My attempt at sophisticated drinking got as far as finding the first glass cup I could lay my hands on.

Tonight’s beer is a familiar one to most, Morland’s Old Speckled Hen.

This is one of those beers that you can’t avoid and nearly everyone has heard of, but I’ve never figured out why. Even my local Spar has it, and their real ale choice is this and Newcastle Brown. Indeed, that’s why I’ve ended up buying a bottle of it to take home, when my normal approach is to try anything with a mental shiny label and a name like Yoko Ono’s been dicking about with a Swedish dictionary.

I get a little sick of seeing it everywhere because the taste is so generic; there are a thousand other beers just like it and no reason not to try them rather than sticking with the same bloody thing over and over. In this way it’s guilty of being one of those ales that become so popular that they become ubiquitous, lose their charm and are eventually dethroned from their shiny position at the forefront of the bar. Spitfire suffered that fate some time ago if you ask me, and Greene King’s IPA is so common there’s no real appeal to getting another pint of it.

The beer reminds me of the first pint of Tetleys I ever had, which I thought I’d like based on the smell of beer wafting out from pubs, but actually felt queasy after drinking because it was so beery. I think that’s what sums it up for me – it’s one of the worst possible beers you could give to someone new to bitter. Everything about it is ultra-beer and if you don’t have the stomach for it, it won’t go down well.

These guys at BeerAdvocate (which is a misleading name since all they advocate is reducing everything down to a list of its chemical elements while slagging off the people who made it) come up with some staggeringly complex descriptions of it, while still failing to describe to anyone what it’s actually like to drink. So you should know:

• ONLY drink it if you can deal with shuddering slightly after each sip rapes the side of your tongue,
• DO NOT buy a pint of this if you have 20 minutes to kill before a train and think you’ll “slip a cheeky one in”, as you’ll curse the pain of trying to force it all down in the last five minutes,
• DO buy a pint if you don’t really like real ale but want to buy a pint of it in front of some blokes from work at Friday dinner so they think you’re a proper man who knows shit about beer.

So, a thumbs down from me. It’s not a bad beer, it’s just a pretty intense version of its type.

Beers · Greene King · Morland · Old Speckled Hen · Spitfire

Tonight I’m round at my cousin’s having a cheap night in because of the recession and global economic crises and the rising price of rice and AAAARGH PANIC WE’RE ALL POOR!!! No doubt they’ll be on the vino and, as much as I do like the odd glass now and then, it’s a night on the ales for me. I’ve come to learn that red wine can be tremendous if you drink it in the right company, with someone you can trust to drink at the same pace as you, but if you get even slightly out of kilter with one another then an hour down the line, you’ll feel like your head weighs 20 tons while your mate will have entered into a Jagermeister-based drinking game with the neighbours.

The jazzy label honestly did make me buy it.

I’ve picked up a few bottles from Morrisons, anyway. They’re doing four bottles for £5.50 round here at the moment which ain’t so bad. First up is Greene King’s St Edmunds, a golden beer with a label that stands out a mile. I don’t know about you but the labels really do work on me, and I don’t see any point denying it. Maybe it’s because I don’t really care much what it says on the back because I like all kinds of beer, but the label says more to me while I’m looking through 50 beers on the shelf. Is that bad?

Next up I’ve got White Horse’s Wayland Smithy. Morrisons describe this as “fiery and aromatic” which is probably shorthand for really bitter and smelly, making you cock your head to one side after every gulp to figure out what the hell you’re actually drinking. Hopefully Wychwood’s Circle Master will be a bit more reliable, and the final of the four is Castle Rock’s Harvest Pale which from everything I’ve read sounds like a classic golden ale.

My usual success rate based on randomly picking beers based on their labels is 50%, so I’ll probably get a couple of really good beers tonight and a couple I could take or leave. I’d rather have it that way than be one of those gits blocking the aisles with a trolley full of Andrex while he inspects the labels through ancient reading glasses, merrily reading out loud the full list of ingredients to all and sundry.

As you may guess, I much prefer buying beer from pubs.

Castle Rock · Circle Master · Greene King · Harvest Pale · Morrisons · St Edmunds · Wayland Smithy · White Horse · Wychwood