h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Soooooo, you are the wise one!!!

nope, just an odd pedant when it comes to knowing a few things about what gets put into the things I eat and drink

Don't know if it's available outside of the US, but there's one called "Stoney Creek Vanilla Porter" which is practically a food group for me! Thick and rich, slight vanilla aftertaste, it is to die for...

As for why Americans can't make good beers, you just have to look harder, and not fall for the big brewery line of "Freshness is better." Sure it's fresh, it's PI**! ;D

Its been a while since I lived in Southern England but I always used to enjoy Hall & Woodhouse's "Badger Beer" and "Tanglefoot", Fullers "London Pride", any Green King beer and Marston's "Varsity" which used to be served in a local real ale free house near to my home and went down really well, no matter what the weather but even better when watching a village cricket match on a local green! I expect there are some excellent real ales around County Durham where I'm living at present, but I don't go out much anymore to track 'em down.

Now that the cooler weather's coming (here in the U.K.) it's time to try out those lovely dark winter ales and porters. Tesco's has an own brand Porter (brewed by Marstons) marries well with pleasant company and a warm fire. If you like Christmas cake and Christmas pudding, wait a few weeks and try King & Barnes Christmas Ale. They sell it 'Bottle Conditioned' but I'm not sure whether you can also get it on draught.

I'll go along with that!I had about 10 bottles last Christmas,and they went down a treat
shazz

Well if you can drink 10 in one sitting waiting for Santa - you might care to look up those Unibroue beers I'm always ranting on about - there is a disty. in the UK I believe - their motto is "drink better not more" - But if you drink more, it should be better - That's my motto. I stuck a link to their web page somewhere up in this forum thingy - the web site is intereting for the beerophile.

Hmmm - "beerophilia" - an appropriate descripton.....

Um, can't read posts. Sampled quite a lot of beer tonight.

Can't read it either - are there two of them? forum's left and right?

No there was just one, but it was M O VI N G...

Classic example of too much beer...I'm the guy with the saddle on...

http://www.netsoc.ucd.ie/~robins/louise.html

Nice boots!! Crack that whip!!!

Heh...although, the girl doesn't own a riding crop!! Coz she doens't want to hit her horse...so it was a little bit less then the fantasy that I wanted...aheh aheh...

That was this Hallowe'en btw...

As long as a "good time" was had by all, then thats all that matters!!

You did have a good time didn't you??!!

...but if they're anything like you, they can't spell.

For what its worth, I would say that southern-German beers, such as Loewenbrau or Hacker-Pschorr, are excellent. As too are the Czech beers (Radegast, Pilsner Urquell, and of course the great Budweiser Budvar). But despite this, I am still extremely partial to boring home brews such as Boddie's & John Smiths. There! I said it!

boddie's:- a beer with less body than kate 'call me garden cane' moss. john smith's is vaguely ok, but only because they're the sponsors of the newcastle falcons, my local national league rugby union club. if you want proper beer, try something hand-pulled, which is so damn-good that they don't need to advertise it with either melanie sykes or a cartoon bull with gender confusion. in fact, when was the last time you saw a real ale or a hand-pulled bitter advertised on tv? the last one i saw was fuller's london pride, the bottle variety, last january. decent breweries spend their money wisely, employing people who know what they are doing. AND IT SHOWS...

the only reason that budweiser budvar gets you more drunk than its western counterpart is because it has more impurities in it than american bud. it is the impurities (cow-dung, soil, hops shells, chemical plant refuse, that sort of thing...) which put you into illegal states of mind, not the alchohol.

it is far better to drink one pint of top-draw beer and stay sober than it is to drink yourself into oblivion on cr*p such as fosters or carling. i'll get the tin opener and open up another can of worms next time i log on...

Hear, hear... But for the beericalogically disadvantaged (say in large swaths of N. America for example), Boddies is better than other crap. Especially where hand-pulled means some guy pulled it out of the bar fridge and pulled the tab.

Speaking of rocket fuel - I once (out of curiousity only) bought 1 can of Crest 10% alc. lager (they have it in Canada). This is rather like comparing the propellants developed in WW2 to a good German lager. I will leave it at that. Since then I have only seen this consumed (or rather spilled) on the seat next to some poor guy passed out on the Picadilly line to Heathrow at 11am.

If once in a while I see a small fragment of hops in my pint, and can smell that it was made properly and dry hopped to my taste I am happy. Anything else floating around is not welcome - except maybe the odd microscopic fragment of yeast that may get in there.

In Canada some folks have figured out how to make a decent bitter in brew-pubs or small breweries (ie. like it used to always be before commercial breweries got out of hand), and it is catching on - halleluyah!

Hmmm...if the impurities put you in an illegal state of mind and not the alcohol (I'm taking "illegal state of mind" to mean drunk here), then how come people can get pished on poitin?? It's a moonshine type of thing made in rural ireland places and is usually about 90-something per cent in the alcohol content stakes! Usually VERY high ninties!

just wondering...