On our way out on Saturday night we had lovely ride in with a taxi driver who seemed to share opinions on beer such as coors - brilliant, carlseberg - piss water, red stripe - awesome...
It got me to thinking as to the various beers of choice i've had over the years, my current favourites being San Miguel and Sierra Nevada (hard to find)... San Miguel is a good beer to be well into cos its easy to come by, i also thoroughly enjoy Bud 66 at the moment which is good cos its cheap... Some of my other favourite beers tend to be from the continent of America: Labatt Ice, rolling rock, brahama, dixie, cusquena and sam adams. One of the key things that links a lot of those beers is there hard to find... (except brahma and cusquena, but guess which are my favourites).
Further to this it does seem that my favourite beers currently are all expensive such as budvar...
Also i pondered my changing choice of beers when i was young i chose by price, then as i got older i chose by strength, now i choose by strength when I'm drinking at home but for the other reason to many strong house beers render me far to drunk on a night out. However i am discerning about the beer I'll drink at home Stella 4 or the aforementioned bud 66 or caffreys are great 4% beers that you can drink for taste rather than fosters or carling...
But a definite favourite of mine is random beers located in supermarkets or corner shops, Oranjeboom is a good one, so is palma loca and the legendary 'lynx' which was acquired from the corner shop for a party... and i will always support drinking beer cos it has cool name or a country of origin you've never had a beer from before such the Nicaraguan beer i got the other week or 'anchor steam beer' which you can get in fenwicks.
Speaking of the strength of beers and associations i was well known for drinking red stripe in my time (I still am) and wandering into a lovely bar in Leeds (this place - http://www.theadelphi.co.uk/ if your ever in Leeds get yourself there for lunch) which had red stripe on tap leading to Marc exclaiming "red stripe in 5.3% that explains a lot!" - actually its less strong in cans but he had a point...
the best thing about the adelphi is its range of beers often on a night out your choice is limited some bars that i like such as 'al vinos' are nice but the range of beer is limited (though it does have the awesome 'brooklyn beer' which shocker is American and moretti on tap which is awesome) this is why i love bars like the forth, the head of steam and Bacchus, the mile castle is pretty good as well... man i hate it when I'm on one of those and someone orders carling, whats wrong with you? As a man who likes Guinness and ale i do have a decent fall back if I'm in a really poor bar but sometimes some bars are weird, like LYH it does pretty much anything in bottles (like sagres) but on tap lagers are limited to Heineken and tiger, which are an odd pairing, I'm okay though they do McEwans as well.. The Hancock does okay it manages to cater to students with cheap shite and Stella as well as old men like me with caffreys and the more discerning drinker with staropramen....
Tell you what though the range has moved on since i first started going out when it was carling, fosters, stella or kronenburg... unless you go to the west side grill (old Orleans) then that's all its got... bottles of carling in Pzazz for 1.50 were pretty good though, i also find nowadays i will order 3 different beers for 3 different people when I'm out, back in the day we all drank the same, a combination of more choice and more opinions methinks.
Anyway that was a long ramble about beer, just be glad i didn't get on to ales in depth... maybe next time my blog will be about my life...
