The Millennium Ale Project
What is this “Millennium Ale Project”?
THE PLAN: For 2001, the beginning of the third millennium, brew 100 bottles of homebrew. Oliver and Geoff will be the custodians of half the bottles each. At the end of each year for the next 100 years, Oliver and Geoff will get together and drink one bottle.
WHY? Why not?
BUT YOU'LL BE DEAD BEFORE YOU DRINK THEM ALL: Probably. However, we are unconcerned (after all, science may save us). Geoff will bequeath his bottles in his will to Oliver, and vice versa. Oliver has no children, so Geoff's daughter, and perhaps her children, will carry on the drinking of one bottle at the end of each year.
WON'T IT GO OFF? The brew is about 8 per cent alcohol, which combined with the high hopping rate and maltiness will act to preserve the beer. We have adapted a recipe for Eldridge Pope's Thomas Hardy's Ale from the book Brew Your Own Real Ale at Home.
ARE YOU MAD? Perhaps. We'll let you know in 2100.
Feel free to tell us what you think of what you think of the Millennium Ale Project.
The recipe
Ingredients
|
THOMAS |
MILLENNIUM ALE |
|
| Volume | 12 litres | 55 litres |
| Original Gravity | 1125 | 1125 |
| Final Gravity | 1030 | 1030 |
| Alcohol | 12.8% | 12.8% |
| Pale Malt | 6.8kg | 26kg light liquid malt |
| Amber Malt | 1.7kg | |
| Goldings hops (start of boil) | 55g cones (5.3%AA) |
175g pellets (6.1%AA) |
| Fuggles hops (start of boil) | 65g cones (4.5%AA) |
250g pellets (4.8%AA) |
| Styrian Goldings (last 15 mins) | 25g cones (7.9%AA) |
120g pellets (4%-4.1%AA) |
*Thomas Hardy's Ale recipe from Brew Your Own Real Ale at Home.
Method
- Boil ingredients for 1½ and preferably 2½ hours, reducing the volume to 55 litres.
- Cool the wort and adjust original gravity in fermentation vessel to 1125.
- Aerate the wort and pitch a high-quality English ale yeast.
- Monitor fermentation carefully and if fermentation gets stuck (i.e. stops before SG 1035) rack the beer into another fermenter and pitch a wine yeast.
- When the fermentation has abated, rack into a barrel, add a sachet of wine yeast, fit the lid and store for three months.
- Rack into a sterilised fermentation vessel with 230g sugar and a sachet of wine yeast. Mix well, ensuring a minimum of air is admitted.
- Bottle and cap. Leave for at least a year. Reputedly at its best after five years. (We're hoping it will still be great after 100 years.)
The reaction to the recipe
When Oliver told Geoff the proposed recipe, this was Geoff's reaction:
Where the Hell did you get this recipe? I struggle to come to terms with the immensity of it all. My predicament reminds me of one of Descartes' Meditations in which the philosopher addresses the question of the limitations of our imagination. R.D. points out that whilst we are capable of comprehending the idea of an object with one million sides, our minds are not able to picture what such an object would actually look like.
More information, please!!!
The Preparation
Oliver and Geoff had been contemplating brewing a millennium ale since 1999. Despite the talk, they had not got around to it. But they decided, as the new millennium began, that the time was right. (Of course, despite common belief and the media hype surrounding the "new millennium", 2001 was the first year of the third millennium, not 2000.)
There was much planning involved, including obtaining 110 500ml bottles for the beer, buying a 60-litre fermenter, obtaining a boiler, making a cooling coil, and designing and producing labels (the labels didn't eventuate, sadly).
We needed a boiler because of the large volume that was to be boiled. The wort that will be fermented to become beer is best boiled as close as possible to its final gravity to extract the hop bitterness. Fifty-five litres of liquid (we planned to make 110 bottles to cover in case of breakage) takes a long time to cool to the temperature at which yeast can be pitched, so we needed a cooling coil.
THE FERMENTER: On February 23, 2001, Geoff bought a 60-litre plastic fermenter from Geelong Home Brewing. This was the first item obtained for what was now officially the Millennium Ale Project.
THE BOILER: On March 2, Oliver bought an old 50-litre stainless-steel keg from a scrap-metal merchant in Melbourne. Armed with instructions from the book Brew Ware, he ventured to a metal fabrication firm in outer Melbourne on March 15 and had them plasma cut a 275mm-diameter hole in the top. (It was decided that plasma cutting was the way to go, as it is quicker and more accurate than using an angle-grinder.) The result was perfect; a hole that is perfectly round and the bit that was removed can be used as a lid, provided something is attached to it to prevent it falling into the keg. A file then a bit of wet-and-dry paper had any rough edges smooth in no time.
