Beer Tasting

On Friday, the 8th of April, all ESSET members are finally done with all the exams and they got a nice beer tasting event to finally have fun and some stress relief. The essence members came together at the pub O’Meara’s, here the organizer, Michael, found a great deal with the owner to get 5 specialty, mostly Irish beers for only €12,50. The event started at 15:00 and as the head of the event, I was waiting outside of the bar when I saw Remko biking toward me. When we went inside, we already saw Nicki, Nisalyna and Josefine entering O’Meara’s as well. We all went into the back of the pub and sat down to wait for the others with a normal beer. Slowly but surely more and more people came and we all started to sit in a circle like a real Dutch birthday.

When around 12 people were there, we started on our first beer of the 5. This beer was the Guinness hop with 4,2% alc. We got a nice explanation about it from the owner of O’Meara’s and almost everyone liked this beer, as it was pretty sweet and easy to drink. We all toasted and found out that it was also Nisalyna’s birthday! For the next 4 beers, every time we toasted, we said it was for Nisalyna’s birthday which was really funny.

After around 20 minutes we got our second beer which was the Guinness stout. After another nice explanation and another toast, we started drinking it but not everyone liked this one. This beer tasted a little bit like coffee and it tasted a lot stronger than the one before. Personally, I liked this one, however, I would not drink this the whole night.

When we started on our third beer, the last two people joined and we all talked to each other, even to the people who barely knew each other before. The beer tasting really brought us all together and it was looking like a success. The third beer was the Kill Kenny and this beer was a unanimous tasty one. It was refreshing and very smooth. Personally, this was my favourite beer and I would definitely try this one again. Unfortunately, I dropped my full glass of beer but luckily I could share mine with Nisalyna and drink some of the leftovers from the previous beer.

For our fourth drink we all had the Cider Magners. Some students already had this one before and it was their go-to drink at the Irish pub. The Cider Magners, was a sweet, light and fruity beer and for me, it felt like a combination between beer and wine. In the meantime, we really wanted to play a game, however unfortunately, I had forgotten to bring my cards to the bar.

When we finished the 4th beer, some people started to get a bit tipsy and the atmosphere became better and better. The original plan for the 5th beer was to drink a Kwak beer. However, there was a problem with shipping this so the owner had a solution. For the previous 4 beers, we could all decide which one we wanted to drink again! I made an inventory about what beers everyone wanted and the results were pretty interesting. In total, we were with 14 people. 8 people wanted the Kill Kenny again (including me) 4 people wanted the Cider Magners again, and 2 people wanted the Guinness hop 4,2% again. When we got this one, we were all satisfied and talkative with each other. At around 5 pm I had to leave for my dad's birthday but I heard that many of the essence members went partying after and had a fun night!