Beer and Grapefruit

I guess there must be some good lagers out there produced by small breweries but as for the everyday top name lagers and there are a lot of them....no thanks.

They all taste the same and that is probably because they dont taste of anything and those "extra cold" lagers you can get in some pubs just taste of cold, if thats possible. In fact I have noticed that some real ales taste at their best at room temperature, they are not the same straight out of the fridge.

Doom Bar can indeed be very variable but it’s a popular beer that sells well. My first pint had enough fizz and was nicely chilled. Some others have been soapy and not cold enough - the sort of bitter that bearded old foggies like.

At last- a topic I know something about ! Pub lager is cold ,just in case you do taste it. Round here a lot of beer now has the lemony taste, or elderflower. Some from the yeast , some from added flavouring. Most of the beer is from the north and the islands and is very good. I may have to go out now and check my facts.

At risk of this becoming an esoteric topic, Duncan W's comment needs support i.e. "Those of us in the north west will remember Greenalls. Horrible stuff. " Too true !
Greenalls had much to answer for, other than awful beer. They took over the Nottingham Shipstones brewery (see Nick Clarke 3's posting), changed the process & thus the product and later closed the entire operation.
For anyone interested in 'real ale', local brweries' products etc ~ there's a wealth of information here:-
**LINK**
Then again, should there be any readers of Viz here, their comic strip "Real Ale T***s" is a salient reminder of not becoming too obsessed about beer.

The pub in the next village to us still does Bass from a wooden keg, they go out the back to get it when you order a pint. They also do the king of a classic pub sandwich, thick cut home baked bread, heavily buttered, with thick slices of strong cheddar and sliced raw onion....nectar from the gods.

Edited By Ron Laden on 14/09/2018 10:37:47

As a young man I was dragged around many a CAMRA pub crawl and found that real ale is best for cracking hangovers. The very names are a clue that not all is well: Woodfords' Head Cracker; Skull Splitter; Ramblers Ruin; Old Stoat Wobbler; Old Slug Porter; and Extinction Ale. Real ale has me spending the following morning calling long distance on the big white telephone whilst wishing I was dead.

I reckon Real Ale is the British equivalent of running with the bulls in Pamplona. People don't do it because they enjoy the experience, it's a rite of passage. Everybody pretends they appreciate real ale, the truth is no-one does - it's horrible.

You're better off with a nice light beer deep frozen to kill the flavour. Watney's Starlight for example. Much nicer than a mouthful of Old Man's Wiggler...

Dave

What happens is that the same enzymes in the liver that get rid of the statins are also used up getting rid of some of the grapefruit chemicals. This means that the liver is less able to get rid of the statins and the concentration of them becomes higher than expected (with the achy muscles and other symptoms if sufficiently extreme). Your doctor might not be enough of a chemist to tell you this, but you can adjust the statin dose downwards until you don't get the symptoms.

I actually had to cut my dose due to getting symptoms, then three months later, when collecting a script, the pharmacist took me to one side and told me that he'd just read a new warning of an interaction with Amlodipine calcium channel blockers. I thanked him and said that explained the problem. Blood tests show that they're working as well as ever, even at the now-reduced dose.

I can't stand any of the citrus flavoured stuff. I have tried all the offerings from Oakham because my God Daughter works there, not found a drinkable one yet. I was brought up drinking Highgate mild from Walsall in the West Midlands and the Black Country brewers like Banks. Now living not far from Burton On Trent so another good proper beer area.

What do Watneys Starlight and making love in a punt have in common? They are both ****ing close to water.

Mike

I resemble that remark (did I mean resent?)

Neil

May you spend eternity supping on a creamflow nitro-keg...

N.

DE14 - source of Branston, Marstons, Marmite and my daughter.

What's not to like?

Neil

The great thing about the current evolution in brewing is that there are styles for all tastes. My wife is not a fan at all of traditional English bitters, but will drink hoppy and citrusy IPAs.

When it comes to lagers, a lot of my lager drinking frienss wont touch craft lagers. Becuase they can taste them..

"DE14 - source of Branston, Marstons, Marmite and my daughter. What's not to like?"

Proximity to Derby County FC ???

(nowt wrong with Burton Albion though)

From what I could tell from my time there, Canadians and many Mercans seemed to equate hoppiness with greatness. Some of the really "good" beers were so hoppy and bitter they almost turned your tongue inside out. God nose why people enjoy that. I'd even end up drinking something as pathetic as Bud or Coors Light in preference.

I know that there are several distinctly different groups of people when it comes to smells and tastes and (like Rod perhaps), I'm not a lover of bitter and pungent smells. But even so, some of the hoppy stuff out there takes some stomaching. Not surprisingly perhaps, I'm not a fan of grapefruit juice either. Each to his own!

Murray

Fruity beers sounds dangerously like Alcho Pops - booze for children, other wise known as underage drinkers.

For Christmas I was given a can with a glass and bottle of Motorhead 'Road Crew' beer, which is marketed as an example of the American citrussy style. I always had Lemmy down as a Jack and Coke man...

Neil

When I was in the Air Force and stationed at Bicester in the early sixties there was a pub nearby that only served beer from wooden barrels, they were all lined up on a rack behind the bar and each barrel had a tap, no pipes or pumps, just gravity feed straight from the barrel. Spent many evenings in there and for the life of me I can’t remember the name of the pub or the brewery.

Dave W

When I were a lad there was a pub in Arncliffe (Yorkshire Dales) which had the barrels in the cellar but no pumps. When you wanted a pint the barman would shout 'anyone else want one? and disappear carrying an enamel jug. Absolute nectar.

And as for Silly Old Duffer and his Watney's Starlight, I'd suggest washing your mouth out with soapy water but if you'll drink such a diabolical brew you'd probably enjoy it.

I also remember Lump Hammer Bitter and Desperate Dan Cow Pie from when I had a contract running at Thompson Nuclear. You definitely didn't want 2 pints at lunchtime, evenings another matter altogether.