Oliver also bought a 3/8” stainless-steel ball valve and some fittings so the valve could be attached to the keg.
Oliver knew that stainless steel was tough, but didn't realise just how tough. It took about three hours to drill a 3mm-diameter hole through the 2mm-thick keg. Once this pilot hole was through, it was fairly easy to progress one drill bit size at a time until it got to the 5/8" bit bought especially for the job. The hole still wasn't quite big enough to fit the ball valve, so a bit of filing did the trick. Perfect. A bit of wet-and-dry and we were set.
WORT-COOLING COIL: Armed with some drawings produced by Oliver, Geoff boarded a plane at Melbourne Airport bound for Mildura, in northern Victoria. His destination was Red Cliffs, not far from Mildura. Geoff planned to discuss the idea of an immersion cooler constructed of copper pipe with a local plumber (and his now father-in-law), Patrick “Rico” Hunt. Rico and his brother Newton were the third generation of plumbers in the family business, H.S. Hunt & Sons, a name that had been synonymous with plumbing, roofing, tank building and the like in the district longer than living memory. Sadly, the business has since closed.
Rico studied the drawings closely for a couple of minutes and then promptly announced, “No worries, we'll knock that up in the morning." As it transpired, Rico had some experience in this type of job: producing copper coils for local Italian immigrants for use in their grappa stills.
INSTRUCTIONS: The diagrams that Oliver drew for Geoff and Rico.
The job was completed in less than three hours on March 12, 2001, in the workshop of H.S. Hunt & Sons.
LANDMARK: The workshop of H.S. Hunt & Sons, a Red Cliffs
icon where the wort cooler was created.
First Rico made a template of suitable diameter around which to wind the half-inch copper pipe. That done, the tube was wound and bent into shape.
FABRICATION: Geoff and Rico shape the copper pipe. Rico made the template
to measure using aluminium and metal-working tools from antiquity.
Finally, it was welded and supporting lugs were attached to enable the cooler to hang from the top of the brew pot. The finished result — a bloody work of art.
CRAFTSMAN: The Master at work.
MASTER'S APPRENTICE: Geoff lends Rico
a hand as the wort cooler takes shape.
AAAAAAH! The finished product. Now, what about that beer …?
The wort cooler was carried back to Melbourne as hand luggage on the plane, much to the consternation of fellow passengers, crew and airport security.
BOTTLES: We decided to use 500ml bottles, for the simple reason that using bottles any larger would require such an immense quantity of beer that it would almost put the Millennium Ale Project out of the realms of homebrewing and into micro-brew territory. We set our hearts on bottles from the Czech beers Radegast and Kozel. The bottles are sturdy, made of brown glass and have a crown seal, as a real beer bottle should.
Oliver somehow knew that the Czechoslovak Sokol National House (aka the Czech Club) in North Melbourne served Radegast and Kozel. After a couple of phone calls, he got on to the very helpful bar manager, Paul, who told him to drop some boxes in on March 17 because there was going to be a big function. He did so, and the following Friday picked up five boxes containing 81 bottles. The bottles were rinsed thoroughly and packed back into boxes. Three empty boxes remained at the Czech Club.
Oliver's fears that the label glue would not be water-soluble (imagine the horror of getting the bottles clean!) proved ill-founded, and after a test soaking of three bottles the labels slipped straight off.
Two boxes, containing a further 31 bottles, were collected from the Czech Club the following Friday night, cleaned and packed up. We now had 112 bottles for the Millennium Ale. All that was left was to soak them in a bath overnight and scrub them clean. Considering the Millennium Ale takes about 14 weeks from boiling to bottling, we put this job on the backburner.
GAS BOTTLE: We used Geoff's from his BBQ.
BURNER: On July 11, 2001, Geoff went to his local outdoor centre that was having a 22½ per cent off sale and bought a three-ring burner.
INGREDIENTS: On July 18, 2001, Oliver ventured to Southern Home Brewing in Maidstone, Melbourne, (this became Grain and Grape, and is now located in Yarraville) to purchase the ingredients, mainly because the store sold Coopers malt in 29kg pails, supplied Wyeast liquid yeast (it was agreed that a liquid yeast was the way to go because of the extraordinarily high original gravity. Anything else may not have fermented out well) and could offer Styrian Golding hops, which at the time were fairly hard to come by.
