Black Pearl Classic Porter
Brewed by Distelhäuser Brauerei
Style: Porter
Distelhausen, Tauberbischofsheim, Germany
The Black Pearl Classic Porter is produced by the Distelhäuser brewery in Tauberbischofsheim, a place I am not even sure is real! According to my good friend Google, it is a southern German town, and a small town at that, in the north-east of Baden-Württemberg on the river Tauber with a population of about 12,700.
The brewery was founded in 1811 as Brewery Womann, but since 1876 it has been owned by the Bauer family.
At the moment, 21 different beer specialties are being produced in Distelhausen according to the old traditional brewing methods of the region and, of course, in accordance with the German purity law (Reinheitsgebot) of 1516.
The Distelhäuser Brewery is one of the most successful breweries in Germany, measured by the number of awards for its products. Its Pils, Wheat Beer, Hefe-Weizen, Landbier, its export, are all amongst a bevy of beers that have won Gold, silver or bronze in the World Beer Cup. Too many to list.
Review: 0,33l Bottle of Black Pearl Classic Porter: ABV: 6.6% vol
To note: the Black Pearl Classic Porter hasn’t won anything in the World Beer Cup!!
Comes in a nice bottle with a lovely looking logo, black writing on a nice yellow background.
The appearance was one of a lovely frothy tan head, as expected a very dark black beer with hints of purple.
The head does die a death and eventually goes flat near the end.
Flat. Looks all a bit shitty really.
Has a really lovely porter smell, nice. Really good smell, not faint but striking of roasted malts, coffee, dark chocolate, light caramel.
On the taste side of things, found it very hoppy!!
Bit dry in the mouth.
Not much to taste, just the hops in the end.
All in the back end, hoppy, no coffee, no toffee, very disappointing, this is meant to be a porter after all. Could smell them on the nose but they vanished when it came to the taste!
Relatively smooth with the roasted malts, but it is a porter and you expect some of the porter tastes and characteristics, or at least I couldn’t detect them.
Disappointing.
Tyskie is a Polish beer, coming from the the town of Tychy in Upper Silesia, in the south east of the country. The beer has won numerous international awards and is the number one beer brand in Poland, and due to the mass exodus of the natives living and working all over Europe, the beer is pretty much available to buy anywhere there is a large population of Poles. 
Nice big brown looking bottle that is a 500 ml bottle, and not the usual 300ml sized one can get, which is all good, that bit more to drink! Like the striking label, which apparently depicts the royal crown of Polish King, John III Sobieski, born in 1629, the same year the brewery was founded.
Bit of carbonation. Not a bad looking beer. 
Duvel Moortgat Brewery (Brouwerij Duvel Moortgat) is a Flemish family-controlled brewery founded in 1871 by Jan-Leonard Moortgat.
Like the cutesy small stubby brown bottle, with the well known Duvel brand. Ideally to be drank in a tulip glass as all good Belgian ales should be, but I am not a connoisseur just a regular beer dude so an ordinary beer glass will just have to do. Sorry!
A very strong intense smell, really powerful stuff on the nose….which is too be welcomed as I usually smell fuck all from my beers, lol!
A Bock is a darkish, malty, lightly hopped ale first brewed in the 14th century by German brewers in the town of Einbeck. It got its name “ein Bock,” meaning “Billy Goat” in German as people mispronounced the town of Einbeck, and for that reason you will often see goats on the beer labels of bocks. It is usually a strong lager from 6% to as high as 12% ABV., sweet, and lightly hopped. The beer should be clear, and colour can range from light copper to brown, with a plentiful off-white head. The aroma should be malty and toasty, possibly with hints of alcohol, but no detectable hops or fruitiness.The mouthfeel is smooth, with low to moderate carbonation and no astringency. The taste is rich and toasty, sometimes with a bit of caramel. Again, hop presence is low to undetectable, providing just enough bitterness so that the aftertaste is muted.
As for this beer, the Eichbaum Brewery was founded way, way back in 1674 by Jean de Chaine from Southern Belgium, originally as a small brewpub, and while the exact location changed, its home and heart has always been in the city of Mannheim, a southern German city touching the Rhine. The name Eichbaum came from the German translation of his family name.
