Michael Carøe Andersen

Tag: beer

  • How to pour an ale

    One of the things I love about being here in UK is the hand pumped beers or cask ales as they are also called. These are unfiltered and unpasteurised beer that are not drawn from the kegs or containers by carbon dioxide but instead by hand pump or gravity. In UK you just have to look for the Cask Marque sign and you know the pub serves some good, traditional cask ale.

    Greene King IPA Revolution

    If you go to the north of England you will get your pint like the one on the left, smooth and creamy. If you ask for a pint in the south you will get one like the one on the right, clean and crisp. The two pints shown are the same beer but poured in two different ways that produces slight differences in taste. There is more of an explanation here.

    Thursday Ann and I went to the February edition of London Bloggers Meetup. The meeting was sponsored by Greene King brewery who wanted to show of their new beer engine that could produce both Northern and Southern style pints. The head brewer John Bexon was there with another guy to tell about the beers and explained how to taste a beer.

    Greene King IPA Cask Revolution

    I enjoyed speaking to other bloggers and having a night out. The beer was very good I enjoyed both versions – and it was free which makes it even better. We had a great evening where we got away with goody bags filled with interesting beers from the brewery and tickets for a rugby game but more on that some other time.

  • Beer garden season has started in Prague

    Yesterday the temperature snuck up around 17 degrees which was enough to drive most of the Prague population outside after work.

    First day out in parukarka

    I went to my local beer garden on the hill of Parukarka (or is the hill called St. Cross, I’m confused?) 5 minutes from our place. There was a long line for the beer but eventually I got one just before they ran out of glasses.

    You buy the beer at either a small booth or inside a tiny pavilion pub and then you can take the the beer with you into the green field and hang around while watching the sun set over Prague. Here is a 360 shot taken outside the beer booth.

    Just before the sun set the pub ran out of beer. But that didn’t matter I still had my beer and went further up the hill to see the sun set behind the Strahov hill just to the left of the big castle on the other side of Prague.

    Sunset over Prague

    Did we just skip spring and went straight to summer?

  • Sunday Walk In Prague II

    About a year ago I made a blog post about a random walk in Prague from our apartment then. Yesterday I did the same from our place in Zizkov.

    Click on the images for more explanations of what and where they are taken.

    Statue in front of Zizkov city hall

    Construction in our backyard

    Old Skoda

    Construction at the memorial of Vitkov Hill

    National Memorial

    Czech flag

    View from Vitkov hill2

    Street art in Zizkov

    Cafe Fantova

    Wall in Prague

    Municipal House, Obecní dům

    Church of Our Lady before Týn

    Sad, Red Ballons

    Man on a bench

    Smile!

    David Cerny's Hanging Man (1)

    House decoration

    Art-Café u Irmy (3)

    U Rotundy pub (2)

    Infinity

    Narodni by nightfall

    Thanks for the inspiration for a coffee to Karen, a dark beer to Evan Rail and light beer to Ronald Pattinson.

  • Prague beer prices

    Working in Prague

    The good guys of the Prague search site Nelso has made an invaluable resource for people on the hunt cheap beer in Prague. The beer price heatmap shows the prices on beer at more than 250 bars in Prague. As I understand the underlying technology they have used a meteorological predictions based on the points to create the map – very cool. I guess that is also why all of Letna Park is expensive because of the 90czk beer at Hanavsky pavilion.

    Prague Cheap Beer Map: Jedno pivo prosim!

    By the way – the sweaty beer on the picture is a 0,5L Staropramen at 59czk from Cafe Savoy which puts it in the red.

    There is also a Danish edition for Øl i Prag.


  • Oktoberfest videoblog

    Three weeks ago Femi and I went to Munich for Oktoberfest. Boy was that a fun weekend – Stefan, who we met in Ostrava, hosted us and showed us around the city of Munich and Theresienwiesen were oktoberfest takes place.

    Group picture from our table


  • IAESTE Day 2007 in Prague

    Yesterday the local committees of IAESTE in Prague organized the annual IAESTE Day to promote the IAESTE programs at different universities across the world. I was happy they asked me if I wanted to give a presentation about how I had benefited from IAESTE. So I told the story of How I Ended Up In Prague Because of IAESTE (Some of it is on page three of this IAESTE UK alumni newsletter). Its been a while since I had done a presentation but I really enjoyed the afternoon talking with people about going abroad.

    Uuuuuuummm cake

    Even better was the evening were they had organized a banquette for business contacts, alumis and member. Good and free food and drinks is a great thing that I come across way to seldom.

    Mingeling people at IAESTE day 2007 Prague

    See more pictures at flickr.


  • The Swedish Invasion

    Back in 1631 a Swedish army invaded Prague and now they are back! – This time with a more peaceful aim.

    Backsell the Swede was an intern in Michigan at the same time as Femi and I and after spending a year in Germany him and Toni (another Swede) did a trip of central Europe before heading home.

    Its a weekend of Swedish style drinking, snus chewing snusing and partying sprinkled with a little touristy activities in the mix.


  • Updated my blog

    The castle from the village below

    While some of the weekend was spend with a bunch of IAESTE people at the Karltejn Castle, my hung-over Sunday was spend at the computer.

    Ive changed the look of my blog for a cleaner one. There are usually plenty of pictures in my post so I decided to go for a simple design with Depo Clean theme. Here is a few more shots from the castle.

    View from the far end of the castle

  • South Bohemian Weekend

    South Bohemian landscape

    Last weekend I joined the local chapter of IAESTE on a trip to Southern Bohemia. We were 50 people from about 20 different countries so there were a lot of different talks and a good atmosphere.

    Friday we drove to a camp site on the Vltava River were we camped for the night while making Czech sausages and drinking pivo around the camp fire.

    Camp fire

    Next morning we got up and got suited for a canoe ride seven kilometers down the river.

    Getting ready to get in the water

    It was a warm day with temperatures up to about 35 degrees so it was great day for cruising on the river. I think Dennis and I capsized 4 or 5 3 times during the sailing because we had to get through a couple of falls which we werent very good at.

    I ended up getting my camera wet so no more pictures from me that day. Instead Im borrowing some from Dennis who was a bit more thoughtful with his camera.

    We sailed until we reached Cesky Krumlov which is a really magical town with a huge castle overlooking the town. The centre of the town itself is also very beautiful. The city center is on the UNESCO World Heritage List.

    Here is one of Dennis pictures overlooking the town from the castle.

    Sunday we went to see the real Budweiser brewery in esk

  • Back to work

    Working in Prague

    The weather has been quite hot down here the past week and we have returned to work on the projects we got going right now. As it were Friday we figured wed try and work from one of the many nice cafes around here and ended up at Cafe Savoy where the picture above is taken.

    Since we arrived two weeks ago we have been living in a small one-bedroom apartment – but on Sunday we are finally moving into our own place – I cant wait :)