As a spin-off of What's that burning?/Now Spinning/This week I've been mostly reading ..., and also the extended (and completely off-topic) conversations about American beer, battery acid, and the proliferation of orange juice varieties from whichever thread that was ....


Now sipping:

Unibroue, "Terrible"  (Chambly, Quebec, Canada)

It is not.  It is fantastic.  By the makers of the also fantastic "La fin du monde" and "Maudite."  Deep, rich, and quite fruity, nearly pitch black.  A fantastic Abbey style ale in the Belgian tradition.

http://www.unibroue.com/products/terrible.cfm

Alors tu dis que c'est pas terrible, alors là je te comprends pas bien, j'avais plutôt l'impression que tu l'avais aimée, non ? D'ailleurs c'est pas 'Eau maudite' ? Et aussi bien sûr 'Eau bénite' ?

Me, I just had a humble Mühlen Kölsch and I think that'll do me as far as the booze goes for the night.

martle: a couple of shots of Jim Beam bourbon, apres nosh. A little rough, but pretty good - and popular here in the UK, as bourbons generally seem to be, more and more. I only recently discovered that (rather like Champagne from Champagne en France) to be called 'bourbon', it has to come from Kentucky. Thus, Jack Daniels (being a Tennessee whiskey) is not - shock horror! - a bourbon. I'm sure all here are deeply gratified to learn this very useful fact. 

I was just having fun practicing my appallingly lousy French.  Wonder how many mistakes I made in that stupid little two sentence reply.

martle ... my old favorite liquor store in Buffalo had an impressive collection of small batch bourbon (not Knob Creek and Basil Hayden and such, which pretend to be small batch but are actually distilled by Jim Beam).  Really fantastic and quite interesting, w/ loads of variety b/t different distilleries.  If you ever have a chance, you should try some of those.  They're probably a bit pricey in Britain (here, they're surprisingly inexpensive), but worth it.

Ooh, Aaron! Thanks for that. They are indeed pricey here. But as their popularity seems to be increasing, so with luck will their price fall. Here's a current favourite, increasingly available in hip UK bars:



And it's not just the per-unit price in the UK. Go into most US bars and the bartender will pour your shot straight from the bottle into the glass, whilst chatting to someone over his/her shoulder - hence a usually very generous amount, as well as cheap. Here? They practically count the drops with a pipette. 

Ollie
Shurely you mean sherry, darlinque?

Brandy. Yes.

Père Magloire VSOP.

I may be gone some time.

This bottle looks familiar. I see it's from Jerez so in a sense it's sherry I suppose.