Review Posts

St Austell Big Job

Earlier this year, I was due to be heading down to Cornwall to join St Austell for their Celtic Beer Festival. Sadly, the weather disagreed with my plans. It's clearly Health & Safety gone mad, but for some reason First Great Western have this ridiculous policy about not running trains on tracks that are suspended ...

Marble Ginger 1888 Stout

Ginger and Stout are two very enticing beer types, so the prospect of having both together is rather exciting. Marble did very well in last years Great Alcoholic Ginger Beer Taste Test so I have high hopes! Here is their 6.5% ABV Ginger 1888 Stout, described as "all the best things about winter in a ...

Leikeim Wintertraum

This is the beer I got as my Secret Santa at the CAMRGB Twissup in London, so thank you very much to some kind soul! This is Leikreim's Wintertraum, which my questionable German translates as "Winter Dream". It's a gloriously clear golden colour in the glass with a lingering, fine bubbled head on it. There's ...

St Peter's The Saints Whisky Beer

I've always had a soft spot for St Peter's, if only for the shape of their bottles. They make some tasty beers too, if you like your beer on the more traditional side of the brewing spectrum. This is their The Saints Whisky Beer, made with a measure of English Whisky from the Saint ...

Whittard Guatemalan Elephant

I was a little surprised to discover that Whittard even did coffee when they recently asked me if I'd like to sample some of their offerings. In my mind, they've always been a tea shop, albeit with the occasional (and, if I'm honest, not particularly exciting) strange flavoured coffee. But no, they have a healthy ...

Milroy's Tweet Tasting

Milroy's was the first proper whisky shop I ever visited. Not long after my whisky tastebuds were given a wakeup call in Aberdeen, I found myself in London and couldn't resist the enticing shop window. A good whisky shop feels a little like a book shop to me. I can happily browse the shelves for ...

Cherizena Turquino Montanes

I came across Cherizena at this year's Abergavenny Food Festival; it's hard to resist a stall laden with heavenly smelling coffee beans, so I ended up coming home with a bagful of things to try. This is their Rare Cuban Turquino Montanes coffee, from their higher priced speciality range. Produced in small quantities, it's described ...

Suntory Single Grain 'Chita'

Suntory have quite a collection of distilleries and one of them, Chita, is dedicated to making grain spirits and whiskies. While much of this goes straight into their blended brands (Hibiki apparently has quite a high level of grain whisky in its makeup), some makes its way into bottles in pure form. This is ...

Taylors Christmas Blend

Christmas seems to be one of those times when just about every producer comes up with special editions. Often this seems to be a quick repackage with holly on the packaging and sleigh bells playing in the background, but sometimes you get something genuinely different. This week's coffee is Taylors Christmas Blend – described ...

Master of Malt 40 Year Old Speyside

This week marks the end of an era – it's the last dram from Master of Malt's brilliant 3cl sample offerings; I've raved about this before, but it really is a fantastic way of getting to try all sorts of whisky (in case anyone was trying to think of what to buy me ...