Ste'S World Of Beer

Beer Enthusiast. Unbiased reviews. World beers & non-alcoholic /alcohol free beers. Beer label collector, 1L /40oz bottle collector, news, etc.
No craft beer snobbery!
I own all photos. I dont sell beer.

MY BEER STORY.

I'm Steven, from East Kilbride, Scotland. This page is dedicated to my love of beer. I love speciality beers, unique beers, Belgian beer, German beer, 1L bottles of beer and 40oz of malt liquor. I collect beer labels, litre bottles of beer and 40oz malt liquor bottles. I also want to brew my own all-grain beer from scratch one day, and start small-batch brewing. My dream would be to own a Pico-brewery or a Nano-brewery to produce and sell my own beer in very small batches.

The first beer I ever tried was in Spain when I was 11. I begged my dad for one, so he got me a non-alcoholic beer and I hated it! The second beer I ever tried was also in Spain when I was around 14 years old and it was San Miquel from a can machine and it was 100 pesetas, which was only about 60p. When I was around 16 up to my late teens, apart from the usual bottles of Hooch, Tropical Thunderbird, Hawaiian Blue MD 20 /20, and half bottles of Buckfast at the weekends, I mostly drank litre bottles of San Miguel, cans of Tennent’s Lager and Kestrel Super, and 1 can of super at 9% was lethal!

In my early 20's most of the beers I drank up until this stage were standard /commercial lagers, until I found a shop in Glasgow called Peckhams which sold different beers from around the world, so I started buying them to try. My dad suggested that I collect the labels as a hobby, so I did. I bought a poly pocket style scrap book and have been saving them ever since. I tried lots of beer from different countries, like Belgium, Germany, Holland, and from holidays in Spain I tried more Spanish beers. I liked trying to find special /unique beers and ones with weird colours & flavours, to add to my beer label collection.
In my mid 20's they discontinued 1L San Miguel in the UK and i was gutted! I knew that when I went to Spain on holiday I could buy them and 1L bottles of Mahou Clasica, so it was all good. The Bierhalle pub in Glasgow was one of my favourite places to drink. They have an extensive beer menu with lots of beer from around the world. I also found another pub in Glasgow called The Beer Cafe which also have a massive menu. I also ordered beer from Beers of Europe online. I started collecting 1 litre beer bottles and I found a shop that imported 40oz of malt liquor, so finding Olde English 800 was a dream come true, since I love 90's hip hop and Ice Cube used to drink it in the movie Boyz in the Hood! I went on to trying more 40 ounces of St Ides, Mickey's Fine Malt Liquor, Colt 45, King Cobra and Steel Reserve.

In my early 30's I went to my first beer-tasting at Peckhams in Glasgow and I got to sample around 40 beers that day and I learned a lot about different beers, styles and breweries - it was amazing. I stopped drinking standard lagers as much and got into proper beer. I went to a few more beer festivals over the years, like the Glasgow Green Oktoberfest & Bierhalle Oktoberfest, but they were more of a 'piss-up day' than a beer festival! The only good thing about the Bierhalle Oktoberfest was sampling a German beer called Weihenstephaner Vitus, which is the best German beer ive ever tried. I also learned more about the German purity standard and the ingredients they use in their beers. WEST Brewery in Glasgow also use the same purity standard as Germany. Im not really a fan of beer festivals that serve beer in plastic glasses or that serve other forms of alcohol, it makes the beer festival pointless. . . why go to a beer festival if you don’t like beer? I seem to prefer beer-tasting sessions rather than standard beer festivals.

In my mid 30's my sister and her boyfriend set up a beer tasting session at my cousins house and they got me into Belgian Blondes and Tripels, which I love the most to this day. They both regularly tour Europe and visit Belgium. They started bringing me back crates of Belgian beer, so i’ve learned a lot about Belgian beer since then. De Dolle Brouwers is my favourite Belgian brewery.

Then into my late 30’s I started this beer page and I just purchased my first all-grain beer kit so I can attempt to make beer by boiling the grains and doing everything from scratch. I plan on experimenting with different ingredients and concentrating on SMaSH beers, which stands for Single Malt and Single Hop, so I can get to know the different flavours and varieties of hops, and i’ve always wanted to make a mint beer! I went through a stage of drinking non-alcoholic beer in early 2017, but that didn't last! In late 2017 i visited my first brewery (Tennent’s) with my sister, which was interesting. I barely drank any beer through 2018, especially after meeting a girl who didn’t drink.

To round things up. . . I never really got into the whole 'Craft Beer Scene', because I wasn't really a fan of IPA's (hoppy beer), and I also found the majority of people to be beer snobs and quite pretentious, especially if a craft beer brewery sold up to a commercial brewery like InBev or Heineken, and people would boycott their beers and even some shops would stop selling it, and I think that's pathetic! I also find that a lot of people slag off mass produced beer and think that the people need ‘educated’, but people like what they like, each to their own. Personally i’m not really a fan of mass produced beer either, but i’ll still drink it and there are a few brands I do like, like Leffe, some lagers and most malt liquors. What people don't realise is that craft beer is becoming more mainstream than mass produced beer, especially Brewdog. Im not against craft beer, because in 2017 I started finding a few Craft Beer breweries that I do like, that aren't too hoppy. Beavertown which is an English brewery is probably my favourite, and they have fantastic artwork on their 330ml cans. Mikkeller which is a brewer from Denmark, a majority of his beers are brewed in Belgium. Amundsen Bryggeri from Norway is an interesting brewery, with nice can artwork and ring pulls which take the whole top of the can off, and its perfect to make a beer can planter with afterwords. I don't mind some hoppy beers, but i seem to prefer Belgian beer, German beer and beers that remind me of the nostalgic 90’s hip hop scene (beer in 1L bottles & 40oz of malt liquor).

At the moment (April 2019) my all-time favourite beers are:
De Dolle Boskeun, Dupont Avec les Bons Voeux, Westvleteren Blond, Saison Dupont, Omer Traditional Blond, Achel 8 Blonde, St Stefanus, Weihenstephaner Vitus, Schneider Weisse Tap 6 Aventinus, Beavertown Appleation, Lindemans Apple, Mahou Clasica (1L), Olde English 800 (40oz), Colt45 (40oz), and Mikkeller’s non-alcoholic range.