The Life and Times of Neil

So a quick word tonight on a bottle of what proclaims itself “the strongest Belgian beer”, coming in at a fairly hefty 12%abv.

The beer is bronze in colour with a nose that drifts between malty and slightly floral. On the palatte, the beer is quite sharp with hints of citrus; but there is also a noticable sweetness, particularly after it’s been stood in the glass for a while. The high alcohol content also leads to a certain astringency. The finish is somewhere between bitter and sour and tends to catch in the back of the throat. At first the finish is somewhat muted, but once again becomes more pronounced with exposure to air. Overall, I can’t say I was overly impressed. I felt the beer lacked character; although I would not say the beer was unpleasent.

I should probably note that the bottle I sampled did have a slightly cloudy appearance. I’m not sure if this means the beer is bottle conditioned (the bottle makes no indication if this), it had thorn a chill haze, the glass had some residue in it which reacted with the beer, or it was simply a sub-standard batch that slipped through (the beer was still within its best before date). So my review may not be based on the best specimen. Looks like I need to go back to Belgium for some more!

Given this, my scoring may be a little unfair, but I am going for a 6 out of 10. While a very drinkable beer, I just felt it lacked character and is sold mostly under the claim of being “the strongest Belgian beer”. Of course, if I find a better specimen I may yet change my mind and update thus review and score.

Posted November 14, 2009 Comments(1)

(For those who don’t know the Ministry of Crap Design, or MoCD for short, comes from the stand-up comedy of Ben Elton from many years ago. We all experience it many times through life, I have a blog, the rest is history; except Ben is a lot funnier than me!)

OK, so I’m sat in what is starting to feel like my 3rd home: Amsterdam’s Schipol airport. Been here 90 mins so far thanks to a very early arrival and still have 2 hours until my connecting flight. So armed with an iPod with the Wordbook app but no wi-fi (3 Euros for 15 minutes?!? Schipol is a real rip-off these days from food to duty free to Internet prices!) the mind starts to wander. And as usual one of my moments of inspiration(?) came while sat on the bog (please tell me it’s not just who gets that!) and suffering at the hands of the autoflusher!

The idea is simple. No-one likes going into the cubicle to see the remains of what the person to go in there before you has just done. Some places are worse than others (Eaga men… You know who you are you filthy beasts!) so the autoflusher is a panel mounted on the wall behind you which somehow detects when you leave and then flushes away you doings, saving the next person in the horror of seeing what you left before they have chance to flush it away themselves. All sounds very healthy and hygienic!

However… Experience show that they don’t always work as intended. It seems the slightest movement is enough to set them off, even if it’s just slightly to one side to reach to loo roll dispenser. I swear today I only had to breathe at one point and it tried to flush me away! Now I have 2 issues with this. Firstly, we are all being told to conserve water; yet just think how much water is being wasted by all these false flushes. But more important is that the flush is pretty powerful. This means that every time it flushes with you still sat there, you end up with a wet arse. This requires more loo roll to dry yourself off, which means more moving, leading to another flush leading to a wet arse again, and so on.

Of course, in true MoCD fashion, as soon as I stand up today and move away from the toilet what happens… It fails to flush! Thankfully the earlier false flushes had removed most of what was in there so it wasn’t too bad (of course, there is no manual flush backup).

I should point out that this problem is not unique to Schipol. I think the first time I encountered the autoflusher was at another airport – St Louis International in the USA; and theirs were no better!

Posted November 12, 2009 Comments(0)