The idea behind the beer finder is that no matter what your mood or the situation you should be able to find a beer that takes your fancy.

The contents of the All Beer Experience

You can search the site using a couple of different methods, the first is the simplest, simply enter something into the free text search box, whether is a flavour you are looking for, a food match or a particular type of hop you are sure to find something.

The second method is a little more complex but should result in a perfect match, you can select from ABV, flavour intensity, beer style and even how the beer comes packaged, hit search and seconds later you are presented with suitable matches.

Once you have found the beer or beers you are looking for you can click in to view a more in depth profile of your chosen beer, this includes sight, smell, taste and feel, flavour profile and suggested food matches along with some info on the brewer/distributor and what sort of serving it comes in, it’s in depth enough to satisfy most needs but not too waffly that it puts you off reading it all.

While not every beer in the country is listed there are a huge amount of beers and breweries, there are still quite a lot that are missing but as the site grows I am sure more and more breweries will get on board.

It’s a very handy tool for finding matches to food and finding beers that are of a similar style to ones you like, I could rattle on about it all day but the best way to find out what it does is to try it for your self.

So why not check it out here and let me know what you think.

Beer Tickers beyond the ale is a film designed to show the good, bad and the ugly of the hobby, passion and tradition that is Beer ticking or Scooping.

It follows some of the more colourful characters in the ticking scene such as Mick the Tick, Brian Moore and Dave Unpronounceable. It’s mainly set in and around the beer hub that is Sheffield but does venture around the country, following the journeys that the scoopers take.

As a film I really enjoyed it, mainly because it was fun to see people I’ve met and know along with a few legendary names that I’ve heard discussed in pubs and on the internet.

For the most part it’s light hearted and shows the length’s that some of the scoopers go to in order to tick off a beer, some people have said it does nothing but take the piss out of the scoopers but I didn’t see it that way, I found it genuinely insightful and there were times where I noticed the ticker in my self. I will admit there was quite a lot that had me worried and confused, like simply having a sip of a beer just to say you’ve tried it, one thing that did make me wonder was that some people refused to drink the same beer twice no matter how good it was, I for one couldn’t do this as there are plenty of beers I love and drink regularly along with some that I would love to be able to drink more often.

If you are  a beer lover then Beer Tickers Beyond the Ale is well worth a look, if you don’t believe me check out Pete Brown’s blog and review, which is much better than my attempt.

If you want to find our more you can check out the Beer Tickers website, facebook page or follow them on twitter.

After a brief twitter conversation and a quick phone call one of the All Beer Experience kits arrived on my doorstep.

The contents of the All Beer Experience

The pack comes in a great little striped cardboard bag, the stripes being made up from photos of different colours of beer…a great touch.

It contains:

• All Beer Guide
• All Beer FlavourMax Glass
• All Beer Interactives

The guide is not just any old book it’s an award winning book having won Gourmand “World’s Best Beer Book”, Winner of 4 awards during 2009/10. It’s a aimilar physical size to “500 Beers” By Zak Avery but is a completely different beast.

It comes ring bound which I was a little worried about at first as I wasn’t sure how sturdy it would be, my fears were soon allayed, the metal rings were really  strong and didn’t bend when turning the pages.

The book is made up of different sections covering everything from ingredients, brewing techniques, beer styles and flavours. It’s packed full of info, tips, techniques and some really lovely photos but the thing that sets it apart are the interactive sections. These make use of not only the other bits that come in the bag but items you should have lying around the house.

These interactive sections encourage you to test, hone and experiment with your skills, giving you tips on picking out flavours and ingredients in different beer styles. The tasks range from tasting different solutions such as salty water to dipping your tongue in a glass of coke. These particular tasks are designed to show you how your tongue reacts to different sensations.

The little sachets of barley and malt help you understand the differences in the ingredients and let you taste them in their most basic form, my favourite bit is the little hop card. This is a simple little scratch and sniff exercise to show you how the smell differs with each hop variety. It really does work and I could quite happily sit and smell the card all day.

The book also describes how different glasses affect the flavour and texture of different beers, It also explains the reasons for the shape of the All Beer FlavourMax glass that is included in the kit.

The glass it’s self is very nice, it’s a lovely shape and really good quality, my only niggle is that its a little bit too small to use for every day drinking, it best suits beer tastings and when you are sharing beers with friends.

At the back of the book there are also some tear out tasting sheets allowing you to hone your skills by working through the different sections and scoring the beer accordingly. This is quite cool especially if you like to make notes on your beers or write a beer blog.

