Beer And Beer Drinking

[sufi]

well, me i'm really not a drinker, you know i'm zoot&bifterite, & if i drink i'm better on spirits or stout, at least for the first couple, & by then i'm away on the rampage & it's too late to care....
anyway, here's me 2p:

a lot of african & asian lager imho seems to have a lot of ethanol or something, altho is nae bad, especially the xport, tastes like bananas or coconut to me? mmmm


recently been seeing melotti around the place, from the eritrean brewery who also do lovely rhum, arak & gin

that said, ethiopian traditional beer is good too, they have tej - made of honey (like mead) which you can get in london, and tella which is like stout

lush

(dunno if it was D&G, but there used to be this great jamaican alcoholic ginger beer called REDRAW, which was wickedly spicy, and dyed yer gob red, ain't seen itt about for ages, i think it got phased out by alcopops - shame)


yewkay beerz:

fuking rotten man - nasty nasty toxic beer, responsible for the decline in drinking culture, death of saturday nights, rant rant,
no wonder they call it the wife-beater yuk
gimme a nice (brewed in bedford), ta very much.

nice pint o bass that 's another matter - anyone who say they don't like bitter should try it (....served by the jug, upstairs in the star...) mmmm creamy, look for the red triangle

... reckon rewch'll be along in a bit to recount a few tales of old tom....

[turtles]

Ahh, beer. Personal expereince seems rather contrary to some people's here, in that I could drink beer all day and not really get too smashed. Though peeing is an issue. Not to mention the beer shits the next day...

As for the canadian beer scene, agreed that labat blue and moslon canadian are pretty dreadful, especially blue. One of the most terrifying beer experiences was going to montreal this summer and finding that the popular beers were blue dry (a stronger version of blue) and molson ex. my god they were terrible.

Round Vancouver way, we do drink some Big Rock, though I think it's also a lot of Okanagan Springs (Pale Ale and Lager) and lots of Granville Island Brewery (Lager, and oooh the hefewiesen they make! so good!) as well as Sleeman's Honey Lager. Though of course Canadian is omnipresent...also, I like Stella! But maybe that's cuz my dad's german, so I was raised on stuff like Warsteiner, which I aslo quite like.

Lastly, I knew an engineer who used to work designing malt-houses (i think that's what they're called), the pre-brewery part of the beer operation. Anyway, he swore that beers like bud and miller genuine draft and such were made with rice instead of barley. Anyone care to confirm/deny?

[scottdisco]

egg:
>in fact why not wander by train or with chauffeur along the sussex coast taking in all three, as you will find some excellent real ale along the >way. a driver would be best as you could stop at all the places in between off the a27 like the giants rest and sussex ox.

excellent, excellent. i'll have my man Cookie make up a list and we'll be off
Hastings sounds like a laff, certainly if it's anything like Dover ["six pints of bitter please, because we're northern"].
the heart & hand sounds decent btw minusone
incidentally i have a pal from Bournemouth who is forever complaining about the disgraceful state of near-three-notes pints round his way. mind you, Badger ales are the scoopage of choice in that neck of the woods so it can't be all bad (except when it's blowing up a Force 8 gale at Poole harbour and you're trying to change pubs, sez my correspondent).

loved sufi's visuals post.
it's hard to get African beer in the Mcr pretty much fullstop apart from in restaurants like Out of Africa and the like; there are also only literally three African eating/drinking establishments AFAIK (AFAIK does not count for much in this case, admittedly) in the entire city (there are a lot of Afro-Caribbean eateries and caffs and whatnot). perhaps i should investigate me some tej or tella whilst in Chicago, as there are enough Ethiopian scranneries round here.

i do like Singha me, oh yes.
all the really big Asian beer names (in UK high-street terms i mean) i wuv, Tiger, Cobra, especially Tsingtao which i really am loving.

