pitfield's shoreditch stout

oh, such stout! i sampled this class bottle in the foundry, shoreditch. compared to this, guiness tastes like it's been put through a low-pass taste filter - all the basic, simple taste is there but this has so much detail on top and tastes like stout is meant to. complex character that i now only vaguely remember - not just the usual chocolate, coffee and roast malt but some really fine elements. and it's vegan and organic! i will definately hunt this down again.

i also had the pleasure of their organic lager, which was a similarly superior drink, but as a lager.

wetherspoons.

well, the end of an era is at hand. upon leaving the cinema the other day, we found ourselves in the spoons. i maintained, it's good, cheap ale, but something was wrong in the empire. on our arrival, i immediately noticed that their 'cask marque' signs on the hand pumps had gone. odd, i thought. i asked for a brain's rev james, but they said it was off. oh, i thought. you'd have thought they'd follow tradition and turn the frontage around or put an empty glass over it, more so after i asked, but no. to push the point home, i made laurence ask for two pints of the same when he was ordering his drinks. i asked if any of the ales were dark at all. "like bitter? yes, they all are" said the manager (?). i was close to giving up and ordered a pint of forgettable name. tommy had an evarard's sunthinggy. both were headless and watery, giving good evidence for why wetherspoons had lost their cask marque; they'd given up. their was probably not the demand for quality ale in spoons. so they'd thought they could just keep the ales on, but treat them like crap. just goes to show really.

leffe

after years of not drinking interbrew's products, monday night - the bank holiday, and my last day of studentdom - saw me in such a desperate mood for that sweet belgian taste i had to resort to leffe, as it was the only type ''international' wines and beers' sold. i bought a blonde and a brune, and wierdly, both tasted somewhat watery. the evening was spent in laurence's room listening to dub, and i didn't make it as far as the tanglefeet i had also bought. in future i'll stick to the real thing.

harvey's mild

and so in our travels we came across a harvey's brewery-tied pub down the road. such a selection! what a collection! i hate the term 'old man pubs', but this place was full of a different set of people, not the ones found in our usual haunts.

the mild was 3% and by no means the most striking ale i've ever had, very drinkable and pleasant and i'd drink it again but maybe not more than a pint a night. it's very much a post-work drink, a classic mild. i'd like to try their 'light mild' next time. the bitter was again unremarkable but pleasant enough, quietly reliable.

Franciskaner hereweissbeir

A:cen eh hev eh hefeweissbeir, plis?

B: certainly sir. here you are: half a pint of weissbeir.

A: neh, eh hefeweissbeir! eh hefeweissbeir!

B: yes, half a weissbeir! who are you, ronny barker? fuck off.


hefe means yeast, so hefeweissbeir is unfiltered wheat/white beer. this beer was good. the other beer i drank in the same five minutes was old hooky. this was also a good beer of its ilk.

look, this shit is harder than it seems. i was curled up in a sleeping bag on the floor listening to raggaba, contorted with the force of my ankst, when i drank these. i wasn't paying that much attention to the taste.

banana bread beer

you know what i think about charles wells? bombardier? well i seem to remember it's plesant enough, but the marketing stinks; selling a product as the national drink is bad enough, but considering wells make most of their money from domestic copies of foreign brands (such as kirin) it seems incredibly cheeky.

but i needed to get my bill over a fiver so i could use my card, so i bought a bottle of BBB, knowing i'd drink it eventually (well, if i leave booze around the house, it has a habit of disappearing). it's definately banana-ery, that's pretty much all the flavour i got out of it, quite possibly because of my garlic/mushroom/kindey bean/cabbage/herbs/soy sauce/pasta fry).

this is backed up by me finishing jess's stella, which i normally hate, and not noticing any flavour at all.

miller vs. kronenbourg

going to the freebutt last thursday left me with a perplexing decision - i couldn't remember which one of these was better(and you can hardly get miller anywhere). the miller proved very drinkable, almost pleasant, whilst i have finally realised kronenbourg (which i ended up having later in the evening) is a pretty poor lager. not much better than foster's or carling. it's fine in a snakey-b though. why has it taken me so long to give up on kronenbourg? how many times have i drank it as a second choice and been disappointed? it's the power of marketing.

also: Ch'ti brune, drank from the bottle on the level. this didn't really have much going for it, but nothing at all against it. it was fine in every respect. i'd like to try it from a glass, most things are better with a nose.

a belgian duet

at the greys last night, so i became a belgian-a-holic for the night.
had two well-known and much loved beers, but since i'm chronicoling this from recent times, i thought i'd better write them up for completeness:

Duvel
fantastic.

Kwak
fantastic.

marston's pedigree

at the greyhound: awful. like bad piss shandy. i couldn't finish my pint.
i may have had another pint that was drinkable, the day after, at the george in alstonefield (it was labelled as such) but it may have been burtonwood bitter which is what i asked for, with a mis-labeled frontage.

san miguel

i've never had a san miguel taste as good as it did last night, in the restaurant 'more'. their awnings and outside were plastered with kronenbourg branding, so i tried the alternative, and was really pleasantly rewarded. definately malty, surprising hints of chocolate, and strong but easy to drink; a very enjoyable lager, obviously well looked after.