Categories
Generalisations about beer culture pubs

A classic cold beer

A conversation between punter and barman overheard in a pub recently.

Man of indeterminate European origin

This time, I want a different beer. I had this last time [gestures at ale pump] and it was weird. It wasn’t — I’m not complaining — it just wasn’t really properly cold.

Barman

Ah, yeah, that’s British ale. It’s not really meant to be cold, just cool.

MOIEO

Oh, I get it. But it’s yellow, so I was confused. OK, this time, I just want a proper classic cold beer.

Barman

We’ve got a lager from a small German brewery…

MOIEO

No, just like, a classic cold beer. Fosters or something like that.

Barman

OK, there you go.

MOIEO

That is beautiful. Beautiful! Frosty cold. Just what I wanted. Thank you so very much.

Categories
Generalisations about beer culture

The tyranny of the ticking bug

We’re not Tickers, although we do understand what drives people to pursue an ultimately doomed, obsessive-compulsive mission to drink a bit of every beer in existence — it’s not like we haven’t spent whole holidays haring from one pub to the next, drinking halves of 10 different beers in each and, at the end of it all, wondering if we’d actually had fun.

On holiday in Carbis Bay, Cornwall, last year, it took us a day or two to realise there was no really exciting beer around and just relax. We enjoyed a few pints of Tribute here and there, picked up a few interesting bottles (once we’d stopped looking) and, y’know, made something other than beer the focus of the holiday.

Similarly, on our recent trip to Haworth, we kept coming back to the Fleece for Timothy Taylor. We could have tried a few more beers we’d not had before but, frankly, didn’t want to waste our time when there was something so good right at hand.

The only problem is, you don’t get much ammo for a blog that way.

Categories
Generalisations about beer culture real ale

Control beer

noun. A beer so familiar and consistent that it can fairly be used as an indicator of the quality of an unfamiliar pub. For example, Young’s Bitter.

Categories
Blogging and writing Generalisations about beer culture

It's only beer

Does anyone else get fed up of being told “it’s only beer” and not to take it too seriously?

Most people with hobbies know that the subject of their interest isn’t that important in the great scheme of things. Global financial crisis, climate change, careers, family — those are serious.

In our case, beer is something in which we’ve chosen to indulge our interest just seriously enough to occupy a few of the spare hours when we’re not worrying about all that other stuff.

We take lots of other things just as seriously, too — Bubble Bobble, the Beatles, curry, spaghetti westerns….

What’s the point of a hobby if you don’t thrown yourself into it?

Categories
Blogging and writing Generalisations about beer culture

Rants and eulogies

Pete Brown has written a superb rant about the many headed beer industry. Read it here.

And then, for something completely different, a nice pair of posts on Pencil and Spoon, one where Mark writes about his long suffering missus, and then the right of reply from the long suffering missus herself.  Other long-suffering beer widows have commented.

This could run and run.