Another Ghostly Guest Blogger

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We received a case of beer at the shop last week. It contained 12 bottles and a sticker on the side naming 12 well know beery tweeters, one of which I was glad to see was me.

I was really interested by this, mainly because I thought it was such a great idea, so I got on the horn to David Bishop to ask him if he would be willing to tell a little about what his beer is all about. You can find a bit more detail on his blogsite, and I suggest you give the pics a look in too. So here's a little look into another beer lover, and how more and more people are really getting stuck in and creating great things, It's just another example of good times for the whole beer industry. Over to David:


I Think Therefore I Brew

First, thanks to Will (@GhostDrinker) for kindly offering to let me blog about my beer. I'm David Bishop or probably better known as @Broadforbrewer on Twitter. I am a novice homebrewer and have recently taken the plunge in sharing a fair proportion of my most recentbrews with a few people I tweet with. This is a 4.6% Summer Ale, made with; Marris Otter pale malt, maize and hopped with Challenger and Styrian Goldings. If you're interested in the brewday and some pics then click here. The process of sharing with relative strangers is something I'm not entirely comfortable with. To date, family and friends have been loyal enough, or smart enough, to tell me how great my homebrew is. When you open the borders of evaluation a little further, who knows what will be said, and in this case there will be no way of shushing everyone, not least a spectre! I see this little exercise as me simply testing the water - at worst I may get burnt and run away with a whimper. That said, I'd be lying if I didn't confess that part of my motivation and general interest in sharing my creation is a vain attempt to 'network' and maybe share some friendly tweets as a result. Although, having read a blog or two before deciding to do this, I'm not naive enough to believe any of that. Forgive me here for coining the Mary Whitehouse Experience and their sketch "Let him have it!" .... but can I make it clear that in my case the ambiguous phrase is calling for feedback and not the bullet!

A bit more about me. Shortly before a self-confessed 'Beer Geek' or 'Twitterholic', I was merely a wannabe homebrewer and while I'm under no illusion that I remain in the baby pool, I am happy to have successfully progressed from kits to full mash brewing and creating drinkable beer. It's worth mentioning at this point that I do have a dream of owning a brewery of my own or with a group of like minded people, but as my Twitter Bio reads "in the meantime I will be reading, tasting and brewing my way towards brewing consistent beers".

Without having researched properly, I continue to make the broad assumption that should you ask any brewery owner, they will tell you that the odds are stacked against anyone with this endeavor. Although contrary to this, and doom-and-gloom aside, there are plenty of success stories which keep my hopes alive and well. What I can be sure of is that I will be trying my best despite the obvious odds stacked against a dad of three who needs to work his 9-5 to keep the household ticking over. I do however continue to play the same numbers every Saturday and suck up the BS that; "It could be me!".

So, if you are one of the few I was able to share a bottle of my 'Retweet' Summer Ale with, I hope this gives you a brief insight into where my beer came from and what @Broadfordbrewer is all about. If you didn't get a beer from me on this occasion, it may be a blessing, only feedback will tell, but I do hope to continue to share my beer and swap where possible in the future. After all, it's only a matter of days since I swapped homebrews with @pdtnc and @BGRTRob as well as @Ol_Foz in the not so distant past. In these cases I know that I may not have offered them anything to set the brewing world alight, but with any luck I'll get further opportunities to do the same again and learn from it! Aside from that it's just good fun. If however my numbers do happen to come up, you may just see my beers in a pub or shop near you! Thanks for reading, and thanks again to Ghosty!

(... Also thanks to @Zakavery for allowing me to pedal my wares from @BeerRitzLeeds!)

(Ghosty re-enters the room) .... But that's not the end of the blogpost today, no no, I should really tell David what I thought of the beer!
The first thing that strikes me about this brew is the perfect clarity and superb yellow/light orange hue. It has a very prominent lemon/grassy hop forward nose, It's really reminding me of the bottle of Anchor Summer Ale I had last week! Quite high in carbonation with a bit of spice and a huge orange pith bitterness. Light in body, but not in flavour. Very soft beer, it's very pleasant. It reminds me very much of drinking bottled Daleside Blond.

Top work David, keep up the good brewing! You can be proud of this, and you were right, it has been fun and should stay that way.