On Saturday, I made first use of one of my Christmas presents from Justine — a voucher to brew beer at Barleycorn Brewers. Trav, Stephan and Chris came along; since all of them drink beer in varying styles and amounts and none have brewed beer before it seemed only fitting.

The brewery is quite small but seems capable of handling the steady stream of customers who are all either brewing their beer, bottling their beer or just lounging around on the seats provided — there’s a big-screen TV, DVD player and cable TV along one wall, as well as signed sporting memorabilia. All that’s needed is a pool table and it would be a true “bloke’s club”.

Unable to decide between two or three choices, we were given a box of six different beers which will taken from our veritable bounty of 144 bottles upon bottling. One I was considering (a pilsener similar one I drank in Prague) was not available, so I moved onto my second choice which was a lager similar to Stella Artois (curiously called “Stella!”).

We first tasted the Stella! and all seemed to agree that it was rather a nice drop. Not too challenging to drink and it went down easy. Stephan said it reminded him a little of VB, which I also detected. I detest VB but the biggest comparison is that it was refreshing and easy to drink. It certainly didn’t taste like bile.

The second was an ale of some sort and though it was good, drinking over 100 bottles of it seemed a difficult task indeed. So, we opted for the Stella!.

Since the advantage of the brewery is that they do all the real hard work (buying expensive equipment, having plenty of different and interesting raw materials on hand, sterilising the equipment, storing the beer), all we had to do was add the ingredients to the large kettle of boiling water as directed, set a timer, then sit down and drink some more. I’m still interested in brewing at home, but this is a hell of a lot more convenient.

There are now three agonising weeks to wait until we go back and bottle all 144 138 bottles and taste the creation we made. Since this was the first time — and I was the guinea pig, with Justine forking over all the money — we stuck mostly to the recipe (only going over a little bit on a few ingredients). Assuming that the beer tastes like the one we tasted (or better) I can see at least some of the four of us going back to brew more.

At home, we have so much booze, we could probably open a bar for the next few months and make a decent amount of money.

Of course, it would be illegal, but that’s not the point. We do have some really nice stuff though. Actually, I think it might be that I have some really nice stuff. Hopefully though, drinking nicer stuff will stop me from becoming an alcoholic, since I wouldn’t be able to afford to keep drinking at that rate. Either that, or I’d be a drunk and broke very quickly.

At home, we have Jose Cuervo gold tequila (admittedly not the best, but it’s certainly not the crap we used to have), previously mentioned Woodford Reserve, the unfortunately named Mount Gay rum (which is an extremely nice gold rum), Absolut vodka (as well as an almost-empty bottle of Skyy and half-full bottle of Smirnoff), not to mention bottles of Johnny Walker, Jim Beam White, Glayva, Jim Beam White, Black Sambuca, Jim Beam Gold, Sake, and various liquers. There’s a bit more than that but I can’t remember them all.

Maybe I should just drink it all myself?

While at work today, it occurred to me that though I’ve had Egg Nog, I’ve only ever had it from a carton.

Since it’s the Christmas season, I thought I should hunt down a recipe and try making my own.

While doing a little bit of research (still at work, I suppose that makes me a cyberslacker), I read that “Egg Nog” basically translates as “Egg Ale” from ye olde English.

Well, what self-respecting person makes their Egg Nog without booze, I thought to myself? So, I used this recipe. Problem is, it didn’t specify which rum is supposed to be used. Always being frugal, I just used some Bacardi I already have.

What does this have to do with the title of this post, I hear you asking? Well, after a few chugs of my Nog, I began to feel rather jolly. I’d say around 20% of this particular Nog is booze, which is a good percentage. It also explains why Saint Nick is so jolly. Drinking this crap year-round would make anyone jolly!

Anyway, that’s enough from me, I can hear the elves chanting my name — I think the drinking contest is about to start up again! Nog me boys!