Beer And Beer Drinking

[luka]

A few years ago i lost the ability to drink beer. i just couldn't do it. it wouldn't go down. i was never a big fan anyway. it's gassy, there's too much of it, you have to piss every five minutes, it's very unsexy, doesn't even look attractive, plus, and this is one of the big mysteries in my life, it absolutely smashes me. i can drink a whole bottle of brandy and be more with it than if i'd drunk 4 pints. 6 pints and i'm out of the game, it's all over. i'm also much more likely to be obnoxious. it makes my head cloudy and bleary. the other thing is, it akes my face fat. i get a little mini double chin and my cheek bones get obscured. i just drink spirits now days. i wonder if any one else suffered this misfortune. this is a general beer thread for people who want to discuss beer. scottie, he loves his beer, he always talks about it.


sometimes i might drink those polish ones that recently started appearing in eastend offies a while back, zyweick and that, but thats me trying to be different, ditto nigerian guiness, oh, they're strong too innit, so it's a cheaper way to get smashed.


talk beer here.

[jenks]

i couldn't do beer at all until i went to work in (what was then czechoslovakia), i ended up in a mining town on the polish border and the only pastime was drinking - seriously nothing else to do - czech beer did for my snake hips and since then i have become a dedicated beer drinker - interestingly(for me) this occured roughly at the same time as i stopped smoking dope.
one question though, why is this on the politics strand - doesn't bother me, just interested

[scottdisco]

as they say, i heart you so much Luka

just going out the door but wanted to be one of the first to respond since you so graciously namechecked me.

i find, these days (well i am an underweight 25), that, unless i'm drinking beer for several hours then about half a dozen jars is a comfortable limit for me too (for a start, the limit is about five or six to stay really appreciative of what i'm drinking, i find).

obviously if you're on an all-dayer or just start late arvo then you can pack loads of beer down before starting on the spirits. but it's important to eat.

Nigerian Guinness is quality, it is strong yeah, about 7.5 or so innit.

i've got to get me some of that but it's hard to come by in pubs a lot of the time (certainly American ones).

let's say, three beers i like a lot, FWIW
Abott
Krombacher
Robinson's Unicorn (Robinson's have about, like, literally 300 hostelries in the Stockport area and then quite a few more in the Manchester area but you don't really see 'em outside a small slice of northwest England; they make good, cheap bitters - this is their Best, 4.2 i believe, just a gorgeous simple quaffable drink - and such and sponsor the football team Stockport County; they do a great mild, Hatters, and a fearsome seasonal beer, Old Tom, eight and a half per cent ABV)

do people like all sorts of beers? or do you stick to lager? cask conditioned stuff?

do you like a nice pils?
do you drink much Belgian beer?
do you drink much African or south American or Asian beer?
American micro-fare?

i only found out the other day why a lot of American beer doesn't have the ABV on the label, incidentally (to do with federal regulations that were only repealed about a dozen years ago).

etc.
quality

Jenks
>one question though, why is this on the politics strand - doesn't bother me, just interested
perhaps Luka is thinking of the Workers Beer Company (or whatever they are called) and their Red Wedge politics, you always get them at Glasto

[luka]

wow! scott, you are a beer genius! i've never heard of any of those beers!

interested to see you drink bitter. that's almost unheard of in my part of the world, at least for people our age. is it common up north? i find it totally unpalettable. an aquired taste presumably, but not one i'm willing to suffer to aquire. any other bitter drinkers? if so state your age and the place you live and the place you were brought up. lager is the default option, but so often too bland for words. maybe in summer, if it's extra cold. so long as there's crisps to go with it.

it's on the politics bit for two reasons
1)there's not a food and drink section. (i think i'll start my cheese thread on the nature section)
2)i don't like the politics threads. they get on my nerves for all sorts of reasons, shoulder chips among them.

[egg]

interested to see you drink bitter. ... is it common up north? i find it totally unpalettable.

i love a Bishop's Finger. v common in sussex.

[simon silverdollar]

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.

i'm from the north west originally, right next door to scott, and bitter/real ale drinking is pretty common among the youth. i'm totally a bitter fan. it's the best consumable substance this country has ever produced- one of the few things that britain does better than almost anywhere else.
some of my favourites:
adnam's broadside [the top boy of beers]
green king indian pale ale
black sheep [unusual cuz it's quite sharp and acidic]
old peculiar [cuz it is]
young's double chocolate stout [this should be disgusting but it's delicious.
old porter [can't remember who does this one- i think it's a london brewery tho.]
old speckled hen.

we'll have to get together for another pub session, scott.

[mpc]

14 cans of red stripe and i'm anyone's...

