December Meme: Booze

[netgirl_y2k]

Yesterday's scheduled post about alcohol was postponed due to my Christmas party related hangover. There's a moral in there, probably.

So kmo said: Beer/alcohol preferences and recommendations. I have the feeling you could drink me under the table, so I will take them quite seriously. :)

I-- I can't possibly imagine what gave you that impression! Why, I--

The affronted innocence act isn't going to fly, is it? So, let's start with beer.

If I'm just just going to the pub for a quick drink with a mate I'll have a pint of Tennant's, which is just the standard beer here, what you'll get if walk up to a bar and ask for a pint of lager without getting more specific. It's fine, it's sort of idiot proof, I don't think I've ever had a bad pint of it. At the same time, it's nothing special, and there's the nostalgia factor that it's what I've been drinking since we used to stuff our school ties into our bags, take off our blazers, and hope the bar staff in the local wouldn't notice we were schoolkids. They noticed, of course, they just didn't care so long as we didn't make a nuisance of ourselves and that one kid who had started school at a wonky time and was eighteen months before the rest of us did the ordering for everyone.

The best Scottish beer, by the by, is Innis & Gunn.

I do tend to drink lager/pilsner type beers more than stouts or real ales. The exception to this was when I went to a friend's birthday drinks, and there was a guy there who I hadn't met before; he was a member of his uni's real ale society, and quickly told me that he didn't like to see women drinking ale, and certainly not by the pint. Well, after that I'd be damned if I wasn't going to spend the evening quaffing Hobgoblin out of a tankard.

I went to Oktoberfest earlier this year, and though I had a whale of a time, the beer was more notable for its quantity than being especially brilliant. The best beer I've ever had, actually, was in Prague. My favourite, favourite beer is Pilsner Urquell, but I don't think you can really go wrong with anything Czech; I really like Staropramen, Gambrinus, and Budvar too.

I like the odd occasional Leffe blonde, although as that is 7% and comes in 700 ml bottles, it's a feel-no-pain type of a beer.

There are all sorts of mad beers, though. I once tried a seaweed beer out of a sort of masochistic I have to know type thing (0/10, would not recommend). There's such a thing as banana bread beer, which is something I know to my lasting sorrow.

I like the occasional Gin & Tonic (Gordon's, please, or Hendrick's; I will not be fobbed off with any of this Bombay Sapphire nonsense), but as I already feel like I'm slowly turning into my mother at the best of times I don't partake often. Actually, funny story, I was going on holiday last year, and I don't fly well, and my mum filled my coat pocket with little miniatures of gin in case I got scared on the plane.

Wine I only really drink with food, so unless it's absolute vinegar I'll happily drink whatever I'm given. Vodka, even the really swish stuff, has only ever tasted of vague burning sensation to me.

I do like a wee dram of scotch from time to time. At a wedding I once got talking to a bloke who was a whisky taster/reviewer, which is the very definition of nice work if you can get it. Although there's a whisky pub in Edinburgh where they have a menu with all their different whiskies on it, and under each one it has a little description of what it tastes like. Now for one of them it said "has flavours of seaweed and iodine" and 1) yuck, and 2) how would you even know? Now I love a pub that has a good selection of scotch, but that set of my pretentious wankery alarm.

I could probably run a Glenfiddich only bar out of my kitchen; people give me bottles of it for birthdays/Christmases and the like because they know I like it, and it's certainly a present you can't go wrong with. My best friend - the fellow I have to blame for turning me into a whisky drinker - treated me to a dram of the thirty year old Glenfiddich when I turned thirty. He's joking that he's already started saving up to buy me a glass of the forty year old for that birthday. Although he's the one that started me on scotch, I like smokier whiskies than he does. He's a highland malt boy. Me, I like something with a bit of peat to it - not Laphroaig, which I find smoky to the point of being undrinkable, but Talisker and Bowmore are both excellent.

And now I should end this post before I really sound like a complete lush.

Comments

[lilacsigil]

I have tasted both seaweed (in assorted Japanese dishes) and iodine (in a gargle) and you are completely right that you would not want that in a scotch.

[netgirl_y2k]

And the thing is I actually tried it, in another fit of morbid curiosity, and by and large, it tasted of scotch.

[adafrog]

Very interesting. Thanks.

[netgirl_y2k]

Ah, alcohol, one of the few subjects (that and Doctor Who) on which I can speak with great authority.

[alwaystheocean]

I really enjoyed reading this! :D

I don't really like beer, but I do like whisky. :D

[netgirl_y2k]

I'm really enjoying this meme for discovering all those things people know about, and can talk at length about, but tend not to in a fannish context. Like, I don't think I knew that you were a dancer until recently.

Kinda wishing one of mine wasn't drinking, but whatever.

[alwaystheocean]

Hee, that's definitely a cool thing about it, I agree! :D

IDK though, I think it was cool to hear you talk about your preferences in more depth!

[glinda]

Flavoured beers are almost always terrible though the Belgians do a nice Strawberry beer, and I quite like a heather beer. Living in Inverness I've become a bit of a small brewery stouts and ales fan which causes much hilarity in the pub, as my usual drinking buddy is a burly six foot tall Englishman who likes lager (I recently introduced him to St Mungos beer...mainly because I've had warm Tennants over me at too many gigs to willingly give them money when its my round...) and the bar staff keep trying to give us each other's beers...

[netgirl_y2k]

Ah, yes, the warm tennants at gigs. At least, I think it was beer... there are times when you don't really want to think about it too closely.

My sister's boyfriend and I slope off together for a pint quite often, and he's a big bearded bloke who looks like by rights he should be manning an oar on a viking longship; he drinks strawberry cider. We're forever being handed the wrong drinks.

[via_ostiense]

a bloke who was a whisky taster/reviewer, which is the very definition of nice work if you can get it

Indeed! I wouldn't mind trying the seaweed + iodine flavor, it sounds like it'd taste how the ocean smells.

[netgirl_y2k]

Mostly it tasted like scotch (I ordered it, I had to know) but I think maybe you needed to be in a castle by the sea to get the full effect.

[kmo]

LOL, thanks for all the reviews and recs! I will keep this in mind should I ever end up drinking in Scotland. I also love scotch but can't seem to afford anything better than the blended variety....will have to save up for the higher quality stuff.

he was a member of his uni's real ale society, and quickly told me that he didn't like to see women drinking ale, and certainly not by the pint. Well, after that I'd be damned if I wasn't going to spend the evening quaffing Hobgoblin out of a tankard.

I heard something like this before from a friend of mine, that it was considered very unfeminine for women in the UK to drink beer and not wine or a least a shandy. Beer is definitely not a girly drink in the US but you don't get strange looks for drinking it.

[netgirl_y2k]

The only reason I can afford single malt at all is that they don't tax the living daylights out of it before it's exported, so a glass of single malt in the pub will cost you about the same as a beer here. At least, so long as you stick to the stuff you can see on the shelves - they bring something out from under the bar then run far, run fast, my friend.

But there are blends that are nicer than some single malts, and anyone who says otherwise is a snob of the highest order.

I heard something like this before from a friend of mine, that it was considered very unfeminine for women in the UK to drink beer and not wine or a least a shandy.

...Not really. At least, it's not a Scottish thing. What made that encounter memorable was that I hadn't heard anything like it before or since - not from the straight guys I watch football with, not when my dad takes me out for a pint with his mates who are all unreconstructed former shipbuilders in their sixties.

I think there's maybe a gatekeeper thing with the real ale society (that's a real thing, honest). It's a bit like how some comics fanboys go, Why don't more people love this thing that I love? NOT YOU. YOU'RE THE WRONG TYPE OF PERSON.