By Boak.
It’s 2002 and I’m in a central London chain pub celebrating my birthday with a mixture of work colleagues and friends from the real world. At this time, you’ll normally catch me drinking Foster’s or bloody marys but it’s my round (hey, thanks, so-called friends!) and one of my colleagues asks for a Deuchars IPA. I am so intrigued by the name that I order one as well.
It’s quite nice – every bit as refreshing as the lager but with some interesting flavours that I find I want more of.
Over the course of the next year, I drink more, and start looking out for it in other pubs. My conversion to real ale has begun.
We’ve posted about how disappointing Deuchars usually is. Either it’s got worse or I grew out of it.
7 replies on “Memorable Beers #12 — Birthday Sophistication”
If there’s a more depressing beer to spot in a Scottish (or English for that matther) then I don’t know what it is. Bland beyond redemption.
I’ll drink Deuchars over 80/- any day.
It dropped dramatically in bitterness sometime around 2007 and has never been the same since. A shame because it was a fine, tasty beer that also managed to be massively popular.
The brewery denies any change, of course.
Me and some beer drinking friends spent a weekend in York in 2006 and Deuchars was consistently one of the best beers we encountered. Then, in about 2008, I found myself starting to ask landlords what was wrong with it, along the lines of, its not off, but it doesn’t taste like Deuchars.
Perhaps Barm’s is the explanation of that, and why I never seem to want to drink it these days.
I would still suggest some of my Fosters drinking acquaintances give it a go though!
A similar thing happened to me. Once I let nowt but cask bitter pass my lips. I was weaned on it. When other kids drank Ribena, I had a pint of hairy growler. Then I tasted Carling. A journey to Nirvana had begun.
My gateway beer was probably Deuchars IPA. And that was back in 2000/01. Definitely changed since then.
After being weaned on Guinness due to Irish parentage my gateway beer was a dark beer at a Firkin pub c.1996. I think it may have been called Dogbolter? I do remember it being strong but quite drinkable at the time.