If you head behind St Mary’s Church in the preposterously good beer-mecca that is Kirkby Lonsdale, you’ll come to a scene known as Ruskin’s View. It was famously painted by Turner in 1818, and with good reason as it’s an achingly pretty example of the British countryside playing a blinder.

It got to be known as Ruskin’s View, however, because the Victoria art critic John Ruskin saw Turner’s painting and went to take a look himself. He declared it to be “one of the lovliest views in England” and it subsequently became synonymous with him rather than, say, the bloke who took the time and effort to paint it. I can’t help think that Ruskin’s getting a bit too much of the credit for drawing everyone’s attention to this admittedly gorgeous slice of Cumbria.

Turner's picture, which he simply called Kirkby Lonsdale Churchyard since Ruskin hadn't been born yet

It also means that Kirkby Lonsdale Brewery- as run by the owners of The Orange Tree, the village’s mightiest pub (now they’ve got rid of the smell)- have called their bitter ‘Ruskin’s’ rather than ‘Turner’s’. Despite the painting and everything. Honestly, you really do have to wonder what it takes to get your name on a pump-clip these days.

The opportunity did present itself, though, to try a beer in the exact place it’s named after, looking at the same thing that the bloke from whom the beer gets its’ moniker was also looking at all those years ago. And so an attempt could be made at trying to understand an area of brewing that’s always intrigued me- how do you make a beer taste like it’s name? As well as tasting like, y’know, beer.

Staggeringly, after a month of seemingly solid drizzle (which, typically, began on the very same day that the North West announced a hosepipe ban) it was a beautiful morning as I sat on a bench and looked out over the same vista that had so snared Turner and Ruskin. I had the beer kept close by as it was still early in the day and I didn’t fancy having all the passing dog walkers thinking I was a raging alcoholic communing with nature or, even worse, trying to explain to them the whole 30 days challenge we’ve got going on here.

After perusing the label and taking a few swigs it was intriguing to see that the chaps at Kirby Lonsdale Brewery had decided that the most appropriate way to put a drinker in mind of one of Britain’s most famous views is via a 3.9%, easy drinking bitter with a little bit of spice and a finish that’s longer than the school summer holidays. Even more intriguingly, and as a fine tribute to the brewers art, they’ve absolutely nailed it.

Ruskin's View as photographed by me. The beer tastes like this photo. Sort of.

I’ve slugged back many a pint of Ruskins on my trips to Kirkby Lonsdale (as well as the brewery’s other ales which are readily available throughout the town and highly recommended) but with the morning sun out at the place that gave the beer its’ name everything just seemed to make a little more sense. The little bit of fruit which is somewhere in the mix seemed perfect for a bright day, that spice gave it a little bracing kick which is perfect for a bright August morning and, don’t ask me how, but it just tasted like the vista. I really can’t explain how but it did.

I liked to imagine Ruskin himself gazing at the exact same view with a beer in hand too- possibly pondering how he could hijack it with it’s own name rather than the man who immortalized it on canvas. I imagine Turner himself also with an ale on the go as he painted his picture- though not too many or he’d have got a bit squiffy and not coloured within the lines quite as neatly as he did. And I looked across to the other side of the valley and right there is a stone circle from thousands of years ago, erected for who-knows-what reason (personally, I’ve always subscribed in hope to the idea that it was for the crazy, goat-sacrificing, naked-dancing, virgin-deflowering rituals that we all like to think the ancient British tribes indulged in and which live on today in places such as Burnley town centre on a Saturday night).

Historical research (and by that I mean Wikipedia) tells us that beer has been around possibly since as far back as 9,000 BC and was spread through Europe around 3,500 BC. Though I bet even then there was places where you could only get bloody Tetleys. This means that, as I stared across the countryside with an ale in hand, I was probably doing something that a bloke had been doing over 5 millenia earlier, staring back across the valley by his newly built circle of stones and thinking “if I invented painting, I could go up there and paint the view. Then some other bloke could get it named after him”.

