at all), which should be even smaller. But I it is just a screwdriver, not a combidrill.
I’m going back to the classics. And what a classic Samichlaus is. It has no gas, all the flavour and energy. What allows it to get to 14% ABV is the double fermentation.
Also, turns out it is brewed only once a year, so I was actually lucky to see it so often.
We take train from Paddington to Reading, and from there to Pangbourne. There’s some family event going there, weather permitting.
We make a short detour to take a look at a pretty little church.
Then we walk along cow pastures.
Stumble upon what other group of middle aged hikers suggests to be a female stag beetle crossing the road.
Kites are flying so low they look huge. Maybe they are huge.
We watch some young cows race down a hill to an unknown but rather desirable target. They can be fast when they want to.
Then by abandoned factory we need to make a small detour around a herd of cows blocking the path, and a longer detour, because part of the path is closed.
Now I remember that Goring is the village with a cafe in the arcade. There are a couple of cafes that look decent, but we decide to travel back to Canary Wharf and have a brunch at a newly opened Brother Marcus.
The experience is better than on Borough Market. Although they still don’t get their poached eggs right.
Two tasters I bought on impulse in York.
Let’s start with Glenfarclas 105. Cask strength sherried whiskies are my favorites. So I was rather looking forward to try it out. But it is one of the worst whiskeys I’ve ever had, especially if we take the cost into account. I imagine that’s what all whiskeys taste like to someone who hates whiskeys. Just like drinking wood polish. Yes, it has taste, but far for pleasant.
How about Glenfarclas 15, though? Surely it must be smoother at 46% ABV and aged for longer? It does have a nicer warmth to it, sure. But it still tastes like wood polish, just a bit more dilluted.
I don’t think this has anything to do with being a 5cl taster either, as taster of Bunnahabhain 12 was fantastic, and so was Glen Scotia 15.
I know Glenfarclas has its own fans. But I’m surely won’t be one of them.
For a 8% beer, it is quite flavourful, and doesn’t leave you with a heavy feeling. But yet again, it’s not distinct enough to justify buying it again.
Another jump in difficulty, now with 19 tiny pieces to assemble. If with Deathmaster I still could do without putty, Krittok made me order a bottle, as those pieces of cloak weren’t fitting as well as I wanted them to. Later I noticed that it happens even on the official art.
Putty did wonders, though, filling even the nastiest cracks. And after two layers of base paint and some work with dry brush, I think you really need to know what to look for.
In terms of actual painting, I missed the mark a little.
For the eyes, I should have thinned the Baal Red more. I did better job in the past.
I also tried to do with less shading. Still some Nuln Oil on the skin, I don’t see a way around that yet, and on metallics. But all contrast painted areas are left mostly unshaded for brighter colours.
The lifecycle of a whiskey: I buy a few 5cl tasters that sound interesting to me. Out of them, I usually pick something I like and buy a bottle. Alongside that bottle, I buy a couple more tasters I haven’t tried yet. The cycle repeats.
Alongside Tamdhu 15 I got myself a taster of Glen Scotia 15, which honestly one of the most generic whiskey names I could have imagined.
For a American Oak (aka bourbon) whiskey, it is surprisingly sweet, to the point I would have believed it’s sherry, if not for the spiciness. It has amazing amount of warmth in the throat for 46% ABV as well. The subtitle says “Rich and smooth”. Not the smoothest for sure, but very rich indeed. At this point in my life, I would probably stick with sherried whiskies, but a great find nevertheless.
I remember cachier in California laughing at me, asking if I bought a single can, albeit 500ml, for a price of six-pack by mistake. But I couple of months later I must say it was worth every of the 15$ I spent on it. This is the best beer I had since unobtainable Schorschbrau Schorschbock I brought from Switzerland.
It has almost no “head”. The smell is quite dominant, like a cold espresso. And the taste is sweet, and so smooth. And it leaves you with the warmth both in the throat and belly like the best of whiskies, and with the tranquility like the best of weed. Certainly something to bring from California next time.
