the market at borough

borough market on a saturday is definitely one of the highlights of the week – bacon bap with brown sauce from roast, monmouth flat white and if you wander for more than half an hour, a cheeky half in the Market Porter. This morning we were joined by the lovely April who is visiting and we wandered home with a bag full of Flour Power Banana Cake, ingredients for potato and leek soup and some Cotherstone cheese from Neal’s Yard.

sunday night in bethnal green

Justin works with lots of cool people and one of the coolest is Andy Liu. He has been giving us the inside vibe on chinese food in london and tonight he took us to gourmet san in bethnal green. We had some rather tasty treats, lots of garlic, lots of chilli and the odd bit of offal. I wish I could tell you what we had properly but basically it was a cold beef and tripe salad with coriander and sesame, fish cooked in a broth and loaded with chillies and the most delicious garlic lamb skewers…

and then we caught the tube back and walking home it started to snow. Proper snow. Sometimes london is really quite rockin.

German beer styles

My first ever post on our blog…hoorah! And what better place to start than a list of German beer styles! We’re heading to Berlin tonight so stay tuned for photos of us sampling them:

Altbier (“old beer”): top-fermented then cold-conditioned

Berliner Weisse: top-fermented, sour wheat beer

Bock: strong, bottom-fermented

• Doppelbock: stronger version of bock (“double bock”)
• Eisbock: bockbier lagered at sub-zero temperatures
• Maibock: brewed to celebrate Spring

Braunbier: made with dark malts, usually bottom-fermented

Dampfbief (“steam beer”): warm top-fermentation

Diaet Pils

Dinkelbier: top-fermented with a proportion of spelt malt (“dinkel”) and usually including both malted barley and wheat

Dortmunder Export: pale, bottom-fermented

Dunkel / Dunkles

• Muenchner Dunkel: dark, bottom-fermented
• Schwarzbier (“black beer”)

Export: typically a golden, bottom-fermented beer

Gose: top-fermented, sour wheat beer

Haferbier (“oat beer”)

Hanfbier: brewed with hemp blossom rather than hops

Hell / Helles (“pale”)

• Muenchner Hell

Kellerbier

Koelsch

Kraeusen

Lagerbier: bottom-fermented

Landbier

Maerzen (“Maerz”=”March”)

Pilsener / Pils

Rauchbier (“smoke beer”): produced using malt that has been smoked over beechwood

Roggen: top-fermented beer made with malted rye (“roggen”); also usually includes both malted barley and wheat

Schankbier: beer with a lower-than-usual alcohol content

• Luettje Lage (“little round”): dark, top-fermented Schankbier

Spezial

Steinbier: currently extinct!

Ungespundet (“unbunged”): only made by a handful of breweries within a 30km radius of Bamberg

Vollbier

Weissbier / Weizenbier: top-fermented; typically made with equal parts wheat and barley malt

• Hefeweizen / Hefeweissbier (“hefe”=”yeast”): unfiltered wheat beer
• Kristallweizen: filtered wheat beer

Zoigl: brewed in communal breweries in Oberpfalz

Zwickel (“tap”): unfiltered, bottom-fermented