What a day. Brilliant!
Being a rest day, I settled down to watch the Commonwealth Games triathlon, happy in the knowledge that I had no exercise of any kind to be done, and was therefore free to indulge without feelings of guilt, and without the tedious planning of runs/walks etc etc around more important duties such as patriotically cheering our Aussie guys and girls home in their respective events.
However, first of course one must prepare with the right ingredients. To watch a triathlon, it seemed appropriate to have a triplet of suitable beers at hand; to which end:
...did the job nicely. And as we won the gold medal (and the bronze too), it seemed appropriate to celebrate with a beer rapidly acquiring legendary status here in Oz, and which I had never previously encountered... the Grand Ridge Brewery Supershine,
bow down, tug forelock etc.
Now to be fair, I had seen this beer before and thought it a nonsense. How on earth could you brew a beer this strong and actually be serious about it? I thought it alcoholic for the sake of being stupidly, ostentatiously, ridiculously alcoholic. And yet, it proved to be a "wow" beer. It smelled almost varnish-like, yet was amazingly elegant for something stronger than a lot of wines. Complex, yet smooth, full of immense flavour and dignity, this is a beer to savour at special times ... um, such as a nice day, or on the occasion of a particular thirst.
And yes, that says 11%. God, that's strong. As strong or stronger than some of that stuff those mad Scotsmen drink. But man was it nice.
Now all I have to do is learn how to brew something similar :o
Easier said than done pehaps, but where's there's a swill, er, will, there's a way...
Cheers, fellow runners.