I have been saying for some time that Bath has two superb independent bookstores, but it also now has a really good whisky shop: Independent Spirit. Indeed, I will be there tonight for a tasting of Japanese whiskies (so make sure you are following me on Twitter then). Chris and Christian, who run the shop, are super friendly, incredibly knowledgeable, and always happy to chat to customers. If you are in Bath, do pay them a visit.

They don’t only sell whisky, of course. I’ve been trying to learn a bit about rum from then in advance of meeting Karen Lord at Åcon. I can heartily recommend this stuff. But I can’t really afford to stock up on whiskies and rums, so mostly what I buy when I go into the store is beer. Which brings me to the picture at the top of this post.

Recently the store has started stocking beers from Bevog, a new microbrewery from Austria (specifically a town with the lovely name of Bad Radkersburg) which is making huge waves in the beer community (#3 in this list). They do have a pale ale and an IPA for those of you who like English beers, but much more interesting from my point of view are the oatmeal stout and the smoked porter. They are both delicious (though I do admit that I’m a sucker for anything smoked and your mileage may differ).

What’s more, all of the beers have superb artwork on the bottles. The picture above is from the oatmeal stout. The artist is Filip Burburan who is from Rijeka in Croatia (a city I visited last year). Croatian friends, you need to make more noise about this guy. He’s amazing. The signature character for the smoked porter is below.

While I’m talking about beer, I can also recommend Floris Mango. It is a Belgian wheat beer stuffed full of fabulous mango goodness. Of course the dudebro real ale fans are going to hate it. It is a wheat beer for a start. But I reckon it is absolutely perfect for a warm summer’s day. Delicious.