John, the guy at the homebrew shop, seemed bemused at our plan but was supportive nonetheless. He even had a full bottle of Eldridge Pope's Thomas Hardy's Ale (that the Millennium Ale recipe is based on) that he showed Oliver.
There was a concern that not enough time would elapse before brewing to culture up a yeast starter, so John gave us two for the price of one Wyeast Scotch Ale liquid yeast packs. Wyeast packs are a sachet containing yeast that floats inside a yeast nutrient. To start the yeast, you pop the inside sachet, releasing the yeast into the nutrient so it can start to multiply. As this happens, the pack swells. Ours took a while (three days) to show any real sign of swelling and so we didn't have time to make a yeast starter. One of the reasons for it taking so long was that Oliver had a hard time keeping it at the recommended 24 degrees. Eventually, he filled a fermenter with water, adjusted it to 24C and dropped in the sachets. This did the trick and the packs started to swell.
The Brewing
What follows are the notes from our brewing weekend, transcribed word for word.
Saturday, July 21, 2001
3pm: Preparations begin.
Tap fitted to the boiler.
Wort chiller hangars trimmed slightly so that it hangs lower in the boiler.
READY TO GO: The boiler with wort chiller inserted.
Built brick base and stand for boiler.
Opened first bottle of homebrew to quench mighty thirst and donned lab coats.
Added water to boiler with two litres of white vinegar to clean out boiler.
Brought to the boil, which took two hours!
Put wort chiller in to give it a bit of a boil and clean. Came up a treat and wonderfully shiny (the vinegar did its work).
6.45: Rang Rico, the man behind the magnificent wort chiller, to tell him that his construction works a treat.
Filled up fermenter with cold water and brought to the boil.
8.20: Water boiling.
Added salt and calcium sulphate.
Left at a rolling boil while we took a curry break.
9pm: Turned off heat and allowed precipitate to settle out.
Added wort chiller to sterilise.
9.30pm: Started flow through wort chiller.
10pm: Added magnesium sulphate.
Began transfer to fermenters to allow precipitate to be discarded.
10.25: Half filled fermenter and turned back on burner.
11.16: Boiling, so took off heat and added two-thirds of the malt.
ADDING THE MALT: Geoff, with his head cut off, and Oliver pour the liquid malt into the boiling water.
COMING TO THE BOIL: The malt mixture starts to froth.
12.17: Boiling again. Added Fuggles and Goldings hops.
ADDING THE HOPS: Oliver, left, and Geoff add the hops.
Geoff suggested the bubbling mess looked like a New Zealand mud bath. “Rotabrua,” Oliver's girlfriend suggested.
“It's a long way to the top if you wanna rolling boil,” Geoff quipped, adding “We are mightily hammered now!.” As always, he spoke the truth.
Drinking Oliver's homebrew No.32.
Geoff: “It's a nice looking boil isn't it: rolling and pitching, pitching and rolling. This is what I call aromatherapy.”
“You are witnessing alchemy — turning beer into stainless steel.” What Geoff meant, who knows!
2.05am: Added Irish moss, Styrian Goldings and cooling coil (to sterilise) and covered with aluminium foil.
2.20am: Small overflow.
Turned off heat and started flow to the wort chiller.
COOLING: The wort chiller in and the water on.
2.30: Oliver's girlfriend had gone to bed and Oliver and Geoff partook in a secondary curry while the wort chiller worked its magic.
By this stage the lab coats had proved invaluable. Oliver and Geoff were filthy, covered in malt and soot. They looked like a couple of Welsh miners emerging from the pit at the end of a shift.
3am: Still cooling
3.30am: Took out wort chiller and brought the keg inside to begin transferring the cooled wort to the fermenter.
INTO THE FERMENTER: Oliver watches as the wort goes into the fermenter.
Added extra water and left overnight to settle and cool a bit more as the wort was still 32 degrees at 4am.
The boiler is a bloody mess of hops and malt on the inside and hops, malt and soot on the outside.
4.10am: Geoff brought in the aluminium foil that had been covering the boiler during the last 15 minutes (and that took the full brunt of the overflow). It was covered in hops and looked like a dirty nappy! So that's where all the hops went!
4.20am: Looking back, the mess is not nearly as bad as we had imagined it would be when we set out on this epic project.
4.40am: Bed.
THE AFTERMATH: The sight that confronted us the next morning.