i must say i cannot really get with the Bass programme.
i don't rate it that much, i must be honest, and i've certainly been on the piss in Burton, so i must be missing something. most tastes have to be acquired and i certainly respect Burton's ale histories, so i dunno. it's another one i have chalked down in a mental notebook.
the thing that strikes me as strange(ish) about Bass is it is very popular in the USA, marketed well over here, slick website, etc. (they seem to go for the merrie olde Englande thing).
i've tried it enough times in the USA out of interest and i can honestly say, my prejudices apart (i think!), it doesn't seem to travel very well (well that's stating the obvious, as what Brit-ale does).
so i'm a bit mystified, in all honesty.
just on the America loves it side of things, i mean.
still, i know Anglophilia can be quite a big thing right.

bipedaldave:
>Ahh, beer. Personal expereince seems rather contrary to some people's here, in that I could drink beer all day and not really get too >smashed. Though peeing is an issue. Not to mention the beer shits the next day...

beer trots can be appalling with some bitters, that's for sure
if you drink beer all day you'll not get smashed no, that's right, cause the all-dayer thing comes into effect, and you just boss it.

Montreal is a surprise.

i want to ask if there is a difference in, say, north American and British drinking culture, in terms of speed and whatnot. i was at a Indiana brewpub once and tried three pints of three of their different ales (an IPA at about 6% was the best) over about an hour (i ate lunch too). when i went to order the third drink the waitress made a crack about my double-bagging (or double-handing or something) the beer.
i was all 'nah, just wanting to try your fine wares, and this is normal speed back home'.
i mean, weird huh?!
perhaps that says more about the Midwest than anything else...

bipedaldave:
>Lastly, I knew an engineer who used to work designing malt-houses (i think that's what they're called), the pre-brewery part of the beer >operation. Anyway, he swore that beers like bud and miller genuine draft and such were made with rice instead of barley. Anyone care to >confirm/deny?

Bud certainly has rice added to it, for crunch (i remember reading some piece once where the St Louis baseball team the Cards had their guys squeezing cups of rice for pitching practice to strengthen fists and whatnot but it was a commercial tie-in with Anheuser-Busch) or whatnot and to help the flavour zip along (or so i believe), so perhaps Miller-styles are the same?
i don't know, but wouldn't be surprised.
Budweiser and Miller beers all have that very crisp taste. in fact i just checked the Bud site now (cause i'm sad) and it makes a virtue of their addition of rice to the process ('not all breweries do this' etc.)
so in the case of Bud it's just an addition (there is still barley involved). i dunno about Miller. merely generalising in a very sloppy manner, i wouldn't be surprised, cause like i say i guess MGD and Bud etc. all taste fairly similar, i.e., i mean in that extremely crisp and clean manner.

btw, merely on name alone, Okanagan Springs sounds divine. is that a town in Vancouver Island or something?

one of the Freaky Trigger people called Warsteiner Warstarter the other day, which i'd never heard before. i like it

Stella actually seems esteemed highly in the USA (i'm assuming perhaps similar in Canada?), well in my very limited experience. well a lot more highly than in the UK (Americans who don't know of the wifebeater nickname - given what a 'wifebeater' is in the US - are amused when informed, in my experience) is what i mean.
i mean, it's a competent lager innit with a bit of the ol' self-fulfilling-prophecy in the 'causes balloonery stakes'. out of the big names Krony b is deffo preferable, although i must admit i'd probably strike out for Artois over Carling, Carlsberg, Harp, Fosters, etc.
but that ain't saying much is it?
actually Carling over Stella, not sure about Carlsberg.
as for Harp, it's nice enough but stick to the stouts, Arthur.

perhaps - as i say, this could be my very partial reading - wifebeater's relative critical popularity this side of the pond is down to a general lack of decent continental European lagers outside of specialist brewpubs or German/Belgian-styled bars?

sorry to bang on, but it really does interest me.

[fldsfslmn]

actually fldsfslmn (i think you're alright just on the economic boycott), that article you linked to is very, very interesting (i've just mentioned it on my blog!).

The article I referenced was actually the wrong one (sorry!). I meant to link to an article from the Edm0nton Journal (which I couldn't find) that mentions the same statistics, but doesn't end up feeding right back into the hands of the C0nservative Party of Alberta. The Journal article cites another upstart Calgary brewer, Mountain Crest, who doesn't appear to be benefitting from these "tax breaks." Like the Sun article, the Journal reminds readers of Kle1n's friendship with B1g R0ck boss Ed McNa1ly, but in the Journal it is not glossed over. The Journal also reminds readers that Kle1n's daughter is a high-ranking executive at B1g R0ck.

