Review Posts

Bewley's Panama

Bewley's are an Irish company who have been operating for four generations. They started out importing tea, but soon added coffee to their repertoire. Bord Bia have been kind enough to send Pete Drinks some of their range to sample. This is Panama, a strength 4 coffee grown on the slopes of the Baru ...

Espresso Martinis at The Forge & Foundry

I'm not normally a huge fan of cocktails; I'd rather have a simple beer or wine than some of the more 'imaginative' drinks that some bars come up with (beer cocktails, particularly, bemuse me beyond belief). However, when the folks at The Forge & Foundry down in Camden invited Pete Drinks to visit they ...

Meantime Brewery Fresh Beer

In an increasingly crowded London beer scene, breweries are always looking for ways to stand out from the crowd. Meantime's latest salvo is the introduction of their Brewery Fresh beer; beautiful copper tanks installed on the bar tops of (so far) a handful of Young's Pubs close to the brewery. Although widely used in ...

Jameson Irish Whiskey

With the approach of St Patrick's Day on Sunday, it seems appropriate to go for an Irish Whiskey this week! This is the standard Jameson Irish Whisky, albeit in a slightly fancier label than normal. It's pretty widely available in supermarkets everywhere, and very keenly priced at a shade under £20 a bottle. Despite only ...

Taylors Take It Easy

It's fair to say that I'm a bit of a caffeine addict; I know it's not exactly good for me, but as with everything else that isn't good for me I find it hard to resist. It's not helped by the fact that my day job industry (I'm a programmer) is largely fuelled ...

Bruichladdich Twitter Tasting

I've been lucky enough to have taken part in two twitter tastings before, and they have been excellent fun. When The Whisky Wire announced that they were doing one with Bruichladdich, I leapt at the chance to be involved. Bruichladdich is an Islay distillery, but their style is generally less peat-heavy than other distilleries there (although ...

Taylors Rich Italian

I'm used to coffee being sold on the origin of the beans, so I was momentarily confused when I first saw this weeks coffee. Italian coffee? Do they have the climate? This is Taylors Rich Italian, and of course reflects the Italian style of roasting and blending, rather than where the beans were grown ...

Lizard Ales Tour-At-Home

Continuing our round-up of Cornish breweries, we reach Lizard Ales, a brewery which has been based in a nuclear bunker since 2008. It's somehow comforting to know that even after a nuclear war, we'll still have some breweries in production. Since this post was originally published, Lizard Ales (the company) has ceased trading, although oddly ...

Suntory Royal

As memories of Japan fade, this week sees the last of my collection of miniatures I picked up when visiting the Yamazaki distillery last year. This is Suntory Royal, a blended whisky that seems to have a varied past. I've come across mentions of Royal bottlings with age statements ranging from 12 to 60 years, ...

Taylors Fairtrade Organic

While I applaud the principle of both fair trade and organic food production, there's a part of me that worries when those are the only attributes used to describe a product. Taylors are a premium mass-market brand, and they're pretty ethical too – while not everything is under the Fairtrade banner, all their coffee is ...