Strange Dogfish head beers

When I was buying a crap Brazilian lager for the World Cup beer sweepstake I made sure I got some stuff I was actually wanted to drink too.

The beers from Dogfish head brewery in Delaware have interested me ever since I bought their 22% ABV World Wide Stout back in the days when Safeways was my local specialist beer shop. As I have relatives in Delaware I've been giving my mum a shopping list when she goes to visit but sadly for me she insists on bringing the clothes she's packed back with her so there's not much room for beer. 

As I'd got a tip off from a blog comment that Dogfish head beers could once again be bought in Britain they were the first things I added to my online shopping basket once I'd got the required Brazilian gnats piss. 

My first choice was Midas Touch, a beer based on analysis of the residue of a 2700 year old drinking vessel. I have a fascination with old beers. I've brewed a few based on recipes in Old British Beers and How To Make Them and the blogs that tend towards the historical, like those of Ron Pattison and Martyn Cornell are some of my favourites. 

Despite the wide range of beers that can now be bought some of the beers that interest me aren't available commercially so at times I have a go at 'brewing beers like those you can't buy' . Some of my efforts in this direction have been brewing unhopped ales. The blurb about Midas Touch suggested it was unhopped:

This recipe is the actual oldest-known fermented beverage in the world! It is an ancient Turkish recipe using the original ingredients from the 2700 year old drinking vessels discovered in the tomb of King Midas. Somewhere between wine & mead; this smooth, sweet, yet dry ale will please the Chardonnay of beer drinker alike.

The taste did remind me of my own attempts at ales, though more complex. It manages to be sweet and dry at the same time and almost like a fizzy wine. On the website it says that Midas Touch as 12 IBUs so there must be a small amount of hops added. It's certainly an interesting drink, but I won't be rushing out to buy it again. 

Next up was Palo Santo Marron, a beer aged in vats made from an exotic South American tree. Surprisingly it was quite mild in taste (at least as far as strong wood aged beers go) and went down rather easily. I enjoyed this one more, but not enough to fork out a fiver for a 355ml bottle again anytime soon.

So there you have it, I'm glad I drank them but having done that I'll save my money for cheaper stuff in future. 

Damned if you do and damned if you don't

The anti-alcohol lobby opened a new front this morning: 'think of the children'. On the radio they had some raving alkie talking about how bad she was at one point (up to four bottles of scotch a day) intercut with tiny Tim or whatever her offspring was called saying how bad he thought it was. 

This was then followed by Wetherspoons boss Tim Martin and some anti-alcohol bloke discussing how booze is too cheap in supermarkets. 

The BBC website also had an article about some children feeling scared when they see adults drinking too much: 'Childwise research director Rosemary Duff said the 30% who felt scared when adults drank was a "sizeable minority".

But she said it was also a concern that nearly half of children were "not bothered" by drunkenness, which, she said, suggested drinking culture had become "ingrained".'

So there you have it, drinking alcohol is bad because it scares children. Unless it doesn't scare them, in which case it's also bad.

I wish these sanctimonious killjoys would just bog off and leave us to get pissed in peace. 

We have it in our power to build the world anew

As it's the forth of July I put on my Tom Paine T Shirt and raised at toast to him. Sadly I didn't have any Harvey's Tom Paine to drink but a bottle of Goose Island IPA was a good consolation.  

I spent a very enjoyable afternoon drinking in the sun with the lovely Lisa and our friend Dan. The trouble is with afternoon drinking what do you do in the evening? Though not ideal for a Sunday there was no escaping the obvious answer: drink some more. Just a small nightcap though, there's beer to be made tomorrow. 

Look what was in the fridge when I got home ...

The lovely Lisa has obviously been reading the blog. Did I say that she's lovely? 

Wheat beers

I've developed an urge for wheat beer recently. I think it probably started when I was in a Sam Smith's pub the other week, as their one cask beer is so dull I often drink the wheat beer. The unseasonably sunny weather must have something to do with it too. I've got used to guzzling wheat beers when on summer climbing trips to the Dolomites, in the German speaking (and more importantly German beer drinking) part of Italy. 

My local Waitrose sells Erdinger and as there's an Erdinger glass in the kitchen cupboard that seemed a good place to start. 

