Since the gin queen is rapidly pushing up the numbers sampled (nom de plume Jennifer Juniper maybe? Donovan 1968 ) I thought I would start my own list of new beers.
So this week up in Brora I sampled Goose IPA ( thought they preferred lager, Ed ) and in Pitlochry on the way home, tried, from their own micro brewery at Moulin Inn, the light at 3.7% abv.
This week in our favourite watering hole the Cafe Royal, a pint of Dark Island from Orkney followed by a new one to me called The Bridge to Nowhere. I had to try that. Great name for a beer by the way! Unfortunately I am generally not that impressed by the beers from my home town brewery. I would imagine that about 90% of punters ( pinters? Ed ) will not know that there is actually a “bridge to nowhere” and it is in fact only about 500 metres from the actual brewery! ( remind me to change that distance back to yards soon). [ he promised me he wouldn’t go there this blog but sometimes folks let you down, Ed )
Two breweries virtually at opposite ends of the country although strangely, or unusually as some may say, I wasn’t spaced out when I left.
Why Belhaven brewery has never been able to come up with a decent lager I’ve never quite been able to figure out.
“Seahorse” if memory serves correct was one. The boys in the rugby club used to call it Crazy Horse – but I guess you certainly get into that area whenever excess alcohol is consumed.
Anyway I have landed up in Tiles which is on a corner of St Andrews square and Andy Murray is on Sky Sports, sound off, competing in Vienna, a city I loved. Fine by me. The ball girls and boys have naff wee nets in a racket shaped frame to gather the balls – never seen those before. Anything to make life easier. Bin coordination.
The bar has a central serving area and was opened following refurbishment in 1993. Formerly the site of the Prudential Insurance Company the architects Alfred Waterhouse and Son were also responsible for Manchester Town Hall and London’s Natural History Museum.
I only knew about this pub because I bought a book on Edinburgh pubs! Hard to describe the interior. Tiles from floor to ceiling so maybe a clue to it’s name there Dr Watson? Think I’ll let the pictures do the talking on that.
I’ve got two adults between me and the TV and they are both playing with their mobiles. Not just a generational thing then.
Pints of Caesar Augustus and then a Czech Republic Krošovice, which is a new one for me. A nice sharp Pilsner.
Back there after the war they were trying to come up with a new identity and decided to call their new country Czechnia, which sounds like a sneeze that has gone wrong, but seems like the proles prefer the simpler Czech Republic. Whatever, like other sophisticated countries they know how to save some of their best grains for beer rather than bread.
Making the news in UK is decision to build another runway at Heathrow. The challenges to this going ahead are going to cost millions far less the final cost if it were to go ahead. I’m guessing that this is a grandstanding decision by the government to distract from that other thing that might be quite important for our future.
In any event they are not going to stand a Tory candidate against Zac ( ?) Goldsmith who resigned over that decision and whose constituency is going to be massively affected . He is going to stand as an independent. Not prepared to face up to the kicking that they would have surely got. Cowardly.
Ok Andy has just lost the second set but doing good in the third. What then happens is something very British or Scottish if you will. The tennis is suddenly ditched and we have TV sound contaminating the whole bar. Yes you’ve guessed it. Football.
Edinburgh has become littered with posters which say “we have a vision for the future but you are not part of it”
Anger and a terrible sadness in about equal measure.
On that high note time to go.
tam bruce 
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