Review Posts

Waitrose Sumatra Mandheling Beans

I originally bought these beans for a coffee stout I was making; to be honest they were a fairly random choice as I wanted whole beans and it didn't seem worth splashing out on some high end beans just to go into some beer. The reason I needed beans was simply that I ...

Taylors Cafe Brasilia

I'm slowly realising what a monumental can of worms I've opened for myself, as my "to taste" coffee cupboard is starting to look a little like my equivalent beer and whisky cupboards. Happily, this means I'm drinking a whole lot more tasty coffee than before, when I would often (don't tell anyone) just default ...

Anchor Brewing Old Foghorn

Anchor Brewing are one of the better known US brewers; I've known of their Anchor Steam Beer for almost as long as I've known beer, which is a worryingly long time. Today, I'm exploring two of their beers. Only one of them is a Monster, so let's start with that one! Old Foghorn is a ...

Yamazaki Whisky Library

The Yamazaki Distillery tour is an interesting but fairly standard walk around the distillery. First timers learn more about the process; the rest of us peer more closely and scope out the similarities and differences between Yamazaki and the distilleries we've seen before. What is most exciting to whisky lovers is the onsite bar in ...

Taylors Lazy Sunday

Although I've tried a lot of different coffees, especially courtesy of the work coffee club, the one thing they generally have in common is that they're at the stronger end of the scale. When the nice folk at Taylors recently sent me some samples, they included some coffees from the 'medium roast' end of ...

Yamazaki Distillery Tour

Yamazaki is one of Suntory's two distilleries in Japan and is described as "the birthplace of Japanese whisky". It was impossible to resist a visit when we were staying a few nights in Kyoto, just a short train ride away. As you can see, it's quite easy to get to by train! It's ...

Ca Phe ZgoZ

This week sees a coffee that you won't easily find on the supermarket shelf but it's well worth hunting it down. A Vietnamese coffee from Ca Phe VN; I went directly to their stall in Broadway Market, but they have an online shop as well. This is their house brand, ZgoZ – or NgoN, ...

Hibiki 21 Year Old

Hibiki is Suntory's blended whisky brand. Somehow, the Japanese whisky industry seems to have avoided being totally sucked in by the "single malt" obsession of Scotch and produces blended whiskies that are every bit as high quality (and expensive!) as their single malt brothers. Here, we have the Hibiki 21 Year Old, which has ...

Vending Machine Coffee With A Difference

It's fairly well known that Japan loves it's vending machines, but you don't really appreciate how ubiquitous they are until you go there. It's said that in London you're never more than ten feet from a rat – well in Japan, the same is true of the vending machine. Of course, being Japan it's ...

Rare Old Super Nikka ... in a can

In Japan, it seems as though everything is available from a vending machine. In this case, whisky - Nikka's Rare Old Super blend, with water added for you. To bring the volume up to 250ml, the watering has been fairy heavy handed which means that the aroma is barely detectable. There's a hint ...