This was unexpected. Historical perspective is rarely the result of a beer, even a really nice one, but by sampling this particular brew, in this particular place, I became crushingly aware of my own historical insignificance. Thousands of years ago, a man in this place had helped build a magnificent stone circle to beguile people through the ages. Turner had sat here and created a beautiful piece of art. Ruskin had come here and with a few words, sealed the view’s place in the hearts of so many. And me? I sat here one morning and drunk a beer.

Ruskin’s View- come for the vista and the beer, stay for the grim sense of personal irrelevance.

The day: 8
The drink: Ruskin’s by Kirkby Lonsdale Brewery, 3.9%
The place: Ruskin’s View, Kirkby Lonsdale
Positives: A beautiful beer and a beautiful place to drink it.  This is as good as life gets…
Negatives: …until the crippling sense of personal underachievement kicks in
Conclusion: Fittingly, one of the best towns to drink beer produces one of the best places to drink one.

Beers · kirkby lonsdale · kirkby lonsdale brewery · ruskin's · ruskin's view

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

Here at BadPoo Towers, we’re on a never ending quest to understand beer, and it seems there’s a hell of a lot for us to get our heads around. Luckily, there appears to be plenty of other people on the journey with us judging by the number of blogs and fanzines out there dedicated to the subject. These tend to fall into two categories:

a) Blogs and articles featuring incredibly precise descriptions of ales, often breaking down the constitutent parts of hops, barley, oats, whatever in forensic detail and leaving everyone none the wiser as to what it’s actually like to drink the damn stuff. Let me put it this way; all matter in the universe is made up of elements, including humans who are capable of intense and complex emotions and feelings. But would you look at the periodic table in an effort to understand something like love? No, you wouldn’t. You’d listen to ‘God Only Knows’ instead.

Or there’s:

b) Whimsical reportage of pub crawls, lounge bars and microbreweries where explanantions of what a beer is like to drink are only as important as the surroundings in which they are drunk. Regular readers round here will notice that this is the sort of thing we like to go in for. To get pretentious for a moment, beer is so much more than what’s in the glass.

Which isn’t to say that giving some idea of what an ale is like isn’t useful. We’ve all tried those brews that taste like they’ve been strained through an ashtray and it’s important that decent warning about such pints is disseminated as thoroughly as possible. It’s the only way they’ll learn.

Therefore, starting on Monday, we at BadPoo will fearlessly embark on a new, experimental adventure in beer reviewing. In an effort to gauge exactly what the place of the great ale is in the 21st Century we will review 30 of them in 30 days and in 30 different places. Sure we’ve all sat in front of the telly with a bottle or supped a pint in the local but what is it like to try an ale in the sacred male sanctuary of the garden shed? Why do kids drink at bus-stops? Does everyone feel just a little bit like a tramp when they drink on a train, or is it just me? Is it right for a man to drink beer in the bath? Or in bed?

All these questions and more will be answered in the next month here at badpoo.co.uk. Together, we will establish once and for all not only whether these beers are any good, but just when and where a nice, relaxing snifter can improve life no end. Or make it worse. Or make you feel like a bit like a tramp (or is that just me?)

Join us.

Join. Us.

30 days · Beers

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

As I’m sure you know by now, Wetherspoon’s has begun another of their real ale festivals, this year billed as “the world’s largest real ale festival featuring up to 50 ales”. Yesterday we popped along to try a few of the first ones on offer.

Good Cheer Beer and Rollercoaster - two decent, if odd, ales. GCB was the better of the two.

First up, and off to a confusing start: a pint of what we have down as Good Cheer Beer’s Pale Yorkshire Bitter, but which on reflection must actually have been a Roosters’ Good Cheer Beer. Being damn cool customers, we’re never ones to loiter at the bar and our notes are based on a quick glance at the clip as we walk past (making sure to look disinterested in all things ale in front of the barmaids). It also proved that we didn’t pay attention to the “beer festival” signs above the clip, and actually bought a beer which wasn’t part of the festival. Thus, on occasion – frequent occasion, I must admit – we end up with a sheet of notes referring to nonexistent ale which isn’t part of the festival. This would be but the first of several such foul-ups of the day.

