Yesterday I wrapped up the first post in the Drink It You Idiot week with the suggestion I was really going to enjoy these seven days if all the beers were as good as that first one.

That first beer was the 2012 Stone Beer from Stone & Wood. And I can tell you they’re not all going to be that good. Yep, things have gone downhill.

Today’s beer is the Hahn Millennium Ale. To be fair I haven’t had this one very long – I found it in a bottle shop a few months ago. Having seen the occasional tweet or Untappd check-in, I assumed these people had bought their bottles ages ago and had been hanging onto them.

For that reason, the beer assumed a slightly mythological position in my mind. Like something I would never actually find or try myself. So when I saw it at a Cronulla bottle shop I just had to buy one.

As the name might suggest it’s a beer that was brewed in 1999. I don’t know too much more about it than that, but for a brewer then known for mainstream lager it was a bit of a step to brew something designed to be cellared. Who the hell would seriously think of cellaring a beer in 1999?

The label describes the beer as ‘‘a deep red ale with complex, toffee and spicy fruit characteristics’’ but I think its best years may be behind it. And I have the support of the Untappd crowd there – all the recent check-ins over the last year or so suggest they should have popped the cork a few years earlier.

Speaking of cork-popping, there was no noise or fizz when I opened the beer. When I poured it into a glass it looked like red wine. Smelt like it too, vinous, tannic and a bit dusty.

The flavour was of red wine first up – and I don’t think that was just the power of suggestion. There was also a real thinness in the mouthfeel too and some sweet malt notes. To be honest, it reminded me of sampling my homebrew before throwing in the yeast sachet.

Glad I tried it. But I won’t be swayed to buy another bottle should I spot one on the shelves.