The alarm bells should have started ringing when I looked at the bottle though. It was 5.3% ABV which puts it at the weaker end of the German wheat beers. I can remember one Summer researching the various wheat beers on offer, which ranged from 5.2 to 5.6% ABV and finding that each increment in ABV improved the beer. Being at the lower end the Erdinger was definitely lacking, so even though I had the proper glass (and wheat beer glasses do look the business) it was a bit of a disappointment. 

My next beer was one I bought when stocking up for my World Cup beer sweep stake entry.   Troublette is a Belgian wheat beer, slightly stronger (5.5% ABV) but a far better beer. Lots of flavour, but still refreshing a few more of these would have gone down very nicely.  

As I'm a bit out of practice with wheat beer I can't really remember what are meant to be the defining characteristics of German and Belgian wheat beers. Cloves and bananas Vs Coriander and Curaçao orange peel? Anyway the Erdinger didn't have much flavour and the Troublette did. 

And to complete the international line up, I also found a wheat beer from England. Whitstable's Raspberry Wheat (5.2%) would I guess be more at the Belgian end of things, what with having raspberries in it. 

It was totally different from the other two though, having a touch of sourness in the taste, but not unpleasantly so. It wasn't really one for guzzling, as there's only so much sourness I can take, but it had the refreshingness I was after. 

If anyone could recommend me some more wheat beer to enjoy whilst the weather's still hot I'm all ears.  

World Cup beer sweepstake - Brazil

I drew Brazil in the World Cup sweepstake. Normally this would be a cause for celebration, but this is no ordinary sweepstake. This is the World Cup beer sweepstake. To enter I had to track down a Brazilian beer and blog about it. 

Wonderful country though I'm sure it is Brazil is not a great beer nation. I couldn't think of any Brazilian beers that I 'd heard of, and a quick google later I found out that Skol is one of the most popular brands. This was not looking good. 

Next I had a look in The World's Best Beers . A few lager breweries are mentioned, including one that makes a weizenbock but what are my chances of finding any of them? I took the opportunity provided by a trip to the Lake District to peruse the selection of foreign beers in Booths. Wide though the selection was, there was nothing from Brazil.

I decided I'd have to order something over the internet. There are a few beers I've been meaning to get hold of so hopefully I could add a Brazilian beer to an order of more interesting stuff. Looking at the Beers of Europe website I saw they sold two Brazilian beers, but only one was in stock. At least that made the decision easy: Brahma beer, a pale lager, it was then.  

My order arrived promptly and in amongst the delights from the States and Belgium was a bottle of what looked suspiciously like gnat's piss. 

Right, so now I'd got the beer how best to drink it? As a man of culture, I'm not really into football, preferring the arts and science. But I thought I should try and get into the spirit of things and drink like a footie fan. 

From what I can gather this mainly involves going down the pub in your countries football strip but I could hardly bring my own beer and I didn't have a Brazilian football top. Still, not to be deterred I resolved to do the best I could at home. Brazil's colours seemed to be yellow and green so I had a rummage in my wardrobe. My thai boxing club have some lairy yellow shorts and I have a green T shirt so I put those on. 

Sadly despite my best efforts it wasn't very convincing. So I had my pubes waxed. Surely I'd now had the full Brazilian experience. 

Next I need to find a football match to watch. I saw I'd just missed a Brazil match and the other matches weren't really at good times. So I decided to watch the tennis instead. It's all people chasing after a ball so it's not really that different is it? I settled down with my bottle of Brahma beer, delighted to see that it came in a clear bottle. Instead of having an ordinary crappy lager I could be treated to a light struck crappy lager. Oh what joy. 

The beer poured the colour of urine with a gentle hint of nothingness on the nose. There was no real taste and it was cold and a bit fizzy.  I was right in saying that Brazil is not a great beer nation. But I've done my bit to enter the sweepstake, and Brazil is a great footballing nation, so here's wishing them every success! 

Beer we go!

I'm not someone who follows football. But I was amused to see that England's win against Slovenia was apparently down the team being allowed beer the night before the match. 

If this is what they can do on some crappy South African lager, think what they could do if some decent beer was shipped out to them!