Tag: Booze & Such

Reverse Jesus

Food & Drink, Gummint, Taxes and Theft

The Hollies once released a song called “King Midas In Reverse”, in which the hapless subject of the work was afflicted with the curse that unlike the mythical Midas (who turned everything he touched into gold), everything this guy touched turned to dust.  (Compare and contrast this with, say, a Socialist politician, where everything he touches turns to shit.)

Anyway, the title of this post is not intended to be irreligious, of course, but as we all know, Christ is supposed to have turned water into wine at a marriage feast in Cana, Galilee.

It seems as though a brewer is intent on turning their own beer into water:

Beer drinkers are furious after pub favourite Grolsch decided to slash its alcohol content.

The Dutch Pilsner has dropped from 4% alcohol by volume (ABV) to 3.4% leaving fans of the beer disgruntled.

Before it was relaunched by the UK by brewer Asahi in 2020 the beer was sold at 5% ABV and has now seen a further reduction in alcohol content.

Back when I used to drink a lot of beer, Grolsch was one of my favorites, with that porcelain-topped cap a lovely touch of class.  It tasted just plain wonderful, and to be frank, if I wasn’t planning on drinking heroically (Castle Lager in South Africa, Wadworths 6X in Britishland, Henry Weinhard Dark in Murka), I really didn’t mind paying the premium price for Grolsch.

But why would the brewers of Grolsch decide to water down their beer?  Ah well, if this was not initiated by the Stupids in The Marketing Department, of course one would suspect the dirty little fingers of Gummint poking into our various orifices.

And that suspicion would be correct.

New legislation introduced last year means drinks are taxed based on their alcoholic strength.

Since the alcohol duty regime came into effect in August and brewers have been reducing alcohol content, while keeping prices the same.

While the reductions may appear small, they generate a tax saving of 2p to 3p on every bottle. [none of which has been passed on to the consumer — K.]

Among the popular brands where the alcohol content has been cut are Foster’s, Old Speckled Hen, Kronenbourg, and Hophead — the practice has been dubbed ‘drinkflation’.

Drinkdeflation, more like.

In these here United States, we used to refer to 3.2% beer as “squirrel piss”, so I suspect that 3.4% can’t be far off.

Good thing I don’t drink beer in any quantity anymore, or else I’d be getting angry.

Healthy Drinks

Health

…or not, as recently revealed by A Doctor:

A Harvard and Stanford trained gastroenterologist has revealed four scary facts about diet soda — and why you may not want to drink them anymore.

I’ll spare you the need to click on the link.  Diet pops (Diet Coke, -Pepsi, whatever) mess with the following:

  • Heart
  • Kidneys
  • Gut biome
  • and make you crave chocolate (or something like that)

Of course, they all taste like shit, without exception, so there’s also that.  In my experience, people who claim the opposite have generally been drinking them for an extended period — i.e. their taste buds have become accustomed to that battery acid tang.  I tried a couple of them, many years ago, and found that they made me thirstier than I was before drinking them.

For those who read John Sandford’s Prey  novels, this will come as Bad News to ace detective Lucas Davenport, who seemingly chugs a Diet Coke with every meal.  Then again, he also drinks that foul Leinenkugel beer, so his taste in drinks is questionable at best.

Wrong Categories

Food & Drink, Old Fartism, Two-Minute Hate

As I wrote only yesterday about the silliness of pubs allowing children inside their premises, and on many occasions about my permanent dislike of the whole “gastropub” nonsense, you can imagine my irritation upon reading this article about Britain’s best pubs, and finding the following results:

Best Pub For Families
and
Best Pub For Food

Bloody hell;  two anger buttons for the price of one article.

But wait!  there’s more!

Best Pub For Dogs

I need a drink.  Thanks to the article though, there are at least three pubs I know not to visit.

Quote Of The Day

QOTD

From Oasis’s Noel Gallagher:

“What I’ve found creeping into pubs, what you see now in pubs, which you didn’t used to see back in the day, is fucking dogs. I don’t recall stepping over loads of fucking dogs to go to the bogs in a pub in the ‘90s.  Kids and dogs, fuck ‘em off, get home.
“Pubs need to get back to encouraging drinkers through their doors, and stop doing food because I hate sinking a few pints surrounded by waitresses and plates.  Every pub does fucking food now as well. I’ve got a real fucking problem with food in pubs. Fuck off to a restaurant and then come back.”

I’m kind of in sympathy with him (although I couldn’t sing one of his band’s songs if you held a gun to my head).

The hell with dogs, whether in pubs or wherever.  Your dog needs exercise?  Walk it, then take it home, then go out to a pub.

Way I see it, a pub can sell the kind of food that’s more of a snack (meat pies, fish & chips, toasted sandwiches, bags of chips/crisps or bowls of peanuts)… but that’s it.

Don’t even get me started on “gastropubs”, FFS.

The business of a pub is to serve booze to grownups.  End of.

Yeah, I know.  With all this hoo-hah about drunk driving (note to Brits:  “drink” driving is a silly, effete phrase), nobody goes out just to drink anymore.  Ever wondered when we as a society started to become more like children?

When all this bullshit started.

