10 Reasons to drink Real Ale…. worth reading. – Page 2 – Chat Forum

lowey · 2009-02-28T20:37:20Z

If you cant be arsed reading it, i'll provide a synopsis at the end. [i]Britain is rediscovering, just in time, that some good things are not mass-produced, pre-packaged, hysterically advertised and celebrity-promoted. One of those things is real ale. The stereotype of the real ale drinker is laughably out of date. If you think of matted beards, mucky cardigans and huge bellies, you need to get out more. Real ale is live beer which continues to develop in the cask. This further fermentation makes the beer naturally lively. It is either pulled from the cask by hand-pump or, even better, simply runs out by gravity. Its blasphemous caricature, keg beer, is dead, pasteurised and filtered. It undergoes no secondary fermentation, and often nestles under a protective blanket of inert gas. It fizzes with injected carbon dioxide. Lager is a different style of beer, in which the fermentation happens at the top rather than the bottom of the vat. There is an honourable continental tradition of lager-making, and there are some magnificent cask-conditioned lagers to which all the real ale plaudits apply. But they are rarely seen here. The fair name of lager has been demeaned. The obscenely overpriced lad-fuel of Eng-er-land has as much in common with real lagers as keg beer does with real ale. Here are ten reasons to reject what passes for beer in the licensed ale-houses of England, and to ask for the real thing for once. [b]1 - because real ale tastes of something[/b] In a recent Hobgoblin advert for real ale, a grotesque figure in a pub, cradling a pint of beer, sneers over his shoulder at a group of callow drinkers: "What's the matter, Lager-Boy? Afraid you might taste something?" The gibe is just. Have you ever wondered why the lager mass-producers market their stuff as best drunk ice-cold? It is because cold anaesthetises your taste buds. To chill beer to near freezing point is like injecting lignocaine into your tongue. It stops the punter finding out the depressing truth - that there is nothing there to taste. Drink lager at a temperature at which nerves work, and the manufacturers would be rumbled. Real ale, though, is more confident. Although the old obsession with warm beer is, thankfully, long gone, at physiological temperatures you can get an explosion of complex tastes. Of course you might not want that: you might want something which tastes of nothing, is more expensive than real ale, and eventually makes you fall over. If so, a simple intravenous injection of phenobarbitone would be more sensible. [b]2 - because real ale tastes good[/b] Not always, of course. Since real ale, unlike dead, pasteurised keg beer, is a live substance, still developing in the cask, it needs to be kept properly so that it develops properly. This demands skill on the part of the cellarman. You can load keg beer straight off the lorry, connect it up, and drink it. Since it is dead, it keeps for ever. But real ale is temperamental. If it is badly treated it will not taste good. Many a drinker has been put off real ale drinking after a visit to a pub which doesn't understand real ale. But to go back to keg beer is like opting for a lifetime of necrophilia because of one nasty experience with a living human being. But when it is good, it can be very, very good. The most pretentious vocabulary of the most poetic wine-tasters fails when confronted with good real beer. There is some memorable stuff lying in England's beer engines. One of the enduring caricatures of real ale drinkers is of the Reminiscer - the man who sits in the corner of the pub and tells you, sip by sip, of the pint of Old Scrotrot which he had in the Anencephalic's Head one June in 1972. The picture embodies and generates all the English prejudice against obsessive train-spotting types, but there's a reason for it. The reason is that there's something to remember. No one has ever said: "You get a marvellous 500 ml of EuroPiss in the Happy Slapper. Amazing, it is. Can't think quite how to describe it." The keg or lager drinker's Friday night diary reads: "Had 10 pints of the usual. Threw up. That left room for a Cat Vindaloo." You need 10 pints of that to create some sort of sensation, even if that sensation is simply nausea and eventual oblivion. You only need one cc of well-kept real ale. [b]3 - because real ale is good for you[/b] Strange but true. Since it is a live substance, each mouthful is a fecund soup of medically helpful micro organisms. I spend a lot of my life in fetid squats in hot, faraway places. The best possible training your gut can get for that is a regular diet of the real stuff. It will mean that you spend a lot less time squatting fetidly. Real ale is also heaving with B vitamins, iron and anti-oxidants. You will want to live longer in order to drink more beer, and are likely to be able to. Drink lager, and your quality of life will be miserable. Mercifully, since it is biochemically obnoxious and more often the drink of choice of violent people,...