I'm quite certain that Alley Kat, an Edmonton-based brewer, has been seeing none of these benefits. Alley Kat, "tax breaks" aside, has been hastening its own demise by refusing to produce and market an instantly recognizable brand for their lager. "Charlie Flint's Original Lager" sounds like you need a handlebar moustache to enjoy, and it's sold practically nowhere. It's not all bad branding, however, and their Aprikat -- an apricot lager, if you can believe it -- is an absolute coup, but unfortunately it's far too light and sweet to be appealing at any time other than the two months of the year where Albertan weather is warm.

The problem is that Edmonton elects practically NO Conservative members to the Legislature. You can see where this is going, right?

Well, here comes a hopeful gentleman. The full text from this article can be found, courtesy of the CBC, at http://edmonton.cbc.ca/regional/serv...-beer-20041230.

Edmonton - An Edmonton businessman is hoping to go head-to-head with Calgary's Big Rock Brewery with his own homegrown quality ale.
Todd Gajek, the brains behind Maverick Supreme Lager, says he's been brewing the idea of an Edmonton-based beer company for four years now.
He says that dream will come to fruition in April when the doors to his microbrewery open at the old Cigar Factory located in downtown Edmonton. Gajek says he wanted to give his company high visibility, which is why he chose downtown.
"We're going to encase the whole thing in glass, so as you're walking by or driving by you can see the whole brewing process at a single glance," he said. [Joke's on him, nobody goes to downtown Edmonton! --fldsfslmn]
Gajek is originally from Calgary so is well aware of the competition he'll be facing from Big Rock. He hopes his own specialty brew will be able to chip away at the market share and eventually become a tourist attraction.
He says the brewery will focus on just one beer, the Maverick Supreme Lager, aged an extra 45 days near freezing temperatures.

Well, I like the idea of of focussing on the lager first, which is what Albertans mainly drink. But Maverick Supreme? I might as well just stop shaving right now...

do you like Grasshopper? i'd be very interested in your views, especially as i've never had it.

It's like a pale ale (in terms of flavour and body), but with a more golden tint. And as I mentioned before, it's highly, highly carbonated. The hangovers are horrific, and the smell of lemon juice on my hands in the morning is enough to make me throw up.

skimming over provincial Canadian taxation, i feel something we can surely all agree on is that the main products from both Molson and Labatts are piss-poor (Labatt Blue is fucking appalling).

Yes.

[fldsfslmn]

Oh, and I should mention that the best beer in Canada doesn't leave the province of Québec.

[turtles]

Oh, and I should mention that the best beer in Canada doesn't leave the province of Québec.

Are you refering to Unibroue (wittily referred to by my buddy and I whilst in montreal as unibrow)? They do make a really wicked apple beer...I'm not usually one for fruity/novelty beers, but that stuff is outstanding. Drinking that while smoking some apple-flavored tobbacco from a shisha (sp?) is heavenly. They've actually started selling some at liquor stores here too. And yeah, montreal's taste in beer might well have just been my experience mostly hanging with guys from a couple of little towns outside of montreal (forget what the area's called, along the St. Lawrence). But then again the Labatt family was from Montreal. I dunno, I can't have been the only person to drink beer in montreal...

Anyway, did not know about the Big Rock-Ralph Klien connection. will have to start boycoytting those bastards now.

scottdisco:
The Okanagan is a region in the interior of bc, mountainous, and dry, semi-desert. Not too many springs there as far as I know. but the beer is good.

There's actually a fairly large selection of the german/belgian/continental europe beers here, in fact far greater than the selection of english beers (i haven't heard of/tasted many of the beers mentioned here). but yeah, stella, warsteiner, grolsh, pilsner urquell, (plus the obvious becks & heineken and bunch of other stuff), all very common here. a 4 pack of warsteiner tall boys is actually cheaper than a six pack of canadian oddly enough...

