Camra

[Robster]

by cask do you mean ordering a cask online and drinking away to your hearts content ?

I did find the only camra pub in my area is about 10 mins from my house but cant go back after last week . Fighting with bar staff is the best way to earn a ban .

So it will need to be wotherspoons for my real ale unless I travel into Glasgow - 20 mins away - so all good .

[Robster]

ST Peters Organics Ale St peters brewery Suffolk ? 4.5%
Very light taste and almost grassy dare I say. Quite refreshing!

Wychwood brewery hobgoblin ruby beer 5.2
very dark and very nice, slight coffee after taste after checking bottle it reads roasted malts so this would explain.

Hard work this!

[prinnysquad]

Personally I'd grovel back to the camra pub on my hands and knees, or wear a fat nose, nhs glasses-disguise, but wetherspoons is ok. They don't keep pints as well, but are cheap.

Where do you live? I could check various sources, because not all real ale pubs are in the Good Beer Guide. They have to be nominated to get in, and if they've only started serving stuff recently they won't be in. Cask at home is ok, but defeats the purpose a little.

Did you get the medicine bottle shaped St Peters? They are superb!



Honestly, once you've had cask and get used to it (give it time!!!), bottles seem so inferior. Still great, but near-universally inferior.

[merf]

girding myself for the annual trip to the Earls Court CAMRA Great British Beer Fest, we are doing our now traditional opening to closing all dayer. Quality day out.

[Robster]

Yeah I had the medicine type bottle, very unique.

I dont do grovelling so cant go back to camra pub Im afraid lol. They only had 3 beers on tap anyway so no huge loss.

I must have polished off about 10 bottles last night including the whiskey beer and old tom cat and I did not have a hangover this morn. Amazing the difference in hangover compared to pints of lager in the pub.

A fair old bit of parping during the night and this morning tho...teh duvet was hovering when I woke up .

Finished with the banna bread ale last night and its delish:

Bannana Bread Ale:
Very stong smell of bannna. Very pleasant taste, I could easily drink it all night! Expected this to be quite sickly but its very refreshing and tasty!.

[prinnysquad]

See, thats how I see banana bread beer, but I get why others hate it.

Ask Plough Boy about his mate, who used to be a lager drinker with bad hangovers, but now he drinks cask he doesn't get headachy hangovers and can drink more! That's why I don't touch pub lager, poured out of those silly little flicky switch stands. Fizzy nastiness full of chems. You need Radaway to cure a lager hangover. Pure filth, Old Wife Beater gives me a headache after half a pint.

Some of the bottled lagers are nice too, the Czech, Belgian, German, even Kenyan stuff is canny. And if you ever get to try a cask lager, give it a whirl. I had Lorimer's Cask Lager last summer, very tasty indeed. And Cains do a nice one too.

merf - give us the lowdown on what you had!

[Robster]

Im heading to a local spoons tonight with lads from football, Im thinking I might turn up early and sample a few ales.

I'll be comparing the hangovers tomo as I will end up going into rounds of lager for convenience but I might stick to bottles.

One thing tho, on a bottle of stella it says only four ingredients. So do they add chem's etc and not display it on the label?.

Forgot to add this from last week:

Firefly Bitter from cask(in pub):
slight vanilla taste with an ale after taste, pleasant. Not sure of abv?.

[prinnysquad]

This is from a website about the way lager is brewed. Brewery conditioned refers to the fact that the brewing process ends in the brewery, whereas cask continues to mature and develop in the barrel, with the yeast releasing new flavours:

Typically the brewery conditioned beer after fermentation is chilled and filtered to remove all the yeast, and then pasteurised to make it sterile, before putting it into sterile, sealed kegs, bottles or cans. This type of beer is sterile so that it will last for ages and save storage and distribution costs, not to make it taste good.
Ingredients of mass-produced lagers and other brewery conditioned beers are arguably chosen for reasons of profit rather than flavour. For example, rice or maize can be mixed with the malted barley to reduce costs. Mass production, the addition of preservatives and other chemicals, and the reduction of the quality of the ingredients, all reduce the flavour of the product, not surprisingly.

The kegs stand upright in the cellar, and the beer is pumped to a font-head at the bar counter, normally by gas pressure from CO2 cannisters, (known as 'top pressure', because the beer is under constant pressure, which forces the beer up through the pipes and out of the font-head tap when the lever is pulled). The effect of the top pressure often taints the taste of the beer (some would say this is a good thing), and to produce a very 'gassy' beer, which for some is not pleasant to drink nor to deal with its after-effects.

Stella is certainly pasteurised. By filtering the yeast out, ultra heating it, and then pumping gas in, it's a really artificial concoction. I don't know if it uses preservatives, but other lagers do. The badness are often due to the brewing process itself.

Bottles and cans are one thing - they often need a long shelf life and need to be sterile filtered, but in a pub I prefer cask because of its unique tastes created by the yeast.

[NW2013]

On the Innis and Gunn originals tonight. Enjoying them very much. Strong toffee aroma and taste and quite light. Great for a summer evening.

[Robster]

A couple more to add:

Theakstons Old Peculiar ale 5.6
Dark ale and very nice taste,creamy vanilla and fruity all at the same time, quite amazing really.
Edit: now after tasting a second time its taste of treacle?? Lol.

Meantime wheat beer 5% meantime brewery: Very smart bottle
Taste like soda water with a hint of beer, very diluted taste. Wont buy again

Belhaven Fruit Beer: 4.6%
Very poor, no taste of fruit at all and not even a good beer taste, one to avoid.

[prinnysquad]

See, I like the fruit beer, and can really taste different flavours in it. It doesn't taste much of beer, but the fruit is quite prominent. Maybe try again in the distant future?

Wheat Beers are very odd, even I struggle with them sometimes. Although the strong ones have an odd fizzy light/head swimming payoff.

[Plough Boy]

Some Vanpeebles homebrew was the order of the day at prinny's. Dubbed 'No Birthday Wherries' as it was from a Woodeforde's Wherry beer kit - it hit the spot.
We also quaffed Asda's Golden Ale Premium, Charles Wells Banana Bread Beer and St Peters Ruby Red Ale. Good stuff.

Robster - you really couldn't taste the fruit in the Belhaven Ale? Hell man - your taste buds must be shot to bits. It's so fruity it doesn't taste like beer!

[merf]

at the recent Earl Court CAMRA bash I quaffed several varieties of Hecks cider and perry, its wonderful but lethal stuff as you are effectively going at a ratio of 1.5-2:1 with all the beer drinking pansies.

I'm a big fan of the Belgie fruit beers Liefemanns Kriek I think, serve it in my fave bar in Covent Garden, the Lowlander. A proper Grand Cafe style place where each beer comes in its right glass

[Robster]

I drank the fruit beer just after dinner so maybe should try it on a clean palette next time?.

One thing I keep noticing is the wind and trotts I get the next day after a real ale session. If you are constipated at all have a go a few real ale's and next day you will be fine .

[prinnysquad]

The parps are one of the great little add-ons. It's great value DLC.

How are your hangovers?