Happy Hour

Happy hour takes place every Friday in the department starting at 5:30 after the Geophysical Sciences Friday seminar. It provides an informal setting to allow graduates, senior undergraduates and faculty members to mix and chat with those members of the department who they don't necessarily see in the normal working day.

Happy Hour was previously run by Ali Gemmell and Ben Kilner but their tenure came to an end at the end of last term, after which I took over with Ben Fox. From the beginning of Hilary 2004, we introduced imported beers from all over the world as we take our regulars on a whistle-stop tour of the planet's more far-flung breweries. Each week we now provide one beer from our guest cellar and I'll bring you details of each one in due time.

This week's beer of the World:

Columba, Corsica, 330ml, 5.0% abv.

And so Happy Hour battles bravely on through into the Summer holidays. But worry not because, despite the lack of anyone in the department, we will still strive to bring those hardy few left behind the cream of World beer. Last week's Happy Hour was a themed French affair, and this week we're not traveling too far in search of our Beer of the World. The evocatively named "Columba" hails from the French island of Corsica and boasts a picture of a pretty fair damsel on the front. Now if that isn't reason enough to sample a bottle of the stuff then I don't know what is.

Columba is another one of our "bottle conditioned" beers meaning it has a healthy dose of yeast sediment suspended in the bottle. This results in a cloudy beer but this is completely natural and should not put off the punters. Aparently the beer is modelled on the Belgian "witbier" style and is delicately flavoured using wild Corsican herbs giving it a taste of summer and a nice light body. I'm reliably informed that this is one of Europe's undiscovered gems and many people have reported favourably upon it after sampling it.

Here at Happy Hour we are continually comitted to trying to bring our regulars drinks that are a little bit unusual from places that they might not otherwise have tried beers from. We believe this is an opportunity for our regulars not to be missed.

Served from 5:30 on Friday of 11th week (Friday 9th July).

Other weeks "Beers of the World"

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