As for drinking speeds...i think it's very much dependant on the type of establishment your in. restraunts are for eating, pubs for drinking and certainly a different pace is expected of people. Brew pubs, IMHO, fit some where in between, though i think getting comments for "double-fisting" (perhaps that's what said?) definitely has at least something to do with the midwest. 3 pints/hour seem entirely reasonable to me...but then i'm rather biased towards drinking...

[egg]

egg:
>in fact why not wander by train or with chauffeur along the sussex coast taking in all three, as you will find some excellent real ale along the >way. a driver would be best as you could stop at all the places in between off the a27 like the giants rest and sussex ox.

excellent, excellent. i'll have my man Cookie make up a list and we'll be off
Hastings sounds like a laff, certainly if it's anything like Dover ["six pints of bitter please, because we're northern"].

in fact a lot of northerners are forced to move here when coming south due to the fact that your northern 'pound' doesn't seem to go as far round ere

i must say i cannot really get with the Bass programme.

ah but shandy bass, surely....

perhaps - as i say, this could be my very partial reading - wifebeater's relative critical popularity this side of the pond is down to a general lack of decent continental European lagers outside of specialist brewpubs or German/Belgian-styled bars?

which reminds me - although i have little time for lager - that drinking heineken on amsterdam campsites is good.

[matt b]

what's that jamaican stout called? 'dragon' or something? it's about 12%. it's like guiness but it really fucks you up. it's quite fun.

as the old rasta geezer at the hi-lo in oxford used to say: 'dragon stout go down like silk, hit you like steel'. truer words...

guinness export is similar, minus about 4 teaspoons of sugar.

crucial brew is the lager equivalent.

bitter has to be properly looked after and cask conditioned to be nice. round here (leeds) tetley's, black sheep and old peculiar are favs.

[Backjob]

with but only if I'm in a , not in a bar. In a bar it's gotta be:


with

(not anymore, not anymore)

[sufi]

gong xi fa cai, backjob!
9th feb no?

[simon silverdollar]

as the old rasta geezer at the hi-lo in oxford used to say: 'dragon stout go down like silk, hit you like steel'. truer words...

guinness export is similar, minus about 4 teaspoons of sugar.

crucial brew is the lager equivalent.

bitter has to be properly looked after and cask conditioned to be nice. round here (leeds) tetley's, black sheep and old peculiar are favs.

-you've been to hi-lo's? that's supercool. i used to like go there when i was at oxford. i liked the way they gave you plantain sandwiches whenever you ordered a drink. also the rasta guy and his wife used to have really full-on domestics right in front of the customers. it got quite intense but was entertaining.

[matt b]

i've spend new year's eve at hi-lo in the past (the countdown was done by their 5 year old son- very funny indeed) a very messy night.

its a place of legend (in oxford at least) for SO many reasons:

1) prices are based on your percieved ability to pay- if you look rich you get charged loads more. the more you go, the less you pay (if they like you).

2) the husband does nothing but do the drinks orders and tinker with his soundsystem (and commeces to play thundering reggae). considering its been there 20 odd years, you'd think it would be tweaked enough by now.
incidently he is/ has dj ed at the co-op hall recently- a new career beckons

3) social services used to get regular complaints about his kids openly urinating in the street.

4) it has won awards form radio 4's 'the food programme' for the best west indian food in the uk.


over christmas, a friend told me that its becoming more of a drinking establishment than a restaurant and the wife has left. don't quote me on that though.

when were you at oxford then simon?

[stevienixed]

"do you drink much Belgian beer?"


i find it quite funny americans speak so highly of stella artois as it's considered to be a very common/lo quality beer in my country. the best pub is in bruges: they have a couple of hundred belgian brewed beers. further down there's a jenever bar. hmmmmm.

[Rambler]

Adnams, Adnams, Adnams

Best if you go over to Suffolk to drink it; most London pubs ruin any decent beer cos they don't clean their pipes. Fisherman is lovely - I think it's called Fisherman because it looks and tastes like the tar they paint on boat hulls to waterproof them, but it goes down nicely.

[Rambler]

Does anyone else get 'Stella fear'? Don't know what they put in it, but it's guaranteed to make me feel rough the next day, even just a pint. Horrible stuff.