Categories
France

What they think of the English Pt. 1

Screaming monkey, Nimes Natural History Museum

You can’t turn on the TV in the UK these days without seeing a report about binge drinking, accompanied by footage of girls rolling around on the floor; young men fighting; and people vomiting or urinating in public places.

Well, it seems they’ve seen that footage in France, too. We asked for a second 250 ml bottle of beer to accompany our meal in a very nice Chilean restaurant in Nimes and the owner/chef/waiter nodded sagely, before saying sadly: “Yes, I hear you have problems with drinking in London these days.”

Irrelevant photo from the vast cupboard of stuffed monkeys at the Natural History Museum in Nimes.

Categories
beer in fiction / tv

Homicide: Life on the Streets

Hot on the heels of Sierra Nevada Pale Ale’s starring role in Knocked Up, here’s Ned Beatty as Detective Stanley Bolander in Homicide: Life on the Streets demonstrating his fine taste in imported European beers by sharing a six pack of Pilsner Urquell with Luis Guzman:

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In The Wire, David Simon’s critically lauded follow-up to Homicide, Detective Jimmy McNulty (Dominic West) is a fan of Murphy’s. What was that the Beer Nut said about ‘paddwhackery’ the other week…?

Categories
breweries real ale The Session

The Session: Brew Zoo X2

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This month’s session is hosted by Lyke2Drink:

Have you ever noticed how many animals show up on beer labels? We have lions and tigers and bears, plus various birds, reptiles, fish, assorted domesticated and wild animals, plus a few mythical creatures. For whatever reason brewers have a tradition of branding their beers using everything from pets to predators. The Brew Zoo will celebrate these lagers and ales.

A couple of Sessions back, we dropped the ball and ended up reviewing Sri Lankan Lion stout instead of a local beer as we were supposed to. We’re making up for it this time by reviewing the beers of a local brewery which also happen to fill an entire bird sanctuary. And with a whole bonus post about a bird-themed beer from Spain.

Cotleigh is a brewery based in Wiveliscombe, Somerset — a county most famous for being where Bailey was born and grew up, hence the claim to locality.

The beers in their range include Tawny Owl, Barn Owl, Buzzard and Peregrine Porter, amongst many other birds of prey.

We’ve tried them all at one time or another. Peregrine Porter is a lovely bottle conditioned porter/stout, which tastes similar to another fruity Somerset porter, RCH’s Old Slug. Tawny Owl is a bog-standard copper coloured bitter which we drank in a pub in Beer, Dorset, earlier this year whilst the locals discussed their haul from the wreck of the MSC Napoli (“I got two pair of Adidas”).

buzzard.jpgThe only one of their range we’ve got handy right now is a bottle of Buzzard (thanks, Bailey’s mum and dad). It used to be called “Old Buzzard” and is a bottle conditioned “strong ale”, although not really that strong at 4.8%. The ingredients include pale, crystal and chocolate malt, with Goldings, Fuggles and Northdown hops. It’s accented towards burnt coffee flavours, with some Rauchbier smokiness. It matures in the bottle, this one tasting much drier and smokier than the one from the same batch we drank in February. In the glass, it looks almost black, with a great big pillowy tan head which stays forever.

We guess it would go nicely with rich roasted meats… or with the big hunks of rotting flesh we’ll be feeding Cotleigh Buzzard in the Session zoo.

And, just in case we’re struggling to get a full set of animals for the Brew Zoo, Cotleigh’s Christmas beer is the cheesily named Reinbeer. Groan.

We got our bottle of Buzzard from the excellent specialist beer shop Open Bottles, in Bridgwater, Somerset (01278 459666).

++ STOP PRESS — BONUS POST FROM BOAK, OUR CORRESPONDENT IN SPAIN ++

My contribution from Spain is “Aguila” (eagle) from Amstel. I think this is still part of the Heineken group.

Two years ago in Cádiz (south west Spain) we ordered a couple of cañas and were taken aback by the tastiness of the beer — in contrast to the usual refreshing but bland fizz, this stuff had real body and flavour, rather like Meantime’s much lamented “Golden Beer”. We asked what it was, but because my Spanish was pretty crap then, I could only make out “a-GEE-la” or something like that. The next round he brought us something different.

A few days later, we spotted Águila (from Amstel) on tap (that´s AH-geela, a subtle pronunciation difference, possibly?), and obviously went for it. It was the usual bland fizz.

We couldn´t work out what had happened. Was it actually Águila we had in Cádiz? Was the stuff in this cafe just not right?

To this day, it is still a mystery. I´ve had plenty of drinks from an Águila tap but wouldn´t say there was anything special about it. Now, I´m not sure that there is a beer called Águila produced anymore — it´s not mentioned on Amstel´s official site, nor can you find it in bottles. But the pumps are quite cool, with a big eagle on top, so it´s not inconceivable that landlords decided to keep the pumps even if the specific product no longer exists.

I do still wonder what it was we had in Cadíz that day, because it was definitely different. I can´t think of any other beers that sound like “ah-GEE-la”, so I wonder if it was one of the last barrels of the old stuff? To further complicate things, I believe Águila was actually a brand taken over by Amstel, so maybe it was the original, which has now been replaced by the boring Dutch brew?

We might never know. Unless any of you guys can help…?

Categories
News

Guinness is good for you… again

guinness.jpgNew research shows that one pint of Guinness with a meal every day is good for you. Any more than that isn’t. It has an aspirin-like blood-thinning property, apparently.

Diageo are not planning to bring back the old “Guinness is Good For You!” slogan….

Categories
News

RIP Michael Jackson

As we did our rounds of the beer blogs today, we were shocked to learn of the death of Michael Jackson.

We can’t claim any personal experiences, but he was extremely influential in developing our interest in beer.  His “Great Beer Guide – 500 Classic brews” is possibly our most-thumbed book — it’s been on holiday with us countless times.

We liked his eclecticism, and his enthusiasm — he talked about what he liked, and not so much about what he didn’t. We didn’t always agree with his comments, but they always gave us food for thought, and often made us think twice about a beer we’d never have considered otherwise.

He’ll be missed.