Game Day Beer Review: Brouwerij Bavik Flanders Oud Bruin

(5.50% ABV) From the bottle, Oud Bruin pours a fizzy iced tea-dark brown, with just the tiniest hint of amber.  The  beer begins with an effervescent tan head that quickly fades away to just a ring around the outside of the chalice into which I poured the beer. 

Oud Bruin's smell is sour, with a definite vinegar sourness intermingling with ripe fruits, including cherry.  I'm also getting a whiff of dark fruit, like prune, on the tail end of the nose.

There are definite dark fruits noticeable in drinking, but I'm also getting a bit of a metallic taste. It's a true sour, lip puckeringly so in the middle, but it finishes smoothly, with some slight bit of funk and green apples. None of the flavors really linger all that long, however.

It's fairly thin, well carbonated and tingly on the tongue. This wouldn't be an everyday choice of mine, but I'm glad I tried it. B-

Helter Skelter

photo by p_a_h	via PhotoRee

Just a quick editorial aside to make room for the latest news before today's blog.  I think all regular readers of the blog will recognize that I'm biased (see yesterday's blog entry for an example), so take it for what you want.  


The headlines out of Manchester and London were consumed yesterday with the news of Carlos Tevez' written demand to leave Manchester City during the January transfer window.  I won't re-hash old news except to say "I told you so."  The guy is a malcontent from the word "Go," and one of those types for whom the grass is always greener somewhere else.  Call me slow, but I realized this when United gave Tevez (or his agent, the ultra-shady Kia Joorabchian) his ostensible asking price, only to be repaid with a refusal to sign and a move across town.  As far as I'm concerned, it's good riddance to Tevez, and Sir Alex has once again proved why he's among the smartest minds in world football.  See ya later, Carlos; enjoy playing for Boca Juniors, and we'll see you in 'El Superclasico' real soon.   


I spent the better part of my day going from football match to football match today; most of the games I saw happened to be in the Premier League, but not all of them.  In fact, the most special game I witnessed took place in the middle of my day, but I'll come back to that a little later.


First of all, the facts, plain and #simples, as they say: it may be cold wherever you're reading this, but in South Florida it's all sunny blue sky and 71 degrees (21.6 degrees celsius, for those of you scoring from England).  Nice and cool in the shade, but a bit hotter out in the sun.  All in all, though, not too shabby for a mid-December Saturday; kind of puts you in the Christmas mood....


Unlike many of you, we get our games in the morning and early afternoon over here in the eastern part of the US.  So it's often wake up for breakfast, turn on the tv, and start watching to begin the weekend.  Because there was no noon-time GMT kickoff today, I got to sleep in, and enjoyed a nice cup of coffee and quick read of the papers before the action got rolling.


To begin the day I managed to catch about a quarter of Bayern Munich's game against St. Pauli (somwhat confusingly, I thought St. Pauli was a beer, and not a football club based in Hamburg; I guess you really do learn something new each day).  I managed to catch just enough of the game to whet my appetite for EPL football, but when I saw Bastian Schweinsteiger's fine layoff lead to an early goal for the men from Munich, it made it all that much more bitter when I read the news later in the day that Schweini had signed a five year extension to stay at Bayern.  I was genuinely hoping he'd end up in Manchester by summer's end.