Noon Sunday: SG reading: 1110. Boiled most of the rest of the malt and added it, which brought the level up to 55 litres (At some stage the previous night we'd worked out, somehow, where the 55-litre mark was). Another SG taken: 1145!!! Whoops! Added some cooled, boiled water to bring the SG back to about 1137 or so. It was above the 1125 in the recipe, but we figured that the champagne yeast would take care of any problems (i.e. fermentation) that the ale yeast couldn't handle.
1pm: Pitched the yeast, which was well puffed up by now, and fitted the lid.
Opened a bottle of Oliver's stout.
The Fermentation
Initial fermentation was vigorous, with a small amount of frothing from the air lock (and the loss, on to white carpet, of some wort due to a leaking tap). After a couple of weeks, it was apparent that the SG had become stuck about 1094. On August 11, The beer was racked into two smaller fermenters and a sachet of champagne yeast added to each. Fermentation began again.
On November 23, 2001, it had dropped to 1090. We added 10 litres of water, which brought it to 1072, then added a 1-litre yeast starter. By December 30, 2001, it was 1068. On February 24, 2002, it had dropped to 1050. At this point we added more yeast and yeast nutrient. The final SG was 1035.
To summarise: The Millennium Ale was racked after three weeks into two smaller fermenters, then spent more than a year in those before it was bottled.
The Bottling
Saturday, August 24, 2002
We grossly underestimated the time it would take to bottled the Millennium Ale.
When Oliver arrived at Geoff and Lisa's in Jan Juc, just over an hour from Melbourne, on Saturday, August 24, 2002, Oliver was hoping the bottling could be completed that day. Geoff had already soaked about 50 bottles and removed their labels, and had a bathful of bottles soaking when the cityslickers arrived. A production line was set up, on which Geoff would remove the labels and Oliver would scrub them to remove the glue. The remaining bottles were then placed in the bath in two layers and the labels were scraped off and the glue scrubbed off.
Sunday, August 25, 2002
The next morning, after a breakfast that went until 12.30pm, we tackled the cleaning of the inside of the bottles. The idea was to rinse the bottles in a caustic solution and scrub the insides with a bottlebrush. But the bottlebrush wouldn't fit into the neck of the bottle (bloody Czech bottles!), so Oliver, working in the laundry, half-filled each bottle with the solution and gave it a good shake. Geoff then took crates of boxes into the kitchen and rinsed them inside and out with fresh water.
PREPARATIONS: Rejected dirty bottles in the foreground,
sterilised and rinsed bottles on the bottle tree and
bottles waiting to be sanitised in the background.
Due to interruptions by an Australian rules football game between Adelaide (Oliver's team) and Richmond (Geoff's), this process took about three hours. After an inspection of each bottle by holding them up to the light, 26 bottles were rejected because they still had a bit, or a lot, of grime in them.
BOTTLES AT THE READY: Sanitised and rinsed bottles ready to be filled with sweet Millennium Ale.
BOTTLES … From any angle, these Czech bottles are works of art.
… AND MORE BOTTLES: The shape of these bottles is something to behold.
LIKE A PROUD FATHER: Oliver contemplates the bottles, and the task ahead.
The bottles weren't primed, as we figure that it wouldn't be necessary considering they will need to last for 100 years. There is also a theory that yeast can work on residual sugars after bottling, and we didn't want overcarbonation of bottles drunk many years down the track (it turns out that this fear was ill-founded).
Then it was on to bottling. This was the easiest part of the whole Millennium Ale Project. No pouring huge quantities of liquid malt into a keg full of boiling water. No stuck fermentation. No leaking fermenters. No trying to take SG readings. No racking. Just bottling the bugger.
FILLING THE FIRST: Millennium Ale flows into bottle No.1.
THE HANDOVER: Geoff takes control of No.1.
THE CAPPING: No.1 gets its cap.
CELEBRATING NO.1: It took more than a year, but the first bottle of Millennium Ale is complete.
FURTHER CELEBRATIONS: Oliver is excited at No.1, while Geoff isn't getting carried away.
FINALLY EMPTY: This fermenter has seen plenty of action in its short life.
THE SLUDGE: The Millennium Ale was racked twice, but there was no shortage
of sediment in the fermenter when the bottling was finally complete.
We ended up with 105 bottles of Millennium Ale, which spookily — or perhaps just coincidentally — was the number of clean bottles we had. So there was no cleaning of any of the other 26 bottles.
