Tuesday, December 10, 2013

Wednesday, January 25, 2012

Happy Goblin Pale Ale

I found this nice drop while I was on holidays in the Blue Mountains (Katoomba wines, top of the hill, main street of Katoomba). My girlfriend actually pointed it out, as she liked the logo, but the handwritten label details told me that this could well make for interesting drinking.


As the label says, this is a hand-crafted, unfiltered and unpasteurised beer, and it is made in a small-scale brewery in Mt Kuringai, north of Sydney (see website here). I would describe this as the perfect gingerbread beer (having guessed it would be, I picked myself up a gingerbread man to have along with it ;) ). It is malty, but its a sweet malt, and the yeast in the beer gives it a really nice bready smell. It goes down well, there's no strong aftertaste, and the hops aren't over bearing or bitter. It looks great in a glass too, nice and bubbly without a massive head, and a beautiful brassy colour. Very hazy too, which is nice, it doesn't sediment as much as Coopers, for example.

This could easily be my favourite 'new find' beer for 2012, and I'm heading off to the Australian at the Rocks tomorrow to give it another belt.

If you ever come across this beer, buy it, its fantastic. Easily a 9 or even 9.5/10 from me.

Monday, November 17, 2008

Lunch at the Bistro...

Moncur that is. This isn't just any pub bistro, it has two chef's hats in the SMH good food guide, so you could easily consider it one of Sydney's best restaurants. Part 1 of a 2 part splurge to celebrate the looming end of a very hard year.

It was a fantastic lunch, worth every dollar. We ended up sharing the Prime Fillet Steak with Bernaise sauce and the grilled atlantic salmon, with a plate swap mid-meal. Both were fantastically good, and so was their bread, which I could have eaten 3 plates of it was so nice. $106 all up, not cheap, but you really do get what you pay for here. We then went for a wander in Paddo and found a place called the Buzy Bakehouse. Doesn't look much from the outside, but its great inside, nice smell of baking bread, heaps of nice things to eat, they do pizza too, so I reckon we might head out there again some day.

Otherwise a not too special weekend, had dinner at the prawn cracker place in Surry Hills, which closed and reopened. I think they're going on the cheap now trying to survive, which is a shame and a big mistake, but lets see. Restaurants come and go...

Marked exams all weekend otherwise, yeah, a necessary evil.