Finally a decent advent calendar

Back when I were a lad we had an advent calendar. We used the same one each year, it was made of layers of card with numbered doors on the front about the size of postage stamps. When the right day arrived the door would be opened to reveal a picture. It was not massively thrilling, but Christmas drawing closer was so I suppose it added to the excitement in a small way. After Christmas the doors would be folded back and it would be put away for next year.

Nowadays you can get advent calendars with toys, chocolate and booze behind the doors. Not the sort of thing I'd actually spend any money on but when I was offered a free beery one there could only be one answer.

As I usually do I enjoyed drinking the free beer. Particularly as since I finally found some German beer I really enjoyed I've been keen to learn more about the fourth ranked Great Beer Nation. This selection provided a great overview of German, and quite possibly Austrian, beers: pale lagers, dark lagers, wheat beers, bocks, dopplebocks and even a pale ale. Though as I don't know a much about German beer I can't really rate how respected the breweries are. Except for Salvator which I was very pleased to see as I'd even considered buying some shortly before the box arrived.

There's also a ludicrously thin beer glass that you won't be able to wash up unless you have a dishwasher but more importantly the Germans seem to be big on re-using bottles. So they're all thick bottles with easily removable labels are a welcome addition to my homebrew stock. And one of the bottles even came with a Santa hat:

Admittedly it's not quite as exciting as a pump clip with a flashing LED but it still amused me, cheers Kalea!