ASIDE: The weekend of the bottling of the Millennium Ale was also a singles weekend. Oliver and Geoff had many bottles of homebrew that were the last of a particular batch and decided to drink them all this weekend. It was not, as our respective girlfiends initially thought and chucked a hissy fit at the suggestion of, a weekend where the ladies and the boys spent time separately.
The Tastings
2002 - bottle No.1 - 18.12.02
The Millennium Ale is the color of dark chocolate; a deep brown with a tinge of burgundy.
The beer is thick and syrupy, but the bitterness balances the sweetness well. It will be even better when the syrupiness and sugariness mellow. It is extremely bitter, but not harshly so.
It's got a good, if slightly sparse, head.
Geoff: “It's much better than I'd anticipated. It's well balanced and it's only going to get better.”
Lightly carbonated and almost no sediment, which is not surprising considering it was not primed and was racked twice.
It's like a botrytis wine; we couldn't drink a lot of it, but one glass is fantastic.
2003 - bottle No.2 - 29.12.03
Venue: Geoff's chambers in Melbourne
A big beer. Huge. Remarkable for its size, if nothing else.
Geoff: “It's gonna last 100 years!”
Syrupy. Tastes like molasses meets black currants. Light carbonation and little to no head. It's strong; we could taste the high alcohol content.
2004 - bottle No.3 - 14.12.04
Venue: Geoff's chambers in Melbourne
Getting better.
Looking and tasting like a more balanced beer.
Light carbonation. Fine, long-lasting head.
F---ing huge beer, but well balanced.
Enormous beer.
Taste: Blackcurrants and more blackcurrants, then dried fruit. Prunes?
Sweet, but not overly so.
We noted about the Millennium Ale Project: we only had a whole century to get organised.
A very nice beer.
A good after-dinner beer.
We were debating whether we should have hopped it more, but decided that we'd revisit that question in 10 years.
Outstanding.
Very syrupy.
2005 - bottle No.4
After believing for almost two years that these tasting notes had been lost to mankind forever, they turned up in late 2007 in a pile of beer-related papers Oliver had filed away (and if you'd ever seen the amount of beer-related papers Oliver keeps, you'd understand how easily these tasting notes became lost and marvel at the fact they were ever rediscovered). We're not sure it was worth the wait, but here goes:
One of the ladies commented that “It smells like Promite and Vegemite mixed together.”
The blokes said: The colour of dark chocolate and has no head. Smells like crushed currants and other dried fruit. Well balanced and syrupy. Lightly carbonated. Tasty.
Lisa's analysis was that “it's not a sessional drink”.
2006 - bottle No.5 - 22.5.07
Venue: Oliver's house in West Melbourne
Only six months late!
Viscous. Tastes like malt (which is hardly surprising). Not overly bitter. Intense molasses/golden syrup taste.
Geoff: “Hints of Bockin' Good Beer about it.” Oliver: “But in a good way!” (Familiarise yourself with Geoff's No.41 BGB on the Our Homebrews page.)
Negligible head, but that might be to do with the glasses, which were washed in a dishwasher. Lightly, but sufficiently, carbonated.
You couldn't drink much of this. One a year is probably about right. But that's not to say it's not an enjoyable, tasty beer.
We had this before lunch, and it went straight to our heads.
Definitely a once-a-year beer.
Geoff: “Needs something to cut through the sweetness. Something like a beef tartare … a bowl of meat!”
It's becoming more rounded, in the sense that the flavours are becoming more rounded. However, more bitterness would be desirable, to counter the syrupy sweetness. We're hoping, and are confident, that the Millennium Ale will mature nicely and become less sweet some time over the next 95 or so years.
LIQUID GOLD: The 2006 Millennium Ale revealed.
ANOTHER VIEW: Check out that colour.
ANALYSE THIS: Geoff scrutinises the brew.
SEDIMENTARY, MY DEAR WATSON: The yeast cake
on the bottom of the 2006 Millennium Ale bottle.
If you like the image above why not download it as your computer's wallpaper!
Just click this link, then right-click on the image and select "Set as desktop background" or similar.
2007 - bottle No.6 - 24.12.07
Venue: Geoff's house in Jan Juc, Victoria
Geoff and Oliver have half the Millennium Ale each, and this was from Geoff's cellar. Unfortunately, the cap has started to rust due to the sea air.
RUSTY: The sea air has got to the caps.
Any ideas about how to deal with this problem would be gratefully accepted. Is recapping then storing somewhere more appropriate the answer? Maybe some wax?
Anyway, on to the tasting …
Geoff: “Jesus f---ing Christ!”
