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Cellar Notes - Bottling Date Resource (Updated for Oud Beersel)

I find the whole aged beer / cellaring thing quite fascinating. Unfortunately, and unlike wine, determining bottling dates for many beers can be a difficult task. Below I've pulled together a few bottling date conventions:

Note that all data with respect to the trappist beers has been sourced from Danny Van Tricht at http://users.pandora.be/dvt/trappist2007/html/chimaybierene.htm (great job BTW).

Chimay
Dore: 4 years from best before ('BB') date
Blue: as per vintage year
Red: 4 years from BB year
White: 3 years from BB year

St Bernadus (our educated guess - happy to hear confirmations)
Triple: 3 years from BB date
Pater: 3 years from BB date
Prior: 5 years from BB date
Abt: 5 years from BB date

La Trappe
Blond: 2.5 years from BB date
Dubbel: 2.5 years from BB date
Tripel: 2.5 years from BB date
Quadrupel: 3 years from BB date

Orval
As per label bottling date

Oud Beersel
20 years from BB date

Rochefort
6: 5 years from BB date
8: 5 years from BB date
10: 5 years from BB date

Westmalle
Dubbel: 2 years from BB date
Tripel: 2 years from BB date

Gouden Carolas
Classic: 3 years from BB date

Unibroue - See below (unless vintage dated on bottle)
It's easy to translate the bottling date from the code printed on the bottle. For example, 'C08071726Q' translates to:

C = month (ie March)

0807 = day & year (ie 8th March 2007)

1726 = time (ie 5.26pm)

Q = location (ie Quebec)

If anybody has bottling date 'rules' or conventions for any other beers I'd love to get hold of them.

cheers

Cloudwine / Slowbeer On-line Beer Store

Alrighty,

I've been mucking around with a properly functioning on-line beer style for a few weeks. The first 'draft' can be found at http://www.slowbeer.com.au/.

I still have to fill out the content (ie pics, tasting notes etc) but the site does function from a transaction point of view. Regular visitors to the store will note that I haven't loaded all the beers onto the site, rather I'm sticking to the gear I know we'll have in-stock pretty much all the time.

Pricing will continue to be amongst the best in the nation and I reckon it's pretty clear we blow the doors off our key competitors in Melbourne and Perth with respect to competitiveness. But, of course, the consumer will ultimately be the judge.

Offerings are either singles or 6 packs but always happy to provide case prices etc. Just shoot me a note in need.

cheers

Beer News - Local Taphouse 'Beer Spectapular'

Ok,

So any self-respecting Melbourne beer nerd would be well aware of The Local Taphouse in Balaclava (right?) but some of you may not know that owner Steve has pulled together 40 cracking kegs for a one day beer festival on Sunday June 22nd. Kicks off at noon.

Another great sign that the Melbourne craft beer scene is gathering serious momentum.

$25 gets you 20 tasting tickets (60ml samples)...sounds like very decent value. I'll be very keen to take a look at 2 Brothers, Paddy's, Feral and Wig & Pen, amongst others.

Full details at the Taphouse Blog. Specific post can be found here and PDF flyer here.

My earlier plug for this joint can be found here.

See you there!

Web Bytles - Beer Cellaring Sites

I found this site a while back. Heaps of interest here as it pretty much focuses on cellaring beer and in particular focuses on some of the science behind the aging aspects of beer. Lots of care and effort is put into the content.

Not surprisingly the site is mostly US centric but regardless it works well as another reference point.

http://www.brewbasement.com/

Web Bytes - Good Beer Blogs

Like most geek / enthusiast scenes the on-line beer world is awash with beer blogs. And, mind you, most are much better than this one. Below I've listed a bunch that I like to visit regularly.

A Good Beer Blog

Good all-rounder site with professional writing and insight. Wide-ranging global coverage.

Pete Brown

Pete is a most excellent writer having penned, amongst others, 'Three Sheets to the Wind' and 'Man Walks Into a Pub'.

Stonch's Beer Blog

UK beer and brewing focussed. The guide / reviews of the London pub scene is particularly strong.

Evan Rail

Czech specialist. Awesome pics too.

Stephen Beaumont

Canadian dude. One of the world's leading real deal beer writers.

Beer Pages

Another blog from a professional beer writer, this time UK-based Roger Protz.

Web Bytes - Murray's Brewing

Check out Murray's excellent website some time. We have a particular affection for all anti big company rantings so check out his blog as well.

enjoy!

Web Bytes - Cloudwine stuff

Want to know what we reckon about all things wine?

Check out the Cloudwine blog here

Web Bytes - Pete Brown has a Blog

Cool,

Hardly ground breaking news and all that but this guy has written a couple of excellent books in 'Three Sheets To The Wine' and 'Man Walks Into a Pub'. Check 'em out and check out his blog.

Web Bytes - Amsterdam Pub Guide

I reckon Amsterdam is somewhat under-rated when it comes to beer and quality beer bars. We were fortunate to spend a couple of nights there in October and we visted 5 - 6 bars that compared very favourably to those visited in neighbouring Belgium.

This site proved extremely handy as an in-depth guide. Well worth checking out.

Web Bytes - Weltenburger

Ok,

Again not really news but it'll be 'beer news' until I figure out a better classification!

Nice run down of the Weltenburger beers by Tom Cannavan at beer-pages.com. We first came across Tom years ago when researching champagne, a field where he is considered a world leading writer. Not too shabby on the beer scene either.

Readers may know (I assume at least 2 people read this blog?) that ratebeer.com pumps out decent articles from time to time. I'll post a few over the next week or so. Try this one for starters.