Twelve beers of Christmas: #2

I've been at a wedding this afternoon. Free champers and wine tempered the presence of Mansfield Smooth on the bar. To be honest, spending three hours previous imbibing a gutfull of Thornbridge Jaipur at the Old Poets Corner, Ashover, helped tremendously. But now I'm back, from outer space, and I want to be lost in hops. Ladeez and gintelmin, I give you - Struise Mikkeller.



OOOOOHHH MIIIII GODDDDDD. My tabs are laughing so much they have fallen off and wandered into a crap Sony advert. Frankly, I've had this beer next to me for ten minutes and I don't want to dare taste it. The aroma is just spellbinding. Remember as a kid how you'd drag your almost-skateboarding scrapy knees down to the ice cream van? Imagine if they'd been piping out huge fecking whirls of vanilla and HOPS HOPS HOPS into a tight malt pipe.


A sip gives a velvet feel soon perverted into a hop shag. If Heston Blumenthal brewed beer, here's where he'd end up. Cream - HOP - lemon - HOP - baked vanilla - HOP - leaking yeast - HOP - dwarves taking turns to do handstands - HOP. (and before you start- yes, that is a bottle of Thornbridge Bracia in the background. It's what I have knocking around the kitchen on a regular basis. Because I'm a beer cnut. Get over it)

Sense out of me? You may as well go shag a pillow. This is a field of hops ploughed thoroughly with an earthy mien. I want to die now and wake up in eternity, face down in a bucket of this stuff. It's a Terminator of beers; never stops, doesn't understand the concept. I have a thumbful of this beer left and the only thing that's stopping me throwing myself out of the window for the lack of more of it is that I live in a bungalow.
I have to leave now. I have an appointment to satiate my ravaged taste buds. Except that I've just messed my pants in excitement and drank the exquisite dregs in one.

Bugger.

I now have to go find a beer that's OK enough to see me through clear until midnight. Thornbridge something will suffice. In the meantime, anyone who hasn't discovered the sheer bliss that is Hem, do try to keep up. Some of us have to go and drink great beer and go one-two-three-two-two-three.