It's dark brown with a hint of red, and more or less opaque. It smells of Pedro Ximinez black sherry and tastes warming (no doubt due to the high alcohol content) and like it's packed full of berries. It's rich and delicious and the closest thing to spirits or a liqueur we've tasted in a beer.
We reckon the Millennium Ale is starting to balance out, as this bottle is much smoother than we recall previous tastings being. It would be a perfect aperitif. Likewise, if you'd bought this at a bottleshop and it had been pitched as a dessert beer, our only criticism would be that the head retention is poor.
Overall, we're pretty happy.
DECANTED: The Millennium Ale is a dark, opaque bugger and, having just
been poured, has an OK head. This soon disappears.
ON YOUR MARKS: The beer is poured. The blokes are ready.
BOTTOMS UP: Oliver samples the 2007 Millennium Ale.
GOBSMACKED: Oliver in awe of the brew.
APERITIF, ANYONE? There's a hint of the Millennium
Ale's red colour at the top of the stem.
2008 - bottle No.7 - 27.6.09
Venue: Holiday house in Rye, Victoria
This tasting was long overdue, because of work and other commitments.
The reasonable success of the previous tastings and the belief that the Millennium Ale was getting better led us to believe that this would be the best MA yet. But this tasting brought us back to reality with a thud.
That it was the 30th (different) beer of the day probably didn't help matters, but there was absolutely no head and the taste was, well, not all that great. While the comments of the two female tasters Floss and Marcelle were a bit on the harsh side, this was definitely the most disappointing Millennium Ale tasted.
Geoff: “Can I say that the Millennium Ale is taking on (more) Bockin' Good Beer qualities. I don't think that the Millennium Ale is travelling all that well, Olly.”
Marcelle: “It smells like vinegar.”
Guest reviewer Floss: “Auaugh.”
Oliver: “A very disappointing experience. Let's hope this is a blip.
2009 - bottle No.8 - 31.12.09
Venue: Geoff's house in Jan Juc, Victoria
Geoff: “It is 38 degrees celcius outside. But if it was the middle of winter and you were sitting next to a fire and you'd just had a root and you were having a ciggie it might be all right.”
Headless.
Marcelle (wincing): “Oh, fuck.”
Guest reviewer Craig tried to say something nice: “I'm biased because I know the brewers.”
Craig's wife, Carolyn: “It smells like Vegemite or Bonox.”
Lisa, not holding back: “You can't expect the guest taster to finish it.”
Craig: “I'm not finishing that.”
Geoff: “It would be very nice with icecream. It tastes like black sherry.”
Oliver: “Yeah, we said that last year.”
It's extremely malty, but very bitter.
Oliver: “It does smell like vegemite. But it's quite tasty.”
We decided that it shouldn't be looked at as a beer when being drunk.
2010 - bottle No.9 - 12.12.10
Venue: Oliver's house in West Melbourne, Victoria
Geoff: “Are you sure you didn't pick up a bottle of Bockin' Good Beer by mistake!” (Yes, we know we've said that before. Don't know about Bockin' Good Beer? Check out Geoff's No.41 homebrew.)
Geoff: “It's not deteriorating. It continues to be hale and hearty.”
Intense grapey taste. Tastes like fortified wine. (Yes, we know we've said that before.) A complex beer. Very, very light carbonation.
Lisa: “Tastes like Ximenez that's gone bubbly.”
Marcelle: “It doesn't taste like any Ximenez I've ever tasted!”
Oliver commented that “It's actually a pretty nice beer.” At which point Geoff just looked at him.
READY: Just poured and asking to be imbibed.
DARK: The Millennium Ale is like a black hole;
light gets sucked in and can never escape.
FIRST SIP: Oliver begins tasting the ninth bottle of Millennium Ale.
RUBY RED: This pic taken outdoors shows the
real colour of the Millennium Ale.
2017 - bottle No.16 - 28.5.17
Oliver: I don't reckon we're going to be drinking much of this.
Geoff: Ooooohh, f---. It smells like petrol.
Oliver: I reckon it smells like ...
Geoff: Sump oil? Or a sweaty diesel mechanic's shirt?
Oliver: It has the appearance of prune juice.
Geoff: Ooooh, shit. Oh f---.
Marcelle: Are you enjoying that?
Geoff: No. It's disgusting. I don't know how to describe it because I've never tasted anything like it. I seriously feel like I'm about to spew. Jesus. Oh, for f--'s sake.
The yeast cake in the bottle was stuck firm, and like a black hole.
