Don't mix your drinks

'Don't mix your drinks.' Sound advice, but I rarely listened, even on the best-behaved of evenings. Delighting in the next day's forecast of pain that followed a cocktail of red wine, whisky, maybe a rum, porter, a DIPA and so on. Maybe even a proper cocktail. Dinner would be chips.

Best practise for blogging and social media, too, is all about sticking to the one subject. Owning it, whether that be bikes or beer, fashion or fiction. Stick to a USP, say the experts, and go heavy on the U. They also command you use a picture.

Well, this wee beer diary has been very beer focused since my very first post almost five years ago: a brew by Alechemy, purchased at the now sadly shut Hippo Beers on Great Western Road.

But the blog's been quiet for the past year (though I've continued to write about beer, whisky and gin in other capacities). Not since I was blown away by a batch of beers sent from a new-ish brewery called Fierce in 2016 have I taken the time to sit down and try to put my sense of tastes into words.

And while the real world got madder in this blog's five-year life, in my world I felt the beer reviews got better, evolving from the mildly cringey "This IPA is a full flavoured, hoppy and delicious beer" to a regular (and paid!) beer review in The Herald that had quotes, interviews, tasting notes and everything. Even paid advertising.

I spent the first meagre but magnificent earnings from that column on a bottle of GlenDronach Revival 15 yo from the Good Spirits Company in Glasgow. I was blown away by it, and remember it now a couple of years later with great fondness. It was seriously stunning, and at that point was the most expensive whisky I'd ever bought (I think it was about £60). It must have been one of the last ones around as the range is now on a three-year sabbatical due to lack of stock causing the price to rocket.  

All of which serves as a rather long and self-indulgent introduction to the predictably earth-shattering announcement that it's time for something new. Time I listened to the advice and kept the great and the grain, the old and the new, the boozing and the swimming all very separate.

So, the vlogs, blogs and swimming logs continue here on my scottishswimmer blog.

This secret will change your life

Fairy magic by the Black Cuillins. Image: Damian Shields.

I want to share a secret with you. Before you read on you need to make sure no one's reading over your shoulder. This one's for you and you only. Keep on the lookout for prying eyes.

Hippo Beers, My Favourite Shop

Sometimes my kids ask me what my favourite shop is.

Well, I quite like Forbidden Planet but it's too cramped and often too busy. I loved A1 Comics until they got rid of most of their comics. I loved Go Outdoors for the miles of aisles of ropes and boots and waterproofs and camping stuff that I really, really need but never could afford. I have a wee fetish thing for Aldi and its crazy middle row. But they all leave me, well, wanting.

Hippo Beers entered my life in November. We've exchanged glances from a distance. Had the odd flirty exchange. They have my details but not been in touch. I don't know, should I contact them? Maybe I wrote my email down wrong. Maybe they lost it. Maybe they've been too busy and not had time. Maybe their PCs are down. Or their internet. Maybe I should call them. Just to check they've still got my email. Would that be pushy? Would that just be weird?

But what if it's because they don't like me?

Their shop on Queen Margaret Drive in Glasgow has more than 300 beers in stock at any one time. About a dozen shelves of Scottish beers. A bay of ciders. Ales from England, Europe and the US. They have wheat beers and anti-allergy ales. Porters and stouts and wines and whiskies. They probably have the cure for cancer buried in there. Here's an article the Evening Times wrote about Hippo Beers last week.

It's a neat shop, an airy shop, a shop you like to spend time in, wander about in. Read the labels and not feel a twat. Have a chat with the staff and not feel a twat. Buy one beer and one beer only and not feel a twat.

I think I might be falling in love.