Brasserie Lefebvre are the ones making Barbar, the “honey beer” and Blanche de Bruxelles, the “pissing boy beer”. This one is rather new, from 2023, and promises to feature 5 different types of hops.
The head is tall, two or three fingers, much taller that I prefer. For me the less gas, the better. And the color is much lighter that I’d expect, almost lemony and quite opaque. All in all, it looks more like a hazy tripple IPA than a Belgian beer. And considering the fact that IPAs are always heavy on hops, maybe it makes sense.
I know that I was mostly disappointed by Belgian beers in the past couple of months. And in terms of hops, I didn’t feel much difference. Not too bitter, but also not too complex. But in terms of taste, it is excellent. If you’d tell me it was 10% ABV, I’d believe it. It is rich, and it is smooth, and it provides nice sleepiness for at least a couple of hours. A nice surprise.
Finally got to opening it. And it is very impressive. The entire packaging is incredibly smooth and well thought. How the two hefty manuals represent front and read half of the car, how they seamlessly blend into the lid, how flaps of the three boxes with pieces overlap to show a photo of a real P1, with a photo of the Lego model 1:1 underneath.
Putting a single bag took me an hour, but I also didn’t rush. This is the most complex Lego set for me for sure. There are parts that have to be left loosely hanging until later, and the way everythinng is held together is not so much by clicking it, but with using pins.
https://www.bricklink.com/catalogList.asp?catType=P&catString=139
Roe is probably one of my favorite restaurants in London right now. And its chefs are doing some amazing educative videos as well.
This one was about different breeds of meat cows:
The Wagyu beef that is sold in the UK is Hereford’s impregnated with embryos from Japan. Each embryo costs 3K GBP and has 33% success rate.
Belgian Blue cow has a genetic mutation that means they continue to develop muscles. The calf is so big they can’t pass through the birth canal, and thus expensive to grow.
Limousine is very economical, in terms of how fast it grows. It’s not that tasty.
Gulden Draak is one of my favorite beers. Brewmaster is basically Gulden Draak Classic, but barrel aged. Lighter in color than the Classic. Some beers smooth away the alcohol. Not this one, here you just feel it. Wonderful beer, that reminds me why I fell in love with Belgian beers in the first place. The only problem is that I’m not sure I’d take it over Classic.
This is the first miniature I’m painting outside of the starter set.
The single miniatures come without instructions, and I even didn’t find a QR code to open them online. So I had to kind of guess how to put it together. And with those miniatures, there’s much more freedom, as you have to glue the pieces instead of just joining them.
Drybrushing worked wonders on that miniature. Maybe because it’s twice as big as the Skaven from starter set. But two layers of base black paint, and then a single layer of grey and white drybrush (Dawnstone, Longbeard Grey, Wrack White) brougth a gradient I wouldn’t ever manage otherwise.
Also, because the miniature is more complex, I could try more contrast paints. Some of them work wonders, some are still quite shitty: Dreadful Visage and Apothecary White are two paints I wouldn’t buy ever again, they are too translucent to be useful.
Despite having 45 paints, I still ran out of them 😆
There are a few reasons for that. First, a lot of my paints are base/layer paints, and not contrast. And this miniature has much more segments than the smaller ones.
As I’m going through my box of Belgian beers, I must say I’m mostly unimpressed. Maybe I’ve changed. Maybe not going with the “mainstream” is a mistake, and those are mainstream for a reason.
Brigand comes from Van Honsebrouck Brewery, best known for Kasteel.
I rememeber liking Brigand, when it still had a distinct bottle.
For some reason, now they have just a generic label that makes you wonder why it’s even called “brigand” in the first place. It’s smooth and nice, and left me more energised than sleepy. But yet again, not something I would buy again.
The most interesting bit I didn’t know about is that casks used to make sherry can’t be actually used to make whisky, because they are worn down. Instead, sherry producers specifically season casks for whiskey producers. Basically, they keep sherry in them for 2 years, sell them to whiskey distilleries, then make vinegar our of the sherry.