[xero]

i used to drink bitter as a yoot (18 odd years ago, brighton) but switched to lager after one too many eggy pints. Why is it that bitter is more prone to this? - you very occasionally get it with lager but I remember it being really common with bitter. The beer would smell faintly eggy like it had gone off and tasted funny as well. You felt ill quicker than if you were drinking kosher stuff. A lot of people didn't even notice it (i suppose if you were on your 10th it didn't make much odds) is it something to do with dirty pipes? if so then the pipes of pubs in brighton in the eighties must have been amongst the dirtiest in the land. But Harveys is a good beer from that neck of the woods if it ain't off.

[fldsfslmn]

Of all the threads to stumble upon while I'm trying to dramatically curtail my drinking. I'm so thirsty now.

Where I live, the popular local beer is a wheat ale called Grasshopper. Ale is a bit of a misnomer in this case; it's piss-coloured, HIGHLY fizzy, and served ice cold. The pint is served with a wedge of lemon, which is more of an irritation than an appreciated flavour accessory for most. Ashtrays around here are always full of lemon wedges.

Here in the province of Alberta, we have one of those oil-mad, privatize-everything, eat-the-poor styles of government. They're more likely to fund new horse-racing initatives than put money into social programs. The noted ties between B1g R0ck and the Tory party have always been at the back of my mind, but I recently decided to quit drinking their products for good.*

http://www.canoe.ca/NewsStand/Columnists/Calgary/Michael_Platt/2004/11/18/719086.html (more about provincial politics and brewing, sorry it's neither exciting nor relevant to anyone who doesn't already live here)

*I did actually have a can of their Traditional Ale over Christmas, but I didn't pay for it. Should a boycott be total, or merely economic?

[scottdisco]

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!).

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

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). i did a google just now and it's no surprise that Labatt has a deal with the Budweiser (there's a bloke at work who slags off my mate for liking Oranjeboom and maintains Budweiser is preferable - now i'm not actually an Oranjeboom fan myself but really, c'mon...) people to distribute Bud north of the United States border. one shabby turn deserves another... ...perhaps there are good things from Labatts that they brew up now and again but really...

i know what minusone (i have never heard of Harveys so now want some!) means about bad pints but i suppose that is just down to if the publican knows how to keep it. the Cask Marque organisation is certainly something i wish i'd known about during my undergraduate days (student unions are notorious for purchasing the end-of- slops from brewery runs, to keep their beer prices so cheap).
http://www.cask-marque.co.uk/what_is_cask_ale.html

as for egg and Bishop's Finger, god that's so lovely. Bishop's Finger is just quality, there's no other word for it. the Shepherd Neame brewery is actually very well thought of up my way (north-west, like Simon). i used to work for the RAC in Manchester and a sales colleague was responsible for the breakdown motor insurance for the Neame fleet of vehicles.
we were all well excited about that one

i also agree with Si about British cask ale being the finest consumable substance Britain has ever done (Adnams is on the Suffolk coast and their stuff is quite, quite brilliant: the design on their bottles is excellent as a matter of fact). in fact i think Britain is the second finest beer-producing nation on earth (you'd get very few arguments against Belgium, but i think the preponderance of cask-conditioned ale in Britain puts it above other top boy nations like the Dutch, the Germans, the Czechs, etc.) - not that many countries around the world don't produce brilliant beer ('cause they do), but i'm just saying, is all.

yeah that Jamaican stout that Si mentions, it is well strong (think it's about 8?). i know of few places where you can get it at the bar but there again i drink in London once in a blue moon. actually without sounding overly nationalistic or anything like that, i reckon London might be the finest drinking city on earth.
well actually it's probably somewhere in Belgium all things considered (if not Brussels, maybe Antwerp or Bruges) but my half-arsed thesis runs thus:

- London is the centre of British drinking and so all the lovely lovely ales these isles produce can usually be found in London, at a pinch.
- London is also, of course, one of the most cosmopolitan towns on earth and so you can naturally find just about any global cuisine type there and pretty much most booze too, i shouldn't wonder (you can certainly get a lot of decent European, Asian, African and American beer in London).
- although many, many countries produce world-class beer, i think pretty much the best nations for beer production are a handful in continental Europe (those mentioned above, Austria, the Slovaks, etc.) and Britain and Ireland (the USA is the exception to this, but it's no surprise the USA brews so many great albeit sometimes hard-to-find beers, solely given the huge American population).
- so, therefore, all this wonderful beery goodness sort of commingles in London and so, voila!
- i suppose British licensing laws might sink my thesis.

what does anyone think?

i think mpc can drink more Red Stripe than me

P.S.
Simon, deffo to the sesh.
P.P.S.
i am taking Luka's question about bitter and the north of England so seriously i will give it a post of its own.

