Libertarian rantings

January is undoubtedly the favourite time of year for puritans, killjoys, and illiberal scaremongers, all of them seeking to get inside our heads and extract vengeance for any pleasure we might've gleaned from the festive season.

Top of the list is the lowering of the 'recommended drinking limits', which were already impractically low, to the point where no amount of alcohol is now considered safe, and neither men nor women should regularly consume more than 14 units a week. One glass of wine or a pint of weak beer per day, basically.

Government guidelines.  The very phrase makes me reach for a glass. And as usual, the science backing it up is pretty dubious when you actually scrutinise it.

Non-alcoholics Anonymous

When they first went mainstream back in the late 1980s, non-alcoholic and low alcohol beers swiftly became the butt of jokes. They were right up there with Eastern Bloc cars and straight-to-video horror films on the International Crapness Scale.

Apparently you can still buy this stuff

Barbican. Kaliber. Possibly a bottle of Clausthaler if you were in an upmarket wine bar and wanted your non-alcohol imported. It was all woeful.

Maybe you're lucky enough to be too young to remember. Unfortunately I'm not. And because they were non-alcoholic I recall them with greater clarity than any other beers I drank as a teenager.

Even then, it wasn't just about the not-getting-drunk either. They tasted so extraordinarily bland that they didn't even qualify as a good soft drink. An afternoon drinking Kaliber and skipping school left one yearning for a can of Quatro. Remember that? Quatro?

The Pimm's Lagerita

It was back to school for me this week as I attended a 'How to Judge Beer' day course with fellow British Guild of Beer Writers members at the Institute of Brewing and Distilling.

Now, I know what you're thinking: 'But Ben, you're an expert on all things beer. You don't need to be told how to taste the difference between a Lemon Saison and an Imperial Chocolate Stout. You're fucking amazing, you are.'

Phenolic! Diacetyl! Taste those off-flavours!

Well, quite, but we all have gaps in our knowledge and this course happily focused on a few key things that I've never formally studied, particularly around the detection of off-flavours in beer.


It's not just about telling the difference between good beer, and beer that has gone off either. There are several differents kinds of off-flavours arising from myriad different causes, not all of them are considered universally unpleasant, and some are even tolerated by brewers and drinkers, to the point that they're not necessarily considered off-flavours at all, but a de facto characteristic of the beer!

Plenty of drink for thought, and another set of things to consider next time I'm on a judging panel.

Tying myself in Windsor (& Eton) knots

If you haven't done so already, I suggest you pick yourself up a copy of the April/May edition of London Drinker magazine.

There's lots of good stuff in there with the latest news on the London (and wider) pub scene, and I've written a piece about cask Altbier in Dusseldorf and an emotional farewell to the gone-but-not-forgotten Brew Wharf.

Oh, and there's an advert that really fucking wound me up something rotten.

I know. I know I should probably be thinking about the victims of the earthquake in Nepal or the grieving relatives of Keith Harris, but it's always the little annoyances that get to me. Partly because I know most people aren't going to be bothered about it.

The strongest beer in the world

One Easter, way back when I was but a callow and impressionable teenager, my father gave me, instead of an egg, a bottle of Kulmbacher EKU 28. 'The strongest beer in the world', he said, and it probably was back then.

At the time, I was very interested in world records and just beginning my journey of discovery into the beeriverse, so this was an item much revered and awed until the time came to drink it. The Robert Wadlow of beer.

Truth be told, I didn't enjoy it all that much, but at least I could say I'd tried the strongest beer in the world and wouldn't need to have it again. Ever.

Except that a couple of years later I found out about Schloss Eggenberg 'Samichlaus', which - at 14% ABV - was even stronger than EKU. Again, it was widely reckoned to be the strongest in the world at the time; again, I tried a single bottle, and, again, I wasn't very impressed.

That was nearly two decades ago, but I'm still not particularly keen on doppelbocks and other super-strength lager type beers. Too sweet, too malty, nowhere near enough hops for my liking.

And to the breweries producing weapons-grade beers these days, a piddling 14% is basically less alcoholic than water. Water, I say!

eggnogblog

If you're reading this then you survived Christmas - if not necessarily New Year - and unless you're under three, probably suffered from some degree of nostalgia.

The marketing weasels are very clever these days, and they'd love to think that the plethora of new products available will avert our minds eyes from the wistful memories of all the stuff you can't get any more, but which will never be forgotten.

150 watt lightbulbs, high tar cigarettes, guards on trains, the hard square toffee in Quality Street, Gold Top milk... all gone.

Actually, I was surprised to discover recently that the Gold Top (or 'full cream') milk that my grandmother used to give me as a child is actually still available in large supermarkets. Not liking milk very much - unless it's been made into butter or cheese, obviously - I'm not all that bothered either way, but for a few years now I've been meaning to make Egg Nog, and thought that a bottle of Gold Top might well be a useful ingredient. That and eggs, presumably.

Oh, and some booze. Obviously.