We were in the Royal Oak, which means Jennings beers. Jennings aren’t bad if you get the infernal sparkler removed but they’ve suffered some tribulations of late. The brewery in Cockermouth was flooded out and production temporarily moved to somewhere else in the “Marston’s” empire. Production has recently resumed at Cockermouth so it was unclear exactly whether the beer we were drinking had been brewed in the Lake District or the midlands. Either way it seemed a bit below par.
For Friday night I drank Jennings Bitter (3.5% ABV) for most of the night, with only a modest amount of Sneck Lifter (5.1% ABV) at the end of the night as I wasn’t pissed enough to keep out the Winter chill. Despite its low strength Jennings bitter has a lot of flavour and I prefer it to its paler brothers Cumberland and Cockerhoop. Though a lot of beer bloggers like to complain about ‘boring brown bitter’ I find the profusion of pale thin beers more of a problem.
Balancing the need to control your intake with your desire to get pissed is a tricky one. And lets face it the desire to get pissed usually wins, but session beers have their use when there's things to be done the next day.
The snow is great at the moment, isn't it?
ReplyDeleteIt certainly is. Best winter I've had in the lakes, not back til Easter now though :-(
ReplyDeleteThe Middle Ruddings is about 400m away if you're fed up of Jennings.
ReplyDeleteI'll check it out when I'm next in Braithwaite.
ReplyDelete