Can canned beer ever be any good?

Before we were old enough to get served in pubs, my friends and I used to buy cans of beer from the corner shop. We thought it was all very grown up - particularly because we eschewed the usual Fosters and Stella in favour of tinned John Smiths, McEwans Export, and my favourite at the time, Royal Oak.

There was even a 'draught' bitter from Guinness with one of those plastic 'widgets' in the can, which were all the rage in the early 90s. It was probably discontinued years ago, but back in the day it was massive, and even had its own bizarre TV ad, where some guy travelled to an unspecified hot country and chose to keep his supply of Guinness bitter in a river!

Remember this?

I thought it was a nice beer at the time, but I ate Big Macs and Dairy Milk back then as well. Didn't know any better (which was ironic as I thought I knew it all).

Once the pubs started letting us in and we got to drink real beer on a regular basis, it soon dawned on me that the metallic fizz we'd been supping was inherently inferior, and that was that, really. For the best part of 20 years, I've only ever drunk canned beers very, very occasionally, and then usually only out of politeness.

That changed a couple of days ago.

Can it!

I guess Sod’s Law dictates that a particularly busy time at work should coincide with the last few weeks of planning for my wedding (which we are largely organising ourselves) and the cumulative effect is to increase my stress levels while decreasing my free time.

Consequently, I’m feeling pressure from within to give up blogging, sleeping, cooking or possibly all three!

But that’s just not how I roll, nor will I countenance any notion of buying instant ready meals rather than cooking proper dinners from scratch. Pah!

The thing is, I don’t find the purported convenience thereof even remotely tempting. Microwave meals have never done it for me. Nor indeed anything that needs to be 'boiled in the bag', kept frozen until it's time to heat it up, or, worst of all, which can be stored indefinitely at room temperature in a tin can.