Beer?

[John the Monkey]

Do you wear the crown when drinking beer or just when you go out?

Is it a small crown, or a faraway crown?

 

[smutchin]

Drinking a very strange Spanish beer. I think it's off - it's flat and has a sour vinous taste. Seems to go quite well with the roast beef we're having for dinner though...

 

[User169]

MODS!! grapejuice alert.please delete filth. Think of the children.

 

[threebikesmcginty]

You're dead to us smutch.

 

[smutchin]

It's quite a novelty drinking this stuff for a change. I didn't buy it, I was given it. It would be rude to use it to clean the drains.

Back on topic, I went to the shiny new Curzon cinema in Canterbury last night. It's a proper grown-up cinema with a bar. Hurrah! However, the only beers they had were Peroni and a Swiss lager called 1936. It has a nice label, I'll give it that. As a drink, though, it's nothing special whatever the blather on their website would have you believe. Lovely cinema but I shall have to have words with the manager about getting something behind the bar with some flavour in it.

 

[threebikesmcginty]

Did someone say something?

 

[threebikesmcginty]

Back on topic, I went to the shiny new Curzon cinema in Canterbury last night. It's a proper grown-up cinema with a bar. Hurrah! However, the only beers they had were Peroni and a Swiss lager called 1936. It has a nice label, I'll give it that. As a drink, though, it's nothing special whatever the blather on their website would have you believe. Lovely cinema but I shall have to have words with the manager about getting something behind the bar with some flavour in it.

You'll need to pitch this to them carefully smutcharoonie, don't go recommending one of your faves that no one but you then buys unless you're in there every night swilling gallons of the stuff. Obviously John Smiths and shït is a waste of time so pick something that's a cert, is there a good local brewery with a decent bitter?

 

[threebikesmcginty]

BBNo original Porter, slightly thin, in fact the whole thing is a bit thin, it's not bad but it just lacks that bit of oomph, the taste is quite nice and portery, something missing in a lot of today's porters but it's not quite enough, again the finish could be a lot better, a bit more punch and a bit longer. It's a shame really, all the ingredients are there, the abv is 6.1% so it should kick a bit more than this, if they could just crank it up a bit. Put it this way, if it was a Pepsi challenge, this and The Kernel Export India Porter, Kernel wins every time, by a lot.

Here's one I drank in the dark.

 

[rich p]

I can't bring myself to buy beer in cans yet. Just seems cheap and nasty - actually that sounds a bit like me.
Another M&S Mosaic followed by some filthy red wine to accompany the noisette of lamb. Luvverly.

 

[John the Monkey]

A bit of a tangent, but;

VB (Victoria Bitter), Australia’s top-selling mainstream beer pulled a stunt at this year’s Sydney Craft Beer Festival by disguising its beer as a craft beer and then going on to win the best-beer prize, angering “capitalist hipsters”

It's a satirical piece, but the idea that the only thing separating a mainstream brew from craft is the marketing is an interesting one, and oddly, something Mrs M and I talked about recently. She was pointing out (when we were at a pub that only offered the Carls, and Guinness) how boring the beer was compared to the stuff we usually drink. Not horrible, just not special, compared to Lancaster Black, or Tatton Obscure, or...

 

[smutchin]

I remember the outcry a few years ago when Greene King IPA won champion beer at the Great British Beer Festival.

Such undesirable outcomes are the danger of a blind tasting!

 

[threebikesmcginty]

A bit of a tangent, but;

VB (Victoria Bitter), Australia’s top-selling mainstream beer pulled a stunt at this year’s Sydney Craft Beer Festival by disguising its beer as a craft beer and then going on to win the best-beer prize, angering “capitalist hipsters”

It's a satirical piece, but the idea that the only thing separating a mainstream brew from craft is the marketing is an interesting one, and oddly, something Mrs M and I talked about recently. She was pointing out (when we were at a pub that only offered the Carls, and Guinness) how boring the beer was compared to the stuff we usually drink. Not horrible, just not special, compared to Lancaster Black, or Tatton Obscure, or...

Interesting, I tried out quite a few craft beers when I was in Australia and I didn't think an awful lot to most of them, I didn't try VB but if it's a standard beer then I can't see that it wouldn't do anything other than stack up against the competition. I guess as there's no rules as to what is a craft beer, its really down to the individual, when does the machine that is Brewdog, other Brewers are available, stop being craft and become a big brewer?

 

[Crackle]

When they become a faceless corporate with tenancy pubs and you don't know who brews the beer or what their raison d'etre is because it's all just one faceless marketing campaign.

 

[threebikesmcginty]

 

[smutchin]

no rules as to what is a craft beer

Up to a point...

The definition is extremely vague but there are some rules, one of which is that the brewery is independently owned, which rules VB out for a start (it's a subsidiary of Foster's).