I’ve not read the book from cover to cover or completed all of the interactives yet so as soon as I have i will update this post, but my first impressions are very good indeed.

The All Beer kit retails at £19.95 plus postage but if you put the code “abtweet10” on the website you will get a rather tasty £4 discount which in my eyes is a bit of a bargain.

Not only would it be a great treat for your self if you want to learn more about tasting beer, beer styles and food matching but it would also make a great fathers day present.

You can buy one here, there is also an option to buy an extra glass if you want to share the experience with a friend.

The experience is also supplemented by the rather handy All Beer Finder, which I will write about later in the week.

As it happens it was on offer on Amazon for a slightly ridiculously cheap £6. which if you own a copy of the book will know why I think its cheap.

For those of you who don’t own the book then let me explain, firstly don’t let the squat size of the book fool you, it’s about 3 inches thick and hardback with a lovely dust cover on.

Secondly and most importantly its crammed full of useful beer facts and info, covering everything from the brewing process to what to eat with your beer.

The beers are separated up into styles, such as IPA, Best bitter etc, even the more off the wall beers like smoked beer get a mention. Nearly all the beers are accompanied by a photo or a logo along with info about the beer, some brief tasting notes and a little tip or extra note related to the beer.

The notes cover evertying from facts about the brewery to food pairings, the photos are generally great and the info about the beers is just enough without going into too much detail, after all if you want to read more you can always visit the brewers website.

Whether you are have been drinking beers for years or just started out it’s a great book and well worth a read, it’s the sort of thing you can dip into when you have a few minutes or read it from cover to cover whilst sat in the garden on a sunny day with a pint in hand. It’s so good I even bought a copy for my dad.

You can visit Zak’s blog and website  here, follow him on twitter here or buy the book here

The thing that grabbed me though was their 52 week beer club, the concept is nothing new or ground breaking but I think this has the potential to be the best of the bunch, Unlike most of the existing beer clubs My Brewery Tap select beers from certain microbreweries and send them direct to your door every quarter, so you end up with 52 different beers from around the country. So what you should end up with is lots of new and different beers that you haven’t tried, where as some of the other beer clubs send out beers that are readily available in your local supermarket.

My first delivery arrived a couple of weeks ago and I haven’t had chance to write about it until now, It contained 13 beers, most of which I have never even heard of and a couple from places I’ve heard of and wanted to try, The beers i got were:

• Breconshire Cribyn
• Brentwood hope and glory
• Burton Porter
• Eccleshall brewery top totty
• Empire strikes back
• Empire golden warrior
• Fulstow    Village life
• Meantime London stout
• Old Bear Original
• Penpoint Roughtor
• Quantock Sunraker
• Saffron blonde
• Tring Death or glory
• Wooden hand cornish buccaneer

There was also a free glass and bottle opener along with comprehensive tasting notes and a little brewery guide book which was great!

My Brewery Tap Case #1

So is it something that i would recommend – hell yeah, provided they stick to microbreweries and the beers are great quality then they are on to a winner, I’ve already subscribed (twice..one for me and one for someone as a gift – hopefully they won’t read this, if they do, no you can’t have them early!) at the current price of £69 for the 52 bottles i think its a pretty competitive price and would make a great Christmas gift for the real ale lover in your life.

You can buy beers on their website here or follow them on twitter here

For those of you who haven’t seen one a Zap Cap is a great new way to open crown capped bottles with ease, Simply push it onto the top of the bottle press it down then lift it off, hey presto your bottle is now opened, it really is as simple as the packaging says.

You can see how I got on in the video below:

The Stainless Steel Zap Cap is really well built, i’ve used it a few times and it has opened the bottles perfectly each time.  I noticed that on their website it mentions the benefits for children (for juice bottles not beer) and those who find it difficult to open bottles, so I took it round and tried it out on my mum – who has MS and can’t open a bottle with a normal bottle opener, Using the Zap Cap she opened a bottle of beer with no problems what so ever……you will have to trust me on that one as she wouldn’t let me film her!

One thing i did notice is that it keeps the bottle top in perfect condition, so if, like me you collect your bottle tops then the Zap Cap eliminates the usual bending and stretching of the tops that you get with normal bottle openers.

The only downside is that the Zap Cap is quite chunky so it is definitely a home gadget and not something you can carry around in your pocket.

The Zap Cap comes in various guises ranging from the the basic plastic one, to the top of the range steel one they sent me, I believe their is also a bottle shaped one, personally I would choose the Steel one every time, Prices range from £5 to £15 and you can buy them here and they will make a great Christmas present

Here are a couple of pics of the zap cap too (click them to enlarge)