I'm beginning to think all baths were designed for midgets.

This challenge started out as a pure accident; and one I have taken a hearty liking towards. Following on From Terrance’s Sticky disaster in the bath. I decided to see if it was all beers/ciders which were going to cause issues or it was the bath in general.

Item 1: The bath is one of those weird corner baths; which as I found to my cost doesn’t allow you to fit in it whichever way you are positioned. In the end I decided on an convention lieing down position with my feet hanging over one side.

One advantage to this bath was the addition of rather large shelf next to my drinking hand so there was never any issues of bath water contamination or beery shampoo to contend with.

Drink #1: Can of Woodpecker Cider

As mentioned above this was a pure chance challenge; I decided on a whim to have the first bath in my house since I moved in; (I currently only took showers). The bath had been cleaned recently so I decided to start filling it up. However since it needs about 20min to actually fill up with sufficient water to cover my gentleman’s area I got a bit bored and opened a can of cider and wandered off to check my E-Mail.

Halfway into my second can I was caught out, and had to quickly adjust the water level to one which was slightly lower than testing an Archimedes principle. In short: I was left with half a can and a hot bath. Not wanting to waste either I lowered myself in can in hand and began to relax.

Now one disadvantage of a hot bath is you sweat a lot; you literally sit in there and “stew” great at getting you clean but can be very uncomfortable after a few min; enter the can of cheap dry cider. Wow, what a revelation! It may not have come directly out of the fridge but the can was cool and allowed me to regulate my temperature much easier and the dry taste contrasted beautifully with the hot steam.

It was savouring this that I remember reading about Terrance’s experience with Jacques in the bath and I would have to reaffirm that a “sticky” or sweet drink in such a situation would be intolerable; but a dry cold cider suddenly added to the experience of bathing rather than taking it away.

Drink #2 : Newcastle Brown Ale (Bottle)

I don't think this picture does justice to how fizzy this drink was.

Now since this is a serious experiment I could not just have one drink and be done with it so the next time I had a bath I made sure one of my favourite tipple was on hand. The taste was a perfect contrast once again so I did not imagine the first time; however; the bottle caused issues.

The narrow spout and heavy glass tended to “overfizz” the nukie at the best of times, lieing in a bath however the angle was much shallower so I managed to fizz some beer out of my nose a fair few times! This was obviously “not on”; and whilst the beer calmed down once it dipped below halfway the need to be extra careful initially put a real downer on the experience.

I would have to give points to it making you gassy. In a bathroom which echos you can get some quite spectacular belches going on; although from a pure comfort factor this obviously is not ideal.

Drink #3 : Crumton Oaks (Cider) in a pint glass

Keeping with the dry cider angle I decided to check if a simple pint glass could overcome the issues with the fizziness which can occur using bottles. Pouring the drink into a pint glass is normally the best way to drink Nukies in pubs or at home; whilst I didn’t have any to hand at the time drinking cider out of a pint glass I could at least test the principle.

Initially all was well… I had a firm grip and I could lie back savouring the heat and reach out take a drink and hardly need to open my eyes. Alas it was not perfect as I was finding to my cost. You see a bath has some degree of soap in.. and soap and glass make for a slippery surface. The pint glass was increasingly hard to hang onto -  the simple can I could crush slightly to get a better grip. The glass however was not as easy to hang onto.  To my credit there was not a single drop of spillage although it came close a few times. Once again like the Nukie I had to sit up and drink carefully… in effect ruining the experience of the bath in the first place.

And so the humble can wins out; its stackable, doesn’t take up much space and doesn’t suffer from the “soap” issue. I personally prefer a dry cider choice but bitters and ales will work just as well.

The day: 17
The drink (s): Newcastle Brown Ale, Woodpecker, Cromton Oaks Cider
The place: The Bath
Positives: The cool dryness of cider complements the bath perfectly
Negatives: Any sort of glass wear with soap can lead to bath disasters.
Conclusion: Even though the choice of a can narrows your choices; it is an experience everyone of us should enjoy at least once in our lives.

