You know your priorities are wrong when you see a sign saying “Licensed Sex Shop” in Soho and think “Oh good, that means they have a bar!”
Category: Essays and Aphorisms
Essays and Aphorisms: Shenanigans
Now you may get the impression from my writing that I am a very serious respectable journalist. Actually, that’s fairly unlikely, especially after the beer/sex act joke. Anyway, just in case anyone has made that mistake somehow I thought I would share some oddities from recent nights out.
It had been a quite fun night so far, my random writings and photo taking had resulted in a nice chat with the locals about what I was doing, and I had been making some recommendations of good whisky to try.
Then my good friend Dylan noticed they had something new. Some weird Jeremiah Weed drinks. Now one was kinda ginger and root beer styled and the other Sour Mash kinda bourbon styled. I was wary, and those many whisky bottles on the wall kept catching my eye. However I am nothing if not open to experimentation. So my tasting note done I decided to join them in sharing two bottles of these new beverages between us.
Dylan and Will started on the ginger one, and made vague appreciative noises.
Huh, now that’s a phrase that looks wrong out of context.
Anyway. I tried the Sour Mash one, reasoning it had a least a passing wave to my preferred style.
For feck sake why do I do these things?
It was as if someone had taken the vaguest whiff if bourbon and drowned it in water. If I wanted to ruin perfectly good spirits I can do that myself without having to get a fancy jam jar looking glass to do it with. Shortly after my two amigos decided that the ginger one wasn’t actually all that either, something I could have told them a long time beforehand. Then Dylan, very reasonably bowed out of drinking more than the small sample he had tried. With the reason being that he was the driver, leading to the following exchange
“God damn it, you ordered these pieces of shit and now you bow out?”
“Well yeah I’m driving”
“Ok. You have a good point. And we hate you for it”
“Well you wouldn’t want us to crash and die in a ball of flame”
“Yes, but only because that’s not the way we want you to die” “We have a list, a long one”
(DISCLAIMER: Despite the preceding piss take, we agree completely with Dylans choice and respect his decision. Drink driving is fucking stupid. Don’t do it. Seriously)
This was then followed by an example at the bar of exactly how bloody posh Bath is. A couple had come in and ordered Jagermeister Bombs, which if you are lucky enough to not know, is Red Bull with a shot glass of Jagermeister dropped in. By which I mean dropped in while still in the shot glass.
However this is Bath, so we couldn’t have that, no indeedy. Instead they dropped a shot glass of Woods 100 Old Navy Rum into a glass of Red Bull instead. A concoction rapidly called The Bath Bomb, or The Bath Dambuster instead.
All with the Star Inn’s amused bartender looking on and joining the fun.
Anyway, then I ordered a measure of Dalmore 15. The silliness didn’t stop, but at least I had quality whisky to enjoy it with.
So why am I writing all this? Because it’s easy on a night out to get lost in the wonderful whisky and great beer and forget – booze is great, but it’s the people that make it special.
Here’s to all you out there. Share a glass with me would you?
As is often said, brevity is the soul of wit. Thus I must complement the bartender of Brigantes Bar at York, who, when asked for a pint of John Smiths replied
“We don’t serve that shite here”
A true beer philosopher and bar hero. If any readers are from York, please raise a glass to this man.
Like this:
It’s a common problem. Anything far away looks cooler. It’s why people spend a vast fortune heading to other countries to spend time looking at art museums, architecture and scenery, cooing all the while. These self same people oft completely ignore the museums, architecture and scenery 5 minutes walk from their house.
All of which is a somewhat round about way of saying that after going on brewery tours in Belgium and Scotland, I finally went over to the Bristol Beer Factory for a tour recently.
The Beer Wanderer: Gibraltar and Gent.
So you are probably asking, why put Gibraltar and Gent together? Ignoring the fact that one is in Belgium and one right next to Spain, one of them is a city whilst the other is a, erm, country/British Territory I think, with Gibraltar as its capital. So what do they have in common? Well, they do both start with G, which surely is a good enough reason to group them together?
No?