[scottdisco]

>interested to see you drink bitter. that's almost unheard of in my part of the world, at least for people our age. is it common up north?

can i just say before i forget that, in the UK, the worst pints i have ever had have been bitters. but also real ale has provided my most enjoyable drinking as well (i specify the UK as i have drunk a fair bit across quite a few states in the USA and endured some truly shocking beer, not least their mainstream beers, as well as Guinness that has been no better than slops).

but off the top of my head the worst beer i've ever had in the UK has been a dire pint of Theakstons Best (bitter) in a Birmingham Wetherspoons (Theakstons do Old Peculier that Simon mentions, which can be a sublime experience if it's kept well), an awful pint of Marstons Pedigree in my crappy estate local, and a Boddington's that a mate had in (funnily enough) a Manc 'Spoons (there again, 'Spoons are like student unions in how they manage to be so cheap with their ale). oh and a Guinness in Yorkshire once (Featherstone, it was poured like it was lager!).
oh Beamish Red used to be hit and miss back in the day (is that discontinued now? i used to switch between Beamish Red and Beamish Black and then one day never saw the Red again, and then from one day never saw Black again either).

so i'm certainly not under any illusions that bitter can be truly fucking depressingly shite, a truly awful tasting experience when it is bad.

but yeah Luka like Simon says i guess bitter is just cheaper up here (i believe that Lancashire including Greater Manchester is consistently said to be the cheapest region in Britain for the average price of a pint, overall, followed then by Nottinghamshire and Cheshire, i think) so that helps.
also the midlands and north do produce a lot of nice real ale.
i can't quite speak for Si as he grew up nearer Liverpool (you get some good ales round there) but growing up in Manchester means you are blessed for cask as there are four local major independent family brewers (and about another 15 or so very good quality micro-brewers in the Manc conurbation), that all keep prices relatively low (i think it's the cheapest city for drinking, overall; i mean you can find discounted social clubs and stuff all over the place that do raey cheap scoops but i think pound for pound Mcr is the cheapest town in the country for a pint) and all manage to knock out high quality bitters and such (they are Holts, Lees, Hydes and the aforementioned Robinson's of Stockport). they've all got shit loads of boozers in the Mcr area but not much at all further afield, so you can get a good feel for a decent bitter round our way before you are necessarily put off bitter by one too many bad pints of Worthington's or John Smiths Extra Smooth (the big-name caskflow bitters like those are pretty poor imo and that's being tactful, all things considered, although i'll drink 'em ).

P.S.
Boddies used to be pretty crap but it had a revamp a bit ago (a year or two) and it's a lot better tasting now. of course they (Interbrew, the owners, who are also responsible for the British taste for Stella) are moving production from Mcr to Preston and south Wales, so that's that up the spout... ...there was some blindfolded taste-test the local rag did (it was all legit, no media stunt) and about it was 80 or 90% (alright maybe as low as 70% but it was at least that figure, so quite emphatic, in all honesty) of testers tasted the difference between Boddies that was already getting pumped out in Preston and Wales, and the Manc stuff, preferring the original (it's all to do, they say, with a spring that runs underneath the Strangeways brewery on the north edge of town).
it's a shame that it's going as Boddies genuinely is like a cup of tea round Mcr but i'd be far more upset if Holts or Lees or Robis went under.

[xero]

- i suppose British licensing laws might sink my thesis.

these are in the midst of change although the media currently giving voice to everyone who'd like to derail the process

[scottdisco]

minusone:
>these are in the midst of change although the media currently giving voice to everyone who'd like to derail the process

tru dat

so minusone what is Harveys like (i found their website which seems quite nice)?
what is the average price of a pint?

i have never been to Brighton, not even for clubbing, can you tell us of some decent boozers in the town centre?
etc.

cheers.

[egg]

i have never been to Brighton, not even for clubbing, can you tell us of some decent boozers in the town centre?
etc.

cheers.

hm if you are coming to brighton you might as well go on to lewes which is the home of harveys and has some excellent establishments. brighton town centre is a bit 'pants' imo. hastings has possibly more pubs than people, more hardened drinkers and better scenery.

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.

[xero]

hm if you are coming to brighton you might as well go on to lewes which is the home of harveys and has some excellent establishments. brighton town centre is a bit 'pants' imo. hastings has possibly more pubs than people, more hardened drinkers and better scenery.

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.

brighton has a few decent boozers, more than most areas of london. But they are fast being taken over and gatroized - try trafalgar street, it's on the edge of the 'happening' centre so has changed slower. Also the heart & hand in north road has always been a bit rock'n'roll partly cos it has a decent jukebox. Mind you I haven't spent much time there in recent years so things might have shifted. Prices are obscene just as bad as anywhere else in this country, or worse

http://www.harveys.org.uk/

sussex ox! used to play in their garden as a young-un