But: on to the beer itself. Good Cheer Beer seems to be quite widely available judging by a quick search, but it’s the first time I’d tried it. It’s very light, and I thought it tasted a lot like lemonade at first until the beer flavour kicks in. It’d make a cracking pint in a beer garden after work – refreshing, easy-drinking and like drinking pop. The VK of the ale world, if you like. My drinking partner Shaky found it soft and fruity with a tang of beer to finish, a good barbecue beer and definitely 87.6% as refreshing as shandy. A thumbs-up overall, I think.

Our first round also took in what we noted down as an “Oldham Ales Rollercoaster”. Again, our note-taking skills proved as piss-poor as a quadriplegic secretary and the closest I can guess at is that this was something by the Oldham Brewery, which is just a name used by Robinsons. I can’t even say that with any conviction and I’m sure by now it’ll have sold out and been replaced. Whatever the hell it was that we drank, it had a licquorice, heavy taste which was quite off-putting at first but eventually didn’t seem too bad – I gave it a 60%. Shaky meanwhile found the name apt, as you’re unsure of what you’re tasting, being sour, sweet, dry and comforting all at once – one to enjoy, but not to cherish.

Our terrible note-taking record continued as I went to the bar for round two, the first of which I decided was Three B’s Bee In The Bonnet, which after a conversation with Gordon from the brewery transpired to be Honey Bee. Again, this beer is not even a part of the festival, so we essentially may have gone to any pub in Blackburn, drank four pints and made up some names for them. But bear with me on this one: Honey Bee is our beer of 2010 so far. It’s simply tremendous, the most drinkable pint I’ve ever come across, and that includes my affairs with that seductress Harvest Pale. The very first smell of the pint got an “ooooh” from Shaky, a man whose usual reaction is one of almost invisible indifference. There’s a sweet, almost spicy smell, which I described as like wafting a piece of lightly honeyed toast under your nose, and he called a Chinese sweet and sour. And the taste? The word “quaffable” was invented for this beer. You know those massive Americans who enter contests to neck 20 pints in five minutes? The cheating bastards are on this stuff. It’s very, very nice, nothing too intense but a smooth feeling of honey in your mouth. It leaves you with a feeling of warmth and enjoyment, and is by far my favourite beer of 2010.

Honey Bee and Lush. The former is the mightiest drink since the invention of roofs.

And so, somewhat reluctantly, to our final pint of the session, Hopstar’s Lush. These are another local brewery to us, just down the road in Darwen. I’ve enjoyed their beers in the past but the smell of this one was a bit off-putting – we thought it was somewhere between a mild cheese and a pair of wet socks on a changing room floor. Somehow, the taste is totally different – there’s a definite taste of wood, which I thought was like sucking on a piece of moss-covered bark on one of those massive cool trees in a forest-based episode of the X-Files. Shaky felt it was more like chewing on a pencil and suddenly realising you’ve crushed the lead beneath your teeth. Overall, a curious beer, drinkable but leaving you with a strange sensation.

And those were the beers that were. It was an intriguing session, mostly caused by our total inability to actually write down what we were drinking. But in the space of an hour we drank a piece of wood, had a lemonade beer, were left perplexed by a literal rollercoaster of a pint and enjoyed our champion beer of 2010 so far, the tremendous Honey Bee by Three B’s Brewery.

You try topping that, Foster-boys.

Beer festival · Beers · Good Cheer Beer · Honey Bee · Hopstar · J D Wetherspoon · Lush · Oldham Brewery · Rollercoaster · Roosters · Three B's

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

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

We’ve decided to have a go at the second Beer Swap and have begun to pick out our four local beers. I’m hopeful at least two of the micros around here will be able to sort us out with something a bif different, but we’ll have to wait and see. Most people will have heard of Thwaites and probably Moorhouses, but East Lancashire does have a good few other little ones – just have a look at our East Lancs CAMRA page for details. In particular, we know people at Red Rose so it’d be nice to have one of theirs in – but it’s meant to be a secret, eh, so we’ll have to wait and see…

I’m quite looking forward to this one now…

Beer Swap · Beers · Moorhouses · Red Rose · Thwaites

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