Ok, heck then, they are two places I visited recently and never got around to writing up. View full article »
The Drinkers Journey
I have before compared the craft beer scene to the local music scenes of old. Whilst both have gained worldwide publicity through the growth of the internet, the beer scene still relies on a physicality that the internet cannot provide. This is most obvious in the USA where many craft brewers brew solely for their own state, or in some cases their own pub. The most extreme cases result in much in demand beers such as “Pliny the Younger” being available only in certain pubs once a year, or the yearly bottling of Three Floyds “Dark Lord”. Even e-bay and its ilk cannot provide access to tap only rarities with any assurance of quality. View full article »
Like this:
- For all the years English nobles spent trying to stamp it out, Whisky is the only class war I know that can cost 50K a bottle.
- It turns out “There is a beer for everyone in the world, and it’s just a matter of trying different ones until you get the one you like” is not accepted in court as a reason for replacing baby milk with Tokyo stout.
- Asking in a pub for “a beer” is like asking in a brothel for a “sex act”. Both show a lack of understanding of what you like, and are far too likely to end up with foul tasting yellowed liquid running down your neck.
Brewdog: Breaking The Ice: A Cold Weekends AGM
Brewdog: Breaking The Ice: A Cold Weekends AGM
Essays and Aphorisms: The Environment.
It’s never been hidden where I’m doing my tastings, from the half hidden kettle in the corner and a bottle of mouthwash, festival kegs or pretty barmaids, it’s always there in the photo. More than that I try to add in music listened to and the like, and I always have an urge to add more, to say what’s going on, the weather, who’s around, and so on.
Why? It’s hardly because any of you care if I’m buck stark naked, drinking whilst urinating from the top of the Empire State Building onto the appreciative crowd below. (Or maybe you do, if only to be glad that I’m not doing that and thus giving you a mental image you can never rid yourself of)
At the most basic it shows how much attention is being paid to it, a pint in the pub with mates is likely not going to be as lovingly examined as a bottle drunk at home in front of the fire, so it will most likely be somewhat less leisurely as to not be completely anti social. Though again, a group gathering with a shared set of pints discuss and laugh, sharing the moment and the tastes, sparking conversation and ideas that would have never occurred before. But there’s more to it than that.
So again why - why the where, the who and the when? Because it alters things, much as we would like to claim a pint is a perfect thing of wonder, and as a perfect thing, it cannot be altered from its perfection, that is quite frankly, bollocks.
A beer is suited to a time – there is no point breaking open a Good King Henry after six pints of lager, nor should an Aventinus Eisbock be appreciated in the midst of a football match crowd – but more subtly, a Hopback Summer Lighting seems out of place at winter, and the delicious subtleties of Oakham Asylum weep in the face of a greasy burger. A cold room is the bane of a subtle whisky, the list is endless. On the other end of the scale annoyingly there is the sickly sweetness that too many beers take on in a heat wave.
In face of all that, it’s important to let you know what’s going on, as it is a warning of what variations may be introduced, why possibly the review may be less than reliable for your experiences; if favourable, in what condition you should enjoy it (and yes by that I mean that Hair of the Dog beers are perfect when one is experiencing them sleep deprived, in Japan, after a pimp has unsuccessfully tried to get you into a club of questionable purpose).
Everything adds in its own elements, Brewdog Punk IPA is not just perfect with a bit of Propaghandi and one of my favourite appreciation beers. Its punch of flavour doesn’t need your attention to be obvious, so it can be appreciated when your mind is on taking the piss with mates over a fucked computer lying in thirteen pieces on the floor. Ulvers music complements any (normally high ABV) beer that leaves you staring at the ceiling entranced, and lost in intricate subtleties, and Tesco Value Lager is perfect for giving someone a vision of what hell may be like if they don’t change their ways.
So its important to know, and yet so often overlooked, are you in a pub cadging free drinks from strangers by giving them improvised tasting session, or arguing with some racist twat. Are both events one and the same? (Answer: Yes) Did the anger at such ignorant viewpoints combined with an appreciative crowd lead to somewhat more verbose waxing loquacious about beers in the vain hope to impress the crowd (Answer: Probably).
All these change how we approach a beer.
Yet we ignore it
So let’s call to memory, in 20 years time as your favourite beer passes your lips, remember that night, the perfect game, the lost or won argument, the friends and the loved ones.
Let’s drink to drinking being something more than just drinking.
(Thanks to Tanja for doing the editor work on the article)