RudeBoy

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Damn, din't get a chance to sample the MT IPA last night!

Ho hum. I spose I'll have to go back again. What a chore! 🙂

Posted : 01/03/2009 8:49 pm

CaptainFlashheart

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I must come out to the wild Sarf East of town one day and try some at the tap, RB!

Posted : 01/03/2009 8:50 pm

sputnik

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Well, I like a drink or too.
In the summer it is lager.
Winter I will have an Old Peculiar.
All year round I love Guinness(Extra cold in summer).

Posted : 01/03/2009 9:00 pm

hora

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Deuchars Caledonian 80. Anyone who disagrees with me needs shooting in the face. 😀
Caledonian80 won the war FACT.
Caledonian80 gives you 50% longer and stronger erections. FACT.
Caledonian80 splashed on liberally makes you irrisitable to any 18-30yr old woman FACT.

Posted : 01/03/2009 9:01 pm

JulianA

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CFH - North Hampshire: between Basingstoke and Winchester and not too far from Stockbridge (although we have our own butcher who's very good). Jody's farm shop is just down the road (for buffalo steaks etc). Couldn't wish for a better location...

Posted : 01/03/2009 9:07 pm

RudeBoy

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Flashy; I'm pretty sure WCA can vouch for the Union in Greenwich. He and I spent a few hours n there last summer. I think it's possible he may have sampled most of what was on tap! My fave there is the Raspberry Wheat beer. Would probbly have the beer snobs screaming in horror, but it's a delicious pint; very sharp, fruity and it's probby at least a couple of yer 5 a day.

Some of it's strong stuff, but don't leave you feeling farked like pasteurised stuff. I don't think several pints of their Berliner Oktoberfest Special did my mate Scottish Kev any favours, mind (something silly like 8%).

I do find organic beers tend to give me terrible wind, sometimes. And I've had a runny bottom, a few times, after some Real Ales. Not pleasant.

[url= http://www.meantimebrewing.com/awards.html ]Meantime have won a couple of awards![/url]

Posted : 01/03/2009 9:15 pm

sputnik

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And how could I forget about this here kitty?

[IMG] [/IMG]

8.5% alc. vol.... after a couple you pretty much forget everything 🙂

Posted : 01/03/2009 9:16 pm

singletrackmind

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Itchen Valley now, was at Hogs Back and Pilgrim before that. The kit at Itchen is pretty crappy, and breaks down a fair bit. We were in the most horrendous financial pickle, but due to magic of television, and Sir Gerry ( yes peter I will loan you £675,000 for that mews house in that there London )Robinson we are now minted.
I will be doing my utmost to put as much of that cash into my wage packet as possible as the loonies who own the place will burn the rest to keep warm.
In due course well, end of April early May my ugly mug will be on C4 moaning and being miserable, arguementative and rude.
The working title is Gerrys Big Fix. 600+ companies applied to be on tele , with the chance of a load of dosh and some business advice. My advice was to get the cash nad get a Bulgarian hitman to kill the owner, then divvy what was left up between the staff, get stat redundancy and do one.

Posted : 01/03/2009 10:02 pm

andywhit

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Ah OK sounds interesting, will keep an eye out for that.

I live about 2km from the Hogs Back brewery so handy for takeouts 🙂

Posted : 01/03/2009 10:14 pm

RudeBoy

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singletrackmind.. is it you? Is it?

Or is it someone else?

But if you work there, you must know Him?

Pure Gold...

Posted : 01/03/2009 10:17 pm

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[Closed] 10 Reasons to drink Real Ale.... worth reading.