Itchy Feet & A Thirst

Food & Drink, Travels

Just as a pretty girl makes one’s loins stir, and a lovely gun makes the trigger finger twitch, this article by Tom Parker-Bowles makes me want to sell everything I own and take a trip to Britishland, just to visit the pubs he talks about.  I mean:

The 50 cosiest pubs in Britain. From roaring fires in winter to breathtaking riverside views and — of course — a fine selection of local ales on tap, the watering holes you’ll want to linger in

To my absolute chagrin, I haven’t been to any of them;  although I would put some of my favorite pubs — e.g. The King’s Arms in All Cannings, Wilts. — against all of them.

And leaving The George Inn in Norton St. Philip off the list of West Country pubs is nothing short of a travesty.

Of the Haunch of Venison in Salisbury, or rather its omission, we shall not speak.

Frankly, I don’t care about the view in a pub — unless it’s that of a pretty barmaid — because I go to a pub to drink and make merry with friends and not to look out over a valley, a canal or the sea.  Atmosphere is the thing, only in that it makes the merrymaking easier and me less likely to leave after only a cursory pint (it’s happened).

Also less important is the food;  I look with alarm at some of Parker-Bowles’s choices (caramelized shallot and thyme tarte tatin — WTF is that?), when all I’m looking for is a decent fish & chips, a sausage roll or even just a toastie or cheese sarnie.  (Fortunately, I see that Mr. Parker-Bowles dined mostly on good pub fare like toasties, stews and ox-tongue sandwiches.  Attaboy.) Whatever.  I don’t go to a pub to eat, FFS, I go there to carouse.  Eating is best done in restaurants or at street stalls, where booze is the accompaniment rather than the raison d’être.  Of “gastropubs” we shall not speak, either.  (Okay, just one:  I remember going to one such excrescence in London somewhere, and upon reading the menu that featured overpriced crap like “Sea salt & cracked black pepper squid, £28.75”, asked for a bag of potato crisps — to be met with a supercilious sneer and a “We don’t serve that kind of thing here” response.  I left after drinking only half my pint of — mediocre — ale.)

Anyway, as I said at the start, I need to get over there and try some (all?  ye gods) of these places out for myself.


(I know, I know:  a half-pint?  It was my “taster”, followed soon by a full pint, or maybe two.  My memory is somewhat fuzzy, as often happens.  That was at The Haunch.)

Also, I need to revisit some of my old haunts:

Let’s just hope they all survived Teh Covid.

But I sure as hell won’t be going to this foul place, and that’s for sure:

For nearly 200 years, the Stag Inn has been the beating heart of a tiny village. But a recent revamp has split opinion, with some welcoming the modernisation and others claiming its ‘spit and sawdust charm’ has been ruined by being turned into a trendy gastropub.
Critics say unacceptably avant garde measures at the drinking hole in West Acre, Norfolk, including graffiti in the toilets, an upmarket menu with options such as venison burgers, and garishly-coloured furniture have driven them away.

Me, too.  No pics because ugh, as you will see if you dare to click on the link.

Too Much (Hot) Air

Food & Drink

Apparently, we’ve been drinking champagne All Wrong:

A wine expert has revealed why you shouldn’t drink Champagne out of a flute [glass, not musical instrument — K]. Master Sommelier Olivier Krug, from Krug Champagne, was a guest on the ‘Got Somme’ podcast hosted by Angus O’Loughlin and Carlos Santos, and suggested using ‘proper’ glassware — such as a pinot noir or chardonnay glass — to taste all the elements of the champagne.

Whatever.

I’ve never cared for champagne:  too gassy, mostly crap-tasting inferior wine, it’s a triumph of marketing over quality.

“Ah but Kim, you’ve just never tried the really good stuff!”

LOL.  I remember once going to a brand promotion party at some mansion in Newport RI and being given a glass (or two) of their “premium” plonk — from memory, it retailed for $420 a bottle, in the 1980s — and thinking that it tasted like inferior fizzy apple juice.  I’ve forgotten the brand;  Dom Perignon?  Moët et Chandon?  Taittinger?  Bollinger?  But it wasn’t Veuve Clicquot, which really does taste like inferior fizzy apple juice.

Frankly, I find that champagne / sparkling wine works best as a component of the brunch staple, Mimosa (or Buck’s Fizz, as the Brits call it), as long as the drink contains much more orange juice than champers.
[Side note:  don’t bother using freshly-squeezed OJ in a Mimosa:  ordinary pasteurized crap works just fine, in fact Tropicana may be even better fit for purpose than the pricier-than-gold squeezed.]
And if you’re going to mix champagne with anything, you may as well save your money and use Korbel or the like, rather than the aforementioned overpriced Frog Appellation Controlée* stuff.

Okay, I’m just a Bloody Peasant and you’ve bought into the whole Champagne thing:  here are a couple of places to get a “best of” list:  18 Best Sparkling Wines to Drink in 2023 and 12 Best Sparkling Wines From All Over the World.

All that said, one of my favorite apéritifs is called a Golden Dream:  peach-flavored schnapps and (any) sparkling wine 50-50%, with a tiny drizzle of brandy (poured gently over an inverted teaspoon so as to lie on the surface of the drink).  Be warned:  drink this lovely stuff in moderation, or extreme shit-facery will soon follow.  Cheers.

*For the non-cognoscenti, only sparkling wine produced in France’s Champagne area may be called “champagne”;  all others must be labeled as “sparkling wine”, regardless of quality.  It’s all part of the marketing.

JHC.