Perry, Pear Cider and Pedantry

If there's one thing worse than petty pedantry, it's petty pedantry that isn't even fucking correct.

We don't hide behind snowflake protection screens around here. Some people are Complete Fucking Retards. Some people are Insufferable Pedants. And some manage to be both a CFR and an IP concurrently.

Especially when the discussion involves the words 'pear' and 'cider'. And usually a defiant 'perry'.

I'm talking about the sort of really annoying IP who, if you ask them at a quarter past midnight how their evening is going, will point out that 'it's actually the morning now'

At least, they would, if they weren't safely ensconced at home at that time posting on social media, lurking, waiting for someone to talk about 'pear cider'. At which point they can triumphantly chime in with 'Perry! you mean Perry! There's no such thing as Pear Cider!!!1one11'

Lost Breweries: F is for Freeminer

One of the plus points of writing this series is that for every letter of the alphabet I get to indulge in a big bath of beery nostalgia.

I had to think fairly deeply to come up with my 'F', not because breweries whose names begin with the letter have proven immune from closure by quirk of fate, but because the obvious names that sprang to mind haven't really played a significant role in my drinking career, at least when I started thinking about it.

For example, when I was a small child, Fremlin's bitter seemed to be held in extremely high regard by my parents and everyone else who drank beer. It might well have been the first brewery name I ever learned. Possibly even the first beer I ever tasted.

But Fremlin's had been owned by Whitbread since the 1960s, the original Maidstone brewery site had closed in the early 70s and the Faversham brewery that had made the beer the adults raved about also went in 1990. So by the time I started drinking, Fremlin's had become a niche, hard-to-find brand from a ghost brewery that in all honesty never meant anything to me, even if it was beloved of the previous generation.

Then there is Flowers of Cheltenham, another bolted horse from the erstwhile Whitbread stable. In the mid-90s Flowers Original was the staple cask beer in my student union bar, but I hardly ever drank it because it was fucking awful. Warm, soupy goop that largely ensured everyone drank Stella or Guinness instead.

Even in good condition it was an entirely unspectacular beer. That brewery closed in 1998, probably wasn't missed by too many people, and while Flowers beers are still contract-brewed for Whitbread's successor AB-Inbev, it's not really something you'd actively seek out; Again, a brewery that ultimately means very little to me.

And that's why I've gone with Freeminer, whose beers I did at least drink and occasionally even enjoy!