A lesson in beer drinking

It's been months since my last post, and the title of this blog is starting to feel less and less appropriate. Maybe I need to change it to The Right Side of 60 while there's still time.

Two nights ago I opened a bottle of 8.1% strength beer. I won't mention the beer's name because it's probably not the brewery's fault what happened next. However, as a hint it's named after a nearby star, which was also the setting for a battle between Starfleet and the Borg in a memorable Star Trek episode: the one where Captain Picard has been assimilated and uses his knowledge of Starfleet tactics to... er. Anyway, so I open the bottle as I always do, and it goes off like a roman candle, beer gushing all over the work surface.

Two tea towels later and I'm on top of the situation, but most of the beer has gone. I carefully sip what's left. Perhaps it's the great strength of the beer, or maybe the bits of floating sediment that the bottle's instructions suggest I should have left in the bottle ("pour into a glass in one smooth action"), but I cannot warm to its flavour. Part of me wonders if the fountain effect wasn't a red flag.

Why was I even trying to drink an ale nearly twice as strong as normal? Well, it's an age thing. I don't mean that I like more alcohol as I get older. I bought the beer in the poorly lit back room of a beer shop (such an excellent invention—I never saw one until I got to York), and the print on the bottle was very small, and bizarrely I hadn't thought to take my reading glasses with me when I went shopping, so it wasn't until I got home that I discovered exactly what I'd bought.

I made it into my forties before I needed glasses. First for reading, then another pair for longer range, such as looking at a computer screen. The decline is slow but persistent, and now reading without glasses is a definite challenge, particularly first thing in the day; some mornings I have difficulty focusing on my breakfast cereal. In that dim shop, this bottle's label might as well have been written in Egyptian hieroglyphics for all the good it would have done me. In fact, that might have been better, for a couple of glyphs of legless Egyptians or a vomiting crocodile-headed god might have given me valuable clues about the alcohol strength.

But wait, I've just noticed that the label shows an illustration of two Neanderthal figures. Could this have been a coded hint about the expected level of my mental ability after finishing the bottle?

It also says that all their beers are naturally carbonated. Aha! Unexpectedly I realise I must from now on always read the instructions on beer. (Just as an afternoon of near terminal flatulence twenty years ago taught me the importance of reading the instructions on sugar-free jam.)

Old dogs can learn new tricks, provided they learn the hard way.

Another Fine Ale

Working my way through the Brakspear Classic English Ale collection I received in my stocking for Xmas, I get to Brakspear's Triple Ale. This is a truly lovely beer, that flows down your throat without a hint of its 7.2% alcohol content. At least, at the time.

Their web site observes that, "this is a beer that will go on to develop further complexity as it matures in its bottle". Alas, that's a development I'm unlikely to ever experience. Fortunately the branch of Threshers in Haxby currently stocks Triple Ale, so I can continue to taste it in its less mature, though still delicious, state.

It's been a good week for beer, following the news that "moderate beer consumption may help fight osteoporosis". Excellent! The word 'moderate' tempers my joy a bit, but in the end that's such a subjective word.

Years ago we were told that every time you drank alcohol you suffered a small but irreversible loss of brain cells. That's now been shown to be untrue. All we need now is the discovery that alcohol consumption aids liver function, and the rehabilitation will be complete.

That's probably pushing it a bit far, but I suppose we might yet hear that beer helps to fight hepatitis, say, and so could be regarded as a net positive for your liver.

Truly, we live in the Golden Age of scientific discovery.

Special Friend

Starting work on a bottle of real ale a few evenings ago, I was struck by how particularly pleasant it tasted. Not that surprising perhaps, as the label boasted the title,"Young's Special London Ale". Ah, yes. Young's Special, an old friend from many years back. I noticed something else on the label: Alcohol Content 6.4%.

Ohhhkay. That would work out as 3.2 units of alcohol (I know I've had enough to drink when I can no longer calculate alcohol units in my head), or roughly what the Government thinks I should drink no more than per day. Maybe I should leave a bit for tomorrow?

6.4% was rather higher than I remembered. A bit of research (read 'Google') revealed the truth. "Young's Special London Ale", which comes in bottles, isn't the same as "Young's Special", that comes on draught and is only 4.5% alcohol. Not a huge amount of imagination shown there by the Young's beer naming department, and a potential source of catastrophe for bottled beer drinkers like me.

Which brings my memories round to the first time I tried Young's Special. A party in London with a bunch of dental students, thirty years or so ago. A pub beforehand, where a friend introduced me to the brew and I polished off two pints of it. A foolish decision later that evening at the party to move onto cider. And finally, an indeterminate time staring into porcelain wishing my life was over so I could stop being sick for a bit.

Ever since my dramatic discovery that beer and cider don't go well together, I have had very mixed feelings about cider. Yes, I do drink it occasionally, but my heart is never in it. Real ale, on the other hand, has never left me with any sort of lasting aversion. And yet it wasn't just the cider that wasted me that night, so why does my body remember that cider isn't good for it while ignoring the effects of the beer? My tentative theory: cider is usually well stronger than 4.5%, so maybe my body only paid attention to the strongest drink involved.

As corroborative evidence, I would cite the fact that I haven't been able to drink Pernod since my 20th birthday when I overindulged on Pernod & Orange, but I still like orange juice.