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Beer history

Bloody great barrels

As well as being home to some decent pubs, Heidelberg also boasts an enormous barrel as a tourist attraction. In fact, they’ve got several, going up in size as you go into the castle.

The biggest (in the photo) has a capacity of 220,000 litres and is referenced in books by Mark Twain and Jules Verne, among others. However, it’s a tiddler compared to the porter barrel that burst on Tottenham Court Road in 1814, drowning seven people. Stonch wrote about that here.

Apologies for the lack of blogging action recently and in the next few days. We’re mostly drinking mass-produced lagers in the sun, so not a lot to write about really.

10 replies on “Bloody great barrels”

Oh God, not you guys too. Is there no such thing as thirst-quenching summer ale anymore?

That is one sodding huge barrel. 387324 pints – you’d be hard pushed to flog one of those inside a week!

We tried to drink four thirst-quenching summer ales in a row last night and all four were either skunked, pasteurised to Hell, or just had rubbish recipes. So we chucked them away. A chilly Svyturys Ekstra, though, went down very well…

Nice to hear that Lithuanian beer industry has some impact on reducing London heat, however we strive to avoid this high-gravity product back here in Lithuania.
Still I think I support those ideas of considering some mass-produced beers as OK as well as some wanna-be-crafty beers as crap 🙂

I love drinking thirst-quenching ales. Unfortunately, in this heat it becomes obvious that many pubs do not have particularly sophisticated cooling systems for their cellars… I’ve had a couple of really rank pints in usually reliable places in the last week.

Huh. Warm beer in London is all too common regrettably. I usually give up on beer drinking in London when it’s hot. You might as well chuck your money away in a lot of places.

Summer Lightning was one of the first beers we fell in love with until, a couple of years back, we bought a whole box at Majestic, and every bottle was off. We’ve not had any in decent nick for a while. Must get hold of some and give it another go.

I’ve had Summer Lightning in the pub this week, and it’s flown out – so much so I’ve run out, bar one cask held aside for a party on Sunday…

We’ve not had any problems with our cellar (traditional Victorian with a big fan cooler) and the ale has been fine. The issue is often not the cellar, but the fact that people drink less ale in summer. That means you’ve got a greater chance of ordering an ale that hasn’t been pulled through for several hours, meaning you’re served the contents of an uncomfortably warm line.

Nothing like a glass of cheap Vietnamese lager on a hot day. Or a pint of IPA, if you can find it.

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