In the latest edition of James and Oz Pretend to Argue about Booze, a man told them how to drink Guinness properly. He insisted that you “pull the beer through the head”.
Confronted with a sparkled pint in a pub in Cheshire recently, I thought I’d try the same trick. So, I actively supped, rather than just pouring the beer in through my horrible great cakehole.
It worked.
I got the benefit of the pillowy head, but the beer came through loud and clear — not muted, or subdued. I left the head behind in the glass, where it belongs, making my pint look nice.
It’s odd to find yourself rethinking something as natural and instinctive as the act of taking on liquid through the mouth, but I guess an obsession with beer will do that to you.
Incidentally, we thought Oz and James were pretty dreadful last night, although it was worth putting up with 25 minutes of self-indulgent drivel to see the Beer Nut and Bionic Laura on our screens.
8 replies on “Active drinking”
Yeah, from stuff I heard surrounding the filming, the show promised a hell of a lot more than it delivered. But I will not be an armchair TV producer.
I also learned last night that Richard Fox was pretty livid with the way his show was cut together. That spares us a second series, I suppose.
Are you trying to tell us that you need a BBC special to show you how to drink beer properly?
Yes.
Their seeminglyt endless guffawing over the sat-nav made me kick my TV screen in. Nearly.
We calculated that they spent 10 minutes at Guinness, 15 minutes arguing or mucking about, and only 10 actually talking about or drinking interesting beer. Calling Beer Nut “the man with the pink head” was quite funny, though.
Funny how the Guinness guy said drinking the head itself would be too bitter. In Guinness’s case – if only.
As for leaving the head. No. Don’t do that. As for the Beer Nut, I don’t recall his head being THAT pink, but maybe it pinkens up a bit when boozing or under TV lights?
Or when threatened, or hiding in blancmange.
Strange that they didn’t mention that Oz’s oddly-posh country cousin who happen to show up is actually a very famous journalist and used to present Newsnight.
It was the studio lights on the beer nuts head! For a show not about one un-named product it leaned fairly heavily on that product…
I did like the hardware shop pub, I was there a few years ago and thought it was an amazing place. Being able to drink while you buy nuts and bolts is pretty strange. There are a few of these strange old pubs left around the country you just have to know where to look. My favourite is the one where I had to wait until the football scores were over to get my hot port. There was only one plug so they waited till the news was over then unplugged the telly to put the kettle on.