A Maibock, also known as helles bock or heller bock, is a lightly coloured beer, less malty and drier in the finish to a regular bock, and has a spicy or peppery taste coming from the hops. Colour can range from deep gold to light amber with a large, creamy, persistent white head, and moderate to moderately high carbonation, while alcohol content ranges from 6.3% to 7.4% by volume. The flavour is typically less malty than a traditional bock, and may be drier, hoppier, and more bitter, but still with a relatively low hop flavour, with a mild spicy or peppery quality from the hops, increased carbonation and alcohol content. 
Get a lot in the bottle though.
Estrella Galicia 
In the year of 1906 a Mr. José María Rivera Corral, who had just returned from his trip to Mexico and full of enthusiasm and bright ideas, decided to start his own brewery in the city of La Coruña, in the North West of Spain and called it the “La Estrella de Galicia” factory whose main products would be beers and soft drinks.
Came in a nicely looking brown bottle with the Estrella Galicia logo standing out. 
Smooth and crisp, very smooth.
The Rügen Island Brewery is a Craft Beer Brewery in Rambin on the island of Ruegen, the biggest island of Germany (in itself not that big, only 926.4 km² big). Surrounded on most sides by the Baltic sea, the area is characterized by diverse shore line landscapes with many lagoons, beaches and and white chalk cliffs. The brewery is unique in that it is smack bang in the middle of nowhere, at one with nature right in the heart of the island. But it is a new tourist attraction to this wild area, as it offers visitors a guided tour of its magnificent modern brewery, has a beer garden for beer tasting, and store to buy their extensive collection. 
Bottle comes in a very nice well wrapped light brown paper with a nice picture of an eagle on it. caught the eye and that’s why I bought it as it looks well cool. Also explains on the package how the beer won gold in the London 2016 World Beer Award for the category of “beste deutsche brauereri” (Best German Brewery)
Didn’t get much of a smell, pretty faint but was yeast, fruits and coriander.
You are looking at the mirror and you dont like what you see? You need to lose the beer belly. Cut down on the food? But I love my steaks! Now you could give up beer, but that would be foolish. Why not try to join a gym? Nah, too expensive and full of posers. Play some five a side? Yes, but I dont want to completely kill myself, and I dont have the silky skills I once had which is so demoralizing. So there is nothing for it but to try a bit of jogging/running.
Warm-Up!
As you get older I find it takes a good while for the body to warm up as you set out on your run. I am like an old car that starts its journey, spluttering and creaking, but what I find funny is that after about 5 or 6 minutes the body suddenly goes into autopilot and then I am completely fine. I can run for an hour after that without too much complication, as long as it is a steady pace. But apparently there is some science to this, as it takes six to 10 minutes and one degree in body temperature to push all the blood to the working muscles. Once that happens you will experience a light warm sweat and then the pace sets itself to autopilot. So the thing is wait at least ten minutes before you decide to think “fuck this shit, I’m off to the pub!”, keep with it and low and behold you will get that steady run you set out to achieve from the beginning.
So what does a hangover do to your body and what affects would it have on your morning run/jog or in my case slow walk and crawl (up that “Cunt of a mountain!”).
Also try and get some grub inside you, might hold some of the beer together that’s sloshing round your stomach. Normally an Irish/British style breakfast would do just the business in a situation like this, but remember you also have to shit that out…….so something small but useful…..an omelette is good as eggs are excellent for refueling. Also a smoothie with some bananas should be efficient enough.
Of course it does depend on how drunk you are. If you are pretty legless I dont think running will be good for you, as you might just run straight into a ditch or a road sign and end up doing some damage to yourself and your ego.
Zug, in the canton of Zug, central Switzerland, is a very beautiful town with its amazing views of the lake, lake Zug that is!
So in any case, I was there for the race, the The Zugerberg Classic, a race that takes place every year, usually sometime at the start of May, for runners and mountain bikers from the old city of Zug right upto the top of a small mountain! The running distance is six kilometers (6.2 km to be exact) with a height difference of 540 m and the mountain biker for a distance of 25 km with an altitude of 1000 m. The race is open to clubs, children and teenagers, men and women, right up to old folks who are on their last legs.