Sidenote: Having come up with the title now I have a sudden urge to get a can of Directors Bitter for my next bath….

ale · Bath · Beer festival · Crumpton Oaks · dry cider · fizz · Newcastle Brown Ale · none sticky · Woodpecker

Oh, so I drank one
It became four
And when I fell on the floor …
…I drank more

We all know Morrissey‘s lyrics are thought provoking, at some times baffling, and occasionally outright racist (in a daft way); but this phrase has always stuck with me as it epitomises the so-called “binge” culture which tends to vilify anyone who considers enjoying themselves on a night out. A culture which looks down on anyone who mentions they like beer or had more than a single bottle or can in an evening. Admitting to being a “bit rough” at work can often land you with counselling sessions, and if you’re not careful loose promotion prospects indefinitely.

Winston Churchil : The Original Boozer

Now the question is does this stop you from succeeding noting you enjoy a tipple or two or three or is it as soon as you sniff the barmaids apron you are doomed to a life of stale vomit and holidaying at her majesty’s pleasure. In Tony Blair’s recent autobiography we see he had a “drinking problem” as he enjoyed a couple of glasses of wine in the evening to unwind. In this country he has been shown as “weak” and parallels have been attempted to be drawn between his political decisions and after he “had a couple”. In other countries if he had admitted the same The French wouldn’t have cared the German’s would have slapped their leather pants and the Russians would think it was wrong if he wasn’t shown to be completely incapable at least once a month.

So what of the beer? Well the beer was a staggeringly overpriced “John Smith’s Bitter”; which is a far cry from the Tesco value beers which you can get for 12p a can; but its actually one you can drink a lot of very easily and get drunk from; unlike the other cheaper alternatives which is more a test of bladder endurance than anything else.

I cannot describe the entire evening, nor do I want to, but I enjoyed many cans of this fine beverage watched a couple of films, enjoyed a pizza and nattered to several of my friends. This is an evening which I have done before and I will most likely do again. It was nothing to shout about, it was a relaxing evening doing relaxing activities I was warm, content had a full stomach and aside from the every increasing need to visit the toilet went off without a hitch.

Had such an evening been no a street corner; in a park with a group of my friends I would have been instantly deemed as a public nuisance and a picture of modern Britain. Do I feel ashamed for breaking my weekly alcohol limit in a single night over the weekend? No; it is part of the fabric of modern life I wasn’t forced into it nor coerced by advertising I simply had a relaxing night in. Had I been in a public house laughing joking, playing pool before staggering home at 2am my picture may have ended up in the paper the next day detailing how we as a society have come off the rails and everyone should remember to eat “five a day”; never have more than a single glass of wine in one sitting and not raise our voice above a whisper past 8pm.

So this beer is dedicated to the hard working folks who work for a living, pay their tax and support society and may need once a week or so to enjoy more than a single alcoholic drink in a sitting; relax with good company and enjoy unhealthy food. Life’s too hard at the best of times, why make it harder? Lean back crack open a cold one and let the beer wash over you so at least for a short time you can forget your boss; forget the commute and leave the dishes in the sink until the following morning.

I never did quite make the floor, but I did reach my happy place where the rest of the world falls away and I remember what’s important to me.

The day: 14.
The drink: John Smith’s Bitter (several).
The place: Home.
Positives: Warm fuzzy feeling inside.
Negatives: Exponential need to visit the toilet.
Conclusion: Done right a few beers at home over the limits relaxes you and allows you to enjoy the company of friends more; you laugh more you cry; it unlocks your soul to the world you have been missing whilst at work.

beer · drunk · happy · home · john smiths · pizza · society · toilet

It’s time to combine drinking and video games, two of my favourite hobbies. The drink in question is that old friend Jennings’ Cumberland ale. The game in question is Mass Effect 2, a game so superbly brilliant, I’m on my second playthrough. I’m in the garage as that’s where my xbox is. It’s the sort of garage that has become part reception room (it has a carpet, or carpets to be accurate) and part storage room. It is however not the sort of garage where anything vaguely mechanical will ever happen. One of those garages. Consisting mainly of a mixture of furniture and warehouse levels of shelving, it’s become the perfect place for relaxing when the weather is bad. It also has a large fridge full of drinks. Time permitting, crap will be sorted and some sort of sofa installed. For now though I will settle for my camp chair with is surprisingly comfortable and the perfect height for the TV.

Seems it’s time to take a break from Mass Effect, I’ve written one paragraph in 90 minutes, this deserves more attention.

Now that I trust the scene is set,  I’ll move onto the beer. There’s not much you need to know about Jennings Brewery other than it’s near Cockermouth in Cumbria and they brew a good range of beer. The bottle gives little away about this drink, there’s barely any usable description, there is however a pleasant picture of a lake. Just to remind us we’re in the Lake District now. Your correspondent is a fan of the Lakes national park, having lived there and sampled many of the local ales and pubs.

