06 May, 2009

 

Glass of mixed for the young lady

For years I have been referring to rosé wine as "mixed", thinking it to be a mildly derogatory joke to suggest that it is made from tipping some red wine into a glass of white and stirring with a spoon (a wine spoon?). It was getting to be one of those signature jokes that people begin to cordially loathe you for.

Turns out to be true. Just shows what I know. I shall stick to pontificating about beer in future.

Comments:
Just don't call beer 'pig's piss' or something. You seem to have some kind of weird transformative power in your vocabulary, and I LIKE beer.

 
I was up north once (only once) and asked for a light n bitter.

"What's wrong with the bitter?"

Nuffink, make it a pint.

 
Fortunately, the original pig's piss isn't available any more. To think that I actually used to gleefully consume this muck when I was young and naïve.

I've seen Courage Light making a very limited comeback in the past few years, in the chiller cabinet as some kind of "specialty beer" (bloody heathens!). You can still get the genuine (tepid) stuff out i'th' sticks (ie Dartford).

I used to drink light and bitter in the 1970s either

a) to spin out the pint by refreshing it from time to time from the bottle of light, or

b) more often, because cellarmanship standards tended to be just a touch unpredictable in those days, light ale could be used to pep up a crap pint to make it more or less drinkable.

Not the same sense of raw adventure these days with all this Cask Marque predicatability.

 
My particular sticks was Slough (slough-slough-quick-quick-slough) & we progressed onto JC (John Courage - coming in at a 4.8%) which really did muscle up the tepid 'best'.

Sir Tim spoils me now.

 
At Uni in Hull back in the 70's 80's the local brewery and - I think - Bass had a locally-enforced beer cartel.

You could have any Bass you liked or something chemical of Northern Foods' devising from the high pressure metal containers that was called 'Old Tradition' - a beer so foul that it made my transpennine soul long even for Whitbread's Trophy or the dread Brew Ten (which itself was so evil I think that Google has blocked it from search...)


And you soft southerners think you had it rough...

 
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