Didn’t know what to expect really, as it was my first race in years and with the hangover my mind wasn’t straight. But start we did, near the end mind, and after about 500 metres I was beginning to notice that this seems to be a bit hilly!!! Told my running mate to go and run his own race as I didn’t want to drag him down to my level, and off he went in the distance. There was no let up in the height, up and up it went, so after the first 1K decided to speed walk it, thinking I could run any flat bits in between. Thing was there were no flats bits not until the last 1K, so I basically walked most of it. Children past me by, old people with walking sticks smiling and waving out walking me, one guy with a plastic leg fucking passed me, then a Japanese lady who had a trainer caught me……..Jesus I looked around and there was only me and this old fella with his shorts pulled right up his arse, fuck……but I beat him in the last straight, but it was close! I wasn’t going to come last. I later found out that there were a few Indians (not the native kind), about 5 or 6 who also walked it and were even slower than me…….jesus, they must have had a dodgy curry the night before! Anyway I did it and it took me a while to recover from it. My time was a very unimpressive 56.10 (5 people behind me!) 
Also I had the advantage of actually knowing the course, or at least having an idea of how painful it was, so I knew there was a killer in the middle and that near the end there was a few high hills to get over, but also that the last 1K was flattish and down, or at least not up! Funnily enough I wasn’t as fast as I expected on the last 1k, I had really nothing to give, everything was gone in the engine. 
So I hung around eagerly awaiting the results, very curious to know how much I had knocked off my previous time. I came in at 49.31, bettering my PB by about 6 and a half minutes which was ok I guess, and this time a good amount of slow bastards behind me, about 24. Suckers!!!
The SCC (Sociedade Central de Cervejas) produce a wide range of beers, mainly pale lagers, but they also produce a dark Munich called Sagres Preta, which has won many international awards, a Sagres Bohemia an auburn beer with an abv of 6.2%, and a Sagres Radler. Its not only beer too, they also produce soft drinks and bottled water. 
On appearance it had a dark golden colour, with a nice big sized white head that maintained very well. Some lacing. Some carbonation, fizzing away 
Starting small, they brewed very tiny batches, filled bottles by hand and sold their beers at local markets and out of the back of their beat up old Skoda pickup.
It was also along this time that they had a running battle with a German brewery, Schorschbräu, to see who could come up with the strongest beer in the world. Brewdog produced Sink the Bismark ,a beer with 41% alcohol to take the crown of the worlds strongest beer, from Schorschbräu, who had produced a 40% ABV version of their Schorschbock.
Today Brewdog is an internationally recognized beer brand, while also winning a tonne of awards and prizes for their beers. They produce roughly over 65 different beers shipping to over 55 countries worldwide,producing bottled and canned beers in a variety of styles such as ale, stout, India pale ale (IPA) and lager, some of which are also available in keg containers.
Was in there BrewDog bar in Manchester, and although the draught beer was good, the place was a kip. Fuck me, it was all over the place, was like an office, people talking and acting like dickheads, with angry staff and modern decor that didn’t really work. You know its a shit bar when you see people playing fucking snakes and ladders, that’s giving up for fucks sake! But let me put my disclaimer out there, I’m not hip enough for these kind of places.
Comes in a typical BrewDog design. The label decked out in a strong red, with usual style of distinctive lettering and logo. I do like their labels and bottle layout, its eye catching and colourful. 
Very typical of the craft beer style beers, overloaded with hops. Also got a lot of the sweet malts. 
A beer from Ethiopia??? Yeah you bet ya I’d like to try that. Apparently Ethiopia has a thriving beer industry. Well you learn something new everyday, eh!?
The beer has an interesting cover on its bottle. We get to see a medieval type knight slaying a dragon. Well of course that knight is St George, the geezer that slayed that big old dragon back in the day and I think might also have something to do with the Knights Templar (See my article on 
Aroma is faint but I got a sweet malty smell and some barely, bit tinty and lagery as well.