Cumberland is a deep, golden beer that sits nicely on the tongue. At 4.0% it’s light enough to be enjoyed at any time of day. Like many ales it’s vastly improved by sitting in a beer garden by a lake or river. It also tastes like soil. I like a beer with hints of earth. You can almost taste the connection to the ground from which it came.  You don’t get that with mainstream lagers. Cumberland is like an old friend, it has a very nice summary taste. It has that right combination or sweetness and bitterness and works in all situations. It’s also available on tap in lots of pubs, not just in Cumbria either. It won’t stop you in your tracks and you could easily argue that it’s too much of a ‘safe’ beer to be worth a look at. For me though this still ticks enough boxes  to be worth a purchase.

As for drinking in the garage? That added nothing to the experience. I’d much rather have been in the shed but Matt already claimed that.

The day: 5
The drink: Jennings Cumberland
The place: The garage
Positives: Beer + Xbox make for many a great night. This beer was also used recently in a steak and ale pie to great success.
Negatives: Drinking in the garage is boring.
Conclusion: Good beer, dull location. Don’t drink in the garage on your own.

Beers · Cumberland · garage · Jennings

Approximately 10 years ago, back in the deep murky past there was a community site known collectively as the “pants site”. It was the glue which held our collective friendship together as we all started drifting away towards university, jobs and general life.

As was the case on the Internet this site was a portal to all our personal websites which were a product of their times; badly coded oversized images and woefully short of readership. I too had such a site, but my site had something special. A seed; a germination, if you please, of a single idea which bore a single fruit.

In 2001; I had this intention of trying, and reviewing beer and writing my thoughts on said matter. This idea was snapshot and remains for all eternity on the web archive. At the time I thought it was a great idea however the process was not as well thought out as it is now. Generally when I started to appreciate a decent pint I was quickly appreciating a kebab before appreciating my bed after a stagger home. In short whilst I enjoyed the taste of beer in my youth I enjoyed getting leathered far more and was in little to no mood in writing about what I remembered about my experiences the day after.

So my idea was left to fade; in fact only one review was ever done – a review by a certain “Ronnie C”; whom we all know now as the alter ego of our very own Richard Carr.

This is my first article on badpoo and I thought it fitting to start off with a quote, a quote of the first review of an alcoholic beverage done by the badpoo community, or as we were then termed “The Pants Site™’”

May the pants be with you

I AM A ZIDER DRINKER

It is true, I am a cider drinker. I’m not one of these people who drink mild all night then has a quick pint of Strongbow for a change – I drink it all the time. In fact, I love cider. When I first started drinking, I was on all kinds of weird shit, because I went off beer pretty quickly – vodka, whisky, benedictine, bottled shit… then one day I found myself in a country pub in the middle of nowehere, that basically served three drinks. Beer, beer and cider. Not being a beer man (a half makes me sick), it was an easy choice.

The last time I drank cider was at a friend’s leaving party sort-of-thing, and I’d only been drinking for a few months. I must have had about ten pints of the shit, though to be honest I can’t remember much past stumbling home from the Malt & Hops and falling asleep in front of the toilet.

This was a different experience though. It was the first time I’d really held a pint glass, and it was great. Pint glasses are so much better than poncey shorts glasses – they’re manly, they’re cool, you can strut around the place with one in your hand and feel good. Since that day, cider has been pretty much all I drink. I’ve found about four main classes of cider so far.

SCRUMPY – any home- or farm-made cider. The genuine article. Fuck man, drink a flagon of this shit and you’ll be 100% fucked in no time. Plus, it tastes like apples and it has loads of little appley-bits in. Westside. On the downside, it can be expensive and the best stuff lives in Somerset, Devon and Cornwall.

TOP CLASS SHIT – Scrumpy Jack, Bulmer’s. The elite, the best you can get. You have to pay for it, but boy, is it worth it. These are about the only commercial ciders you actually get the taste of apples in, beyond genuine scrumpy.

COMMERCIAL STUFF – the ciders you get served in every pub. Mainly Strongbow and Woodpecker, but there are a couple of other makes that are pretty similar, like Red C (not bad, not amazing). You can’t expect more than this on a night out, so get used to it. By no means bad, but becomes a bit repetitive after a while.

THE PISS – white cider. White Lightning, Strike! and any of the other millions of cheap shit brands you find in 24/7 shops. Typically about £2 for 2 litres, you really do get what you pay for (unfortunately). There isn’t anything to recommend about these, because they taste like paint stripper and smell like wank. But they are really cheap and most people will get really, really pissed off a bottle. Good for a cheap night in and precursor to getting stoned.

Thus concludes my guide to being a cider drinker. Summary: if you’re looking for the good stuff, get a four-pack of Scrumpy Jack if no genuine scrumpy is at hand. The cheaper alternatives are Strongbow and Woodpecker, depending on taste, but of you’re on an economy drive, White Lightning can’t be beaten (for price).

Don’t forget about the Dre.

Beers · Cider · dre · internet · pants · richard · time

Here are a few things that fill me with trepidation:

A) The ‘Beware: Danger of Falling Rocks Ahead’ road sign. Nothing like this one to fill a brief stretch of a journey with the looming fear of impending random death coming through the sunroof uninvited. If I see this sign, I’m drawn to travel the upcoming distance looking up and out of the window at the cliff face from which said boulders could tumble at any minute. This means that even if I get through without having my skull caved in the chances are I’ll drive into the back of an Eddie Stobart truck.

B) Performance reviews: Luckily, I currently have a job which doesn’t feature these, but plenty of times in the past I’ve been confronted with the opportunity to sit down on an annual basis with a line manager and have my every flaw picked apart with surgeon-like precision. Anyone who carries out these sessions for a living is basically like the killer from Se7en without the laudible can-do attitude to dealing with society’s problems.

C) Being on the front row at a comedy gig: Either you’ll become the object of some hilarity at your expense or, even worse, the comedian will try something out based on picking on you which will fail. This means that the comic will try desperately to squeeze at least a titter from this improvised material at which point one of you will get angry and this will degenerate into a slanging match and an on-stage nervous breakdown. I’m staggered at how often I’ve seen this happen.

D) Christmas ales: Here’s a fact- nobody really enjoys them. Any beer designed specifically for a short period at the end of December when everyone is already stuffed to the gills with dead poultry and chocolate is clearly on a hiding to nothing. I’m utterly convinced that Christmas ales are the last refuge for a brewery’s attempts at a beer that end up with what they would optimistically deem to be ‘character’ but what normal, sane folk would class as ‘liquid misery’. This is why Christmas ales tend to live at the back of the cupboard of even the most seasoned ale drinker until spring cleaning occurs and they can safely be hoisted into the recycling. A few bottles, however, slipped through the net from this year’s Yuletide selection at my girlfriend’s parents’ house and therefore these 4 brews were passed onto me- giving me a thought. Removed from the jolity of the festive season, what do Christmas ales actually taste of? Can they stand up of their own if drunk in, say, mid-July?

Well…

First up is the Christmas Ale by Shepherd Neame. This seems like a safe place to start- it’s by a brewery I’m aware of and it’s got a pleasant amber colour. It’s also, I note, 7% so it strikes me as a good idea to get the strong one out of the way early doors. On first taste it is actually reminiscent of Christmas, but only in the same way that the Channel Islands are reminiscent of tales of Nazi occupation. It feels like woozy overindulgence and has a distinct flavour of indigestion and overpowering spice. Drinking this feels like your tongue is being ram-raided. Trying to force the beer down of a typical Tuesday evening presents a sturdy challenge, I can only imagine that attempting to knock it back within a few hours of a full christmas dinner would be nigh on impossible. You’d be better off trying to drink your new Xmas sweater.

Christmas ales- warning, should not be drunk by anyone

Next is Seriously Bad Elf from Ridgeway Brewing in Oxfordshire. I really ought to have checked out the strengths of these beers before I tucked in as it turns out the 7%er was merely an apperatif to this double ale which weighs in at 9%. This is definitely a theme with winter ales- alcohol levels which come dangerously close to rendering a beer flammable. I’m not sure that this sort of content renders a drink particularly useful in wintery conditions- if it did then surely it stands to reason that any polar expedition should be accompanied by a few bottles of tequila and I’m pretty convinced that they usually aren’t. Getting back to the beer, it’s got a first taste that you really ought to be provided with a warning for- it hits you at the very heart of your central nervous system. It’s a little like walking into a darkened room then having hundreds of people burst out and yell ‘surprise’ while dressed as victims of serious industrial accidents. Why this is deemed suitable for Christmas I couldn’t possible tell you. Once you’re braced for each mouthful, it settles down to simply being the beerest beer the world has ever seen, like all concepts of beer have been concentrated into one bottle. This is the ale equivalent of a quasar. To improve everyone’s Yuletide celebrations, the Queen should have to down one of these while delivering his Christmas speech. It’d be amazing.

Third up, also by Ridgeway Brewing and continuing their theme of horrendous elf puns is ‘Criminally Bad Elf’. It is also becoming clear that I really should have read all four labels before I started. This is a ‘barley-wine style ale’ and packs a full 10.5% alcohol, a level at which a beer should only be used for hand-to-hand combat. After the experience of the last beer, I’m fully prepared from the first swig for whatever this brew can throw at me.

Right, before we go any further, read that last sentence back. Done it? Good. Congratulations. You have just read the most naive and utterly wrong sentence ever.

Nothing could prepare anyone for this beer, short of having all your taste buds burned out with caustic soda. And even then the first drink would still make your eyes water like a Belgian fountain. The second swig merely confirms that the first one wasn’t joking, much like when Hans Gruber shoots Ellis just to show he wasn’t messing about with Joe Takagi. Even after nearly half a pint of experience it’s still utterly impossible to knock back any of this drink without coughing. This can only be a Christmas drink designed for one of those branches of Christianity that goes in less for the celebration of Jesus’s birth and more for constant rounds of self-abasement and flagellation. And it’s still 10.5%. It’s basically like mugging yourself.

Finally, mercifully, and again from Ridgeway Brewing we have a porter called Santa’s Butt which weighs in at a practically tap water-esque 6%. This one actually tastes quite nice in that roasted, oaty manner that a good porter does though the apocalypse my tastebuds have undergone through this session, combined with the mind bending alcohol levels, means this perceived pleasentness may be the result of a combination of severe oral injury and encroaching metal incapacitation. However, it suffers from the same problem as the others and what appears to be the paradox at the heart of Christmas ales- it’s far too heavy and hefty to even be drunk after a day where I’ve purposely avoided eating too much in order to make room for it. At Xmas, they’d distend my stomach so much there’s a chance of it falling out entirely and making a break for it.

So drinking Christmas beers in July? On the whole, dreadful, deadly and not worth the bother. But drinking Christmas ales at Christmas? That’s just the act of a madman.

Beers · Christmas · Ridgeway Brewing · Shepherd Neame

Tonight’s tipple is Fursty Ferret from Badger Ales. The bottle promises “ale full of character” as well as “tawny amber ale with a sweet nutty palate and a hoppy aroma with hints of Seville oranges. Goes well with cheese”. That’ll keep Richard happy then. The bottle also tells of a legend about some ferrets turning up at somebody’s house to drink the ale. Right oh, on with the tasting.

The drink has a strong golden brown colour with a pleasant aroma with hints of citrus and hops. The drink sits nicely on the tongue, perhaps a little heavier than I’d normally like. The hoppy taste slightly overwhelms the citrus and nutty tones which are present but seem to be fighting a losing battle against the mighty power of the hops. This is a shame really as it firmly places Fursty Ferret in the ‘just another beer’ category. It’s also quite dry.

If someone was to ask me how Fursty Ferret tastes, I’d have to say it was nice, agreeable but certainly not memorable. It’s the alcoholic equivalent of a supermarket curry, it’s nice. It fills a hole, it does a job but it’s just not the same as going to a restaurant. Ferret has that same effect, whilst I’m definitely happy to drink it, it’ll always taste like a regular, run of the mill beer. Oh well, I’m now two levels away from the “Choose the Impossible” achievement on Bioshock 2 so time to crack on with that.

Goodnight.

badger · Beers · cheese · fursty ferret · richard carr

Childhood is often characterised by single memories floating around, which are impossible to place in time or space. The best you can manage is a stab in the dark at when it roughly must have been and whereabouts it must have taken place. For example, I know that when I was roughly three I was somewhere in the whereabouts of Big Ben; I couldn’t place any more details until this weekend just gone when my coach drove past Westmister Bridge Road and I realised I must have been at the far end, looking over the river towards Big Ben. I also know that I was about eighteen when I had a horrific, life-altering sexual experience somewhere in Blackburn, but it wasn’t until a friend filled me in on the details that I knew exactly which room, who upon and what baked product it involved.

The smell of beer is another such memory, a vague collection of events that I’ll never know the time or place of. I was around it from an early age so there will have been a million times I played in a beer garden or my dad’s mates came back with fruity breath. The only one I can definitely place is walking along the side of the Jubilee in Blackburn, in the days when the waft of ale was pumped out of pubs like the smell of fresh bread fills supermarkets. It was a wonderful smell – I don’t remember it ever seeming anything other than absolutely genuine, like a woman without perfume. Of course, in those days the pubs were generally busy so I’m sure I’ve formed a few associations of that smell with the people around me having good times. Perhaps that’s why I never found trouble drinking beer.

All of these memories cropped up thanks to tonight’s drinks at Le Chateaux Edna, first of which is J. W. Lees John Willies, which in the pantheon of beery bitters sits up there with Boddingtons before it went tits up and pretty much anything by Theakstons. The smell just sums up beer. There are no hints of anything, no whiffs of fruits or chocolate or bloody hazelnuts – just the smell of beer like it used to drift out of pubs. This is one of the most evocative smells I know, one that takes me right back in time and to a happy place straight away.

From here on John Willies becomes a junk food of beers, luring you in with the smell and then hardly satisfying your appetite with an inconsequential taste. There’s really nothing bad about it but you just think it’s a shame it doesn’t live up to that wonderful beer garden smell. Is that harsh? Maybe, but at the same time I know full well I’ll be buying another of these, just for that smell that takes me somewhere in time.

On next to Brakspear’s ‘Double Dropped’ Bitter, which I was due to try last night until life got in the way. This beer tastes like a five year old set loose with the ingredients of a Supermarket Sweep run. I can taste so many things at once it’s bordering on the confusing, though that’s undoubtedly just my chilli-ravaged palate at work once again. At first I thought it was chocolate, but that fell way to an impression of something indistinct – a heavy, dark beer flavour, with a dubious aftertaste. If I’d bought a pint of this with 20 minutes to go before my train, I’d manage to drink it but it wouldn’t be fun.

Between them these beers have some good moments but I would only go back to John Willies for the smell of walking past a busy pub, back in the day.

Brakspear · Double Dropped Bitter · J. W. Lees · John Willies · Le Chateaux Edna

Traditionally there are two things the Americans can’t do. One is make a car that goes round corners and the second is brew ale. The Sierra Nevada Brewing Company have been brewing since 1980 and their Pale Ale is the flagship beer of the brewery, winning several awards over the years.

This grabbed my attention because ten years ago, I was in the Sierra Nevada mountains, hurling myself down a snowy hill like a maniac. As for the idyllic picture on the bottle, the region really looks like that. I was also drawn to the beer as you can get three bottles for £4 in Tesco. Bargain.

There’s quite a gentle aroma to this drink however it’s barely present at all, you have to really shove your nose into your glass to pick it up. The beer has a pleasing rich golden colour, clear to the eye.

Most importantly the taste is one hell of a surprise. I don’t know what I was expecting, having never drank an American ale. There’s a slight hint of a fizz to the drink which initially plays on the tongue. A bit like a faint memory of popping candy. Once you get used to the taste, you realise you’re drinking a pleasant pale ale. Not mind blowing in anyway but certainly above average. We’re in pure summer beer territory here. Light and hoppy with tingling citrus undertones.

There’s no real aftertaste to speak of but you won’t worry about that, you’ll be too busy opening the next bottle. I’d gladly drink this all night long. Bad news is that was my last bottle.

america · Beers · pale ale · sierra nevada

As I mentioned earlier today, my plan this week is to motivate myself to do some uni work by working until half past ten each day and then rewarding myself with a beer. If you know me in person, you’ll probably know I need to resort to this kind of thing to avoid calamitous falls into blind panic about where my next moment of fun will come from. If you don’t, well, you know what they say – whatever gets you through the day…

I become disproportionately pleased with myself when I make any sort of achievement involving beer, be it abstaining for a month or correctly identifying a type of hop based on a brief whiff of a beer across a smoky bar, so I’m happy to say that I stuck to my plan tonight and got a good chunk of work done. Two and a half books down, ten pages of poorly scribbled notes and then, finally, the Brakspear Oxford Gold.

A bottle of Oxford Gold, lovingly served on the antique bar I installed over the course of many years (a.k.a. my grandma's 1970s kitchen).

This is a very light beer, and I do mean very. The smell transported me ten miles into the country on a warm spring day as I raised the first shandy of the season to my friends and, with a brief nod, let summer commence. It is a really nice smell – it reminds me of how beer smells in those brief glory days until you’ve vomited it into a bush enough times for the association to be forever tainted by an unwelcome waft of bleach and cat piss. If I’d had to guess what this was, I’d have gone for a lager, and a damn nice one at that.

But, of course, we’ve all had a beer that smells like mana from the Gods only to reveal itself as a Chimera of tastes, smells, feels and lingering effects on the gut, the majority being so utterly repellent that you cannot conceive what strange chemical reaction is at play to produce such a wonderful first smell. I normally experience a variation of this at beer festivals by getting a beer that stinks at first but I still swear to at least give it a try, at which point it doesn’t actually seem that bad – until I’m half way down, and then the true smell of this foul multi-headed beast emerges from the bowels of the pint. You just know this is the one that you will pay for the day after.

No such problems with the Oxford Gold though. The taste is quite nice, in a fairly unremarkable way. It’s very refreshing, ideal for a quick pint in a beer garden, and having just had the last mouthful it’s got a bit of zing on the side of the tongue. There’s a feeling coming back to me of that crackling sweet that you used to dip sherbet into at school – an odd feeling of wondering what’s going on in the tongue department. All in all, not bad at all though and definitely ample reward for tonight’s work.

As promised, for supper I tried a little cheese and crackers. The people on telly keep going on about five a day, so I’ve tried to cover everything – apples, cheese, cottage cheese, bread and beer. I needed the piece of toast to stodge it up a bit – those crackers are gone in one and then what do you do? For tonight’s cheeses I’ve gone for 300g of Morrison’s Value Mild Cheddar alongside 200g of Morrisons 99p Offer At The End Of The Aisle. I can report back that both are quite cheesy, with the 99p tasting especially cheap. Cottage cheese on toast is a mixed bag but do be sure, readers, not to attempt apple on toast. I enjoyed my late supper in the fine surroundings of Le Chateaux Edna and can heartily recommend a table/settee here to all fine diners.

Fine dining on a Tuesday night, Blackburn style.

Brakspear · Le Chateaux Edna · Oxford Gold

This is what I will be doing this week.

Like any science, social science – the study of people – can make discoveries based on observing repeated patterns. Unlike astrophysics and neurochemistry it falls down somewhat when confronted by the sheer erratic lunacy of human behaviour, where 2 + 2 can equal 4, 5 and ministrone to different people. Nonetheless beneath this madness runs a steady tide of predictable behaviour which we can learn from.

Using this power they call science I have, then, been able to observe the repeated pattern of me

1. knowing I have something to do,
2. knowing I have plenty of time to do it in,
3. therefore proceeding to fill this time with journeys to supermarkets to buy beer and cheese.

This pattern has not failed to emerge again today as I know I need to spend most of the next three weeks doing uni work, but it’s not quite urgent enough to stop me doing everything else. I’ve just managed to temper it a little by giving myself a reward to motivate me to work – if you like, treating myself like a child, a donkey or a plantation worker.

This is what I want to be doing this week.

And so this week, to help me get through the ceaseless, crushing feeling of boredom and impending death I feel when I know that I’ll just be at home after work every night, I’ve picked up four bottles from Morrisons to get me through each night. One for Tuesday, one for Wednesday, one for Thursday, one for Friday. I have a lot of reading to do each night, chapters from six books on the New Right’s impact on welfare provision (1979-1990), so I’m aiming not to open a bottle before 10.30pm each night. That’ll give me an hour and half to enjoy the bottle and a few crackers and cheese – which I read so much about beer lovers enjoying too, as well as Matt earlier this week, I thought I had to give a try – and then give a brief write-up. If I can do that each night, I’ll get all my work done and the cloud of lonely ennui which hangs over my head will take a kick in the balls from my beers to keep it at bay.

I’ve got four to try, as I mentioned – Joseph Holt’s Maple Moon, J. W. Lees John Willies and Brakspear’s Oxford Gold and Bitter. Not the most inspiring bunch ever but as I discovered today while looking through Morrisons selection, I’ve already tried most of them so I’m down to the ones I’ve skipped over in the past.

Look out for tonight’s first report at approximately 11.30pm, unless science proves itself right again and I neck all four by half eight.

Beers · Brakspear · J. W. Lees · John Willies · Joseph Holt · Maple